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Resource:How to develop an innovation space to support creativity and design research

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The first step in getting anything off the ground is identifying a need. With the information above, look at your school. See what systems are already in place to develop a spirit of creativity and design, and expand on that. How can it be improved, how can it gain more awareness, is there even a system like this in place to begin with? These are key questions to ask yourself before proceeding with this.

The next step would be your goal. What do you hope to achieve with this space, how are you impacting student’s, does this idea take care of the need that you have identified? Once you have a clear goal in mind as well as a need identified it’s time to make this a reality. How do we go about this?

If you’re trying to institute change in your school, you won’t get very far without support. One approach to this is working from the little guy up. Instead of going straight to the President of the University, let’s try addressing this with someone a little more approachable first and start garnering that much needed support. One student’s approach was to go to their library’s director initially. The director of the library was very receptive and was more than happy to speak with those above her to garner support. Eventually it went all the way to the top and had a good following. This seemed to almost ensure the success of the initiative.

A bottom up approach rather than going straight to the top is just one method that could be used however. Depending on the school’s infrastructure another approach might be best. Another thing to consider, is that you must be willing to compromise with the people in charge. Don’t be so unwilling to budge on any of your ideas that you end up losing support and losing a great thing for your school and the students in it.

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Now that you have the support, the location, and the funding what’s next? Decorating! Now you have to decide what will be the most creative environment for students to come to, what will get the creative/innovative juices flowing? What type of furniture are you going to use, what type of technology do you want available to the students, how will you allow big groups of students to collaborate on projects and share new ideas? The answer: Don’t do it alone!</span~~><br/~~>

Recruit other students, ask them what they want, ask them what helps them when they’re on their own to be creative. On another note, think about what helps you to be creative. I think we have all heard about Google’s offices...nap pods, couches, people eating on ping pong tables, riding bikes through the office and so forth. Also try to provide as much as access to visualization as possible, this will create an environment to create and give students a better option to express themselves. 3D printers, TV screens, projectors, white boards, big craft papers, foam, scissors, crayons, play dough and etc! Anything you can think of! With your budget that may not be possible, but you get the idea. Think about what makes people comfortable, and get them creative including yourself, and go from there.

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