● To introduce the key creativity sub-skill of connecting and

combining

● To outline some practical steps you can take to improve your

ability to make creative connections and combinations

● To practise connecting and combining in small groups

Discussion of pre-session task

Gutenberg Printing Press Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection

UK favourite dish Chicken Tikka Masala

Metal-working, e.g. Casting and stamping

Wine Press Gutenberg Printing Press

Tomato Soup

South Asian Chicken Curry

UK favourite dish Chicken Tikka Masala

● Darwin begins Origin of Species by

talking about selective breeding.

● Say you want a bigger cow. You can

start by breeding two cows that are

slightly bigger than the rest.

● If you repeat this process enough

times, you can change the size,

shape, colour and behaviour of

animals.

● When he was travelling in South

America as a young man, Darwin had

noticed the variation in the beaks of

birds.

● He now asks his reader: What if

Nature too could somehow select

characteristics?

● This process he called ‘Natural

Selection’, an idea borrowed from

stock breeding.

● But Darwin’s real genius was to

borrow an idea from Political

Economy

● Thomas Malthus was a Political

Economist who was researching

population change at the same time.

● He came up with the idea that

population growth was always

controlled by the amount of food

that could be produced. Thomas Malthus 1766 -1834,English Political Economist

● According to Malthus, population growth

would always grow beyond the amount of

food available to feed it

● This would lead to cycles of struggle for

survival and species competed for limited

resources

● Darwin read Malthus by chance, and

found the missing piece to the

evolutionary puzzle.

● An idea borrowed from political economy!

● At the same time as Darwin was working, a

group of linguists were researching the

origins of European language

● They discovered that most European

languages evolved from a single ‘ancestor’

language which they called Indo-European.

● To visualise this process of development,

they used a tree diagram as shown here.

● Scientists at the same time as Darwin also

used this model to illustrate the

development of species from a common

ancestor

● Even today, if we want to investigate the

origins and movements of people across

the earth, linguists and genetic scientist

work together, looking at DNA and

language.

Practising connecting and combining

● Reverse engineer existing inventions, ideas and

creations into their constituent parts

● James Burke’s Connections (1976)

● The corona-virus crisis has brought together

experts in diverse fields

● To tackle the virus we have needed computer

modelling, epidemiology, bio-engineering,

economics, product development, logistics,

mental health workers, etc.

● Knowledge of a wide range of disciplines

increases the probability of making original

connections and combinations

● Studies have shown that learning a foreign

language can enhance your creativity

● “The findings revealed that learning English as

a foreign language to an advanced level

significantly enhances all four divergent

thinking abilities, i.e., fluency, elaboration,

originality and flexibility.”

B. Ghonsooly and S. Showqi, “The effects of foreign language learning on creativity,” English Language Teaching., vol. 5, no. 4, p. 161, 2012.

● Chindogu originate in Japan and are a kind of game. The aim is to

create a bizarre invention by combining common household objects.

Can you supply a

humorous caption for

this cartoon?

“Most men drink to

escape. I escape to

drink.”

Breakout task

Can you supply a

humorous caption for

this cartoon?

● Identify the key elements of the cartoon and write them inside circles on a sheet of paper, i.e. SPHINX, INTERVIEW, BUSINESS MEETING, SKYSCRAPER

● Next brainstorm words and ideas which are connected with each key element and write them in a spider diagram around each key word as shown

● When you have done this for all keywords, look for original and valuable connections between the associations.

SPHINX

Egypt

No nose

Riddle or Mystery Desert

Pyramids

● To introduce the key creativity sub-skill of connecting and

combining

● To outline some practical steps you can take to improve your

ability to make creative connections and combinations

● To practise connecting and combining in small groups

● Build on this session by practising connecting and combining

using one of the other techniques mentioned:○ Take the chindogu challenge

○ Reverse engineering ideas, inventions or creations

○ Develop a foreign language

○ Practise interdisciplinarity

○ Interact with different kinds of people