COMMUNICATING CREATIVITY


Giving team members the platforms to share their creative ideas, and encouraging a safe zone to collaborate and discuss those ideas, is a fundamental component of enabling a creative culture.


Encouraging a fun, open, storytelling culture enables staff to freely share new ideas and collaboratively problem solve, learning from one another and growing together. In Storytelling: It Can Change Your Mind, we noted that interpersonal neurobiology is investigating how our brains grow when we tell each other our life stories. In fact, our brains make little distinction between our own experiences and someone else’s: the same areas of the brain light up either way, creating fascinating personal connections. As Salman Rushdie once said, “Man is the storytelling animal. It’s the thing that defines us. We tell stories to understand ourselves.”


In 2013, Designer Amanda Yates started Second Tuesdays in St. Louis, a kind of spin off of Te Moth or Tis American Life podcasts. Learning a great deal about hosting storytelling sessions, and the emotional empowerment and group learning that can come from sharing one’s story, she brought that program inside the walls of PGAV to our own staff.


Later that year, Amanda along with Exhibit Designer Carol Breeze, and a small team started Spot on Story, named for our beloved staff mascot. On one Friday afternoon each quarter, our staff gather with handfuls of snacks and drinks, settle in to comfy chairs, to laugh, listen, and tear up as a half dozen of our team take the stage to tell their stories. Each Spot on Story centers on a given theme; and for one hour, donned in costumes surrounded by endless props and visuals, storytellers celebrate our history, our culture, and share industry learning. It’s a remarkable opportunity for our team to hone their presentation skills, come together and strengthen relationships, and learn and grow together. Storytelling pervades everything we do at PGAV, and Spot on Story gives a moment to pause and spin a yarn together.


“Sometimes too serious a


mindset can hinder creativity,” says Hongkiat contributor Michael Poh. “Having fun during work allows one to be relaxed, and that’s where one tends to get inspired with wonderful ideas.”


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