Creativity Greenhouse - Supporting Distributed Group Creativity

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EPSRC aims to be truly innovative in the processes used to stimulate creativity and potentially transformative research and as such runs a range of activities where deliberate creative facilitation is used, from Think Free Retreats to five day Sandpit events. This proposal investigates whether such facilitated creativity activities could be conducted with participants remote to each other, supported by digital communication technologies? Use of such technologies could enable the capability to work without geographical and/or time constraints in what is coined Creativity Greenhouse in this context. The Creativity Greenhouse could enhance the pool of people involved in contributing to meetings and generating ideas. Use of technology could also support more efficient and cost-effective ways of working, e.g. resulting in significant savings on meeting costs.Following a collaborative pilot of the Creativity Greenhouse approach, run by the Horizon Digital Economy Hub and EPSRC, the aim of this project is to develop the existing approach (consisting of event structure, technology set-up and evaluation method arrived at during the pilot project) to a stage where it can be used more widely across EPSRC and beyond. The project is proposed to proceed in two stages. Both will involve the Creativity Greenhouse process including distribution of funding resources for real projects. Phase 1 will involve the distribution of resources within the Horizon Digital Economy Hub and will serve as further opportunity to pilot the technology and the process. Phase 2 will involve funding distribution to the broader UK research community as relevant to two of the four priority areas of the RCUK Digital Economy programme and EPSRC ICT programme. Concretely, a previously integrated set of technologies combining Google Apps as backend data sharing platform and Teleplace supporting synchronous communication during facilitated sessions will be re-used. Previously developed resources such as templates and questionnaires will be adapted and the event structure will be adapted. Technology (WP1), resources and event structure (WP2) will then be studied (WP3) and iteratively refined to suit each of the four events leading to a final set that can be re-used for similar activities or other context within EPSRC and beyond.The key output of the project will be the fully developed and evaluated infrastructure to support distributed groups being creative together. The project will conclude by engaging with various stakeholders across the UK funding landscape to understand the impact of this novel infrastructure on governance and policy (WP4). The project includes resources to package and brand this infrastructure for re-use (WP5).