Mindmapping

In our world which mainly concentrates on the spoken and written word we tend to limit ourselves to rationality, forgetting that intuition has always been a great source of creativity. Although the knowledge of the differences between the left and the right hemispheres of our brain still is insufficient to understand fully how ratio and intuition work together, we all have experienced in our life the power of inspiration through graphical art. We adore the craftsmanship of the Islamic calligraphy, and we enjoy visiting art galleries and museums. Each of us has made the experience that during a long and boring telephone conversation or during a meeting, the pen in our hand suddenly starts its own life, composing sketches and patterns on the note-pad which obviously come from a deeper level below our consciousness. They are never planned or designed, they are just appear. After ending the telephone conversation, we are often surprised about our artistic skills.

These skills can be utilized for creative planning. A method now widely applied to awaken the artist in ourselves is called Mindmapping. Take some colored pens, markers, or crayons. You can do this exercise on your own, then you might only need small sheets of paper. I do it regularly when I start to plan a new project. But it is fun to do it in groups! Then you might need big sheets of paper - those that are used for flip-charts or for pin-boards.

Any one of the group starts to write a word in the center of the paper and circles it (some people draw clouds around, and others don't circle at all, others write the key-words along the branches of the tree; it is not really important, what geometric forms you choose). This is the central concept you want to explore. Do not think about to seriously whether the first expression is really the central issue - we are approaching a creative process, and we do not want to rank now, what is important or not. Please leave your critic outside the room for the next hour. Structure is the death of creativity.

Now any other person has an association and puts it straightforward to the board, connecting it with the center key word with a line.

The next person continues. She could put new categories on the board or elaborate on the word clients. She could also add some drawings. There are no rules for Mindmapping.

Eventually, the group writes down all its associations and intuitions. Some people might form a sub-group and start a second Mindmap.