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Revitalise Your Creativity and Innovation Sense 

 

Using the Tools of Thinking, Creative Making,

Narrative, Mindfulness, Experimentation and Learning 

 

Our Programme

 

CAP Institute's Creativity and Innovation Programme is conducted through Seminars in South Africa, specifically Mbombela (Nelspruit) and Cape Town.

 

The Programme cultivates an African perspective to creativity and conceptual artmaking and serves the purpose of providing opportunities to students, lecturers and artists to extend their experiential learning and frame of reference. The Programme is conceptually and academically grounded in a tertiary model of education.

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Our Seminars are unique in the world by having a two-fold, bi-location structure: One week of creativity tuition and making in the raw, natural African bush in the protected environment of a game farm in Mpumalanga; and one week of tuition in African theory, history and exhibition practice through a guided visit to top South African galleries and museums in Cape Town. The Seminars are conducted under leadership of Elfriede Dreyer, an internationally rated South African Professor, curator and professional artist, supported by a professional hospitality and logistics team, as well as the wildlife veterinary scientist, Dr. Cobus Raath, the managing director of Wildlife Pharmaceuticals, who does elephant briefing with the participants. We also include well-known South African artists in the Seminars to conduct practical sessions with the participants. 

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The Programme includes the best of everything that South Africa has to offer: Expert academic tuition from an African perspective, nature, wild animals, a trip to the Kruger National Park, a sunset cruise in Cape Town, colonial history, and visits to our best galleries and museums, all in safe environments. 

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Aims and objectives

 

Our Creativity and Innovation Programme is aimed at problem solving; creative and critical thinking; and generating with found, alternative, natural materials, but there is also a psychological, therapeutic and cathartic underpinning to the Programme. Through the revitalisation of creative and innovative thinking, it seeks to provide methodologies and processes that induce increased problem-solving skills and stimulate innovative approaches in the workplace or studio. Since we aim to stimulate imagination going back to raw nature and cultivate innovation skills, the Programme is suitable for people from different professions wishing to perform at their peak by enhancing, improving and activating their creativity. Concerned with both theory and practice, the Programme considers connections between them.

 

We empower individuals by developing creativity and innovation sensibility through a connection with raw African nature in protected environments and by providing academic tuition and creative practice under guidance of the best of South African expertise in the visual arts, creative thinking and veterinary science. We make use of the tools of thinking, making, storytelling, mindfulness, experimentation and learning under guidance of an Art Professor and the best available mentors, guides and scientists.

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We are based in South Africa, but we work with clients worldwide.

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Our Seminars are conducted in English.

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What is creativity?

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In the face of constantly increasing global and domestic competition, innovation and creativity have become essential components in the survival game. Creativity has long been a focus of scholarly research in many fields, including business and the sciences. What stimulates and prompts  creativity, however, is a complex matter, even for art academics and specialists who have envisioned, taught and practised various methodologies over the years. What used to be a scholarly interest for a select few has become a compulsory matter for many. 

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According to scholars, creativity and innovation have to do with the recognition of possibilities; curiosity; fearlessness; flexibility; positivity; and motivation; amongst others. The good news: Creativity can be taught, developed, and learnt! In Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats (1985) for instance, he identifies six distinct cognitive modes related to problem solving:  the hats are black, blue, green, red, white, and yellow and they each represent frameworks and dispositions for thinking. The white hat is the information hat: wearing this the thinker considers facts at hand, laying a groundwork for creativity and innovation. The black hat represents scepticism and judgement, and the green hat represents possibility and newness. This is a useful methodology in teaching the steps in generating creative thinking.

 

Affinity mapping as a methodology known as the KJ Method or KJ Technique, is an idea generating and prioritising technique developed by ethnographer Jiro Kawakita; this methodology helps organise ideas, problems, solutions, and fragmented uncertain information into related groups after a brainstorming process.

 

These are but two of the available methodologies to assist in the development of creativity and innovation.