Kickstart Creativity: 50 Prompted Cards to Spark Inspiration

by Bonnie Smith Whitehouse

Overview

Bust through creative blocks and ignite innovative problem-solving with this toolkit for creative experimentation featuring 50 prompt cards.

What if finding inspiration was merely a matter of gazing through a different lens or trying out a new tool? Kickstart Creativity is a deck of 50 cards—each with a creative exercise—designed to prompt unexpected ways of thinking.

At the start of a personal challenge or work project, draw three cards from this deck and reflect on how the spread relates to your current situation. Choose an action card to learn a new skill, a perspective card to see the world in a novel way, and an intention card to influence more meaningful and mindful choices.

Kickstart Creativity can be used by individuals or by groups of teachers, students, co-workers, and other collaborators as an antidote to creative block. With insights from trailblazing rule-breakers and cultural philosophies from bygone eras, Kickstart Creativity will shift your attention away from the pressure of productivity and toward the path to creative freedom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593137703
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	02/02/2021
Pages:	50
Sales rank:	1,050,915
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Bonnie Smith Whitehouse, Ph.D., is a professor of English at Belmont University and the author of Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking. She specializes in the flourishing field of writing studies, where she gives writers opportunities for freedom, authenticity, and discovery by emphasizing process and experimentation over product. Bonnie seeks to help others cultivate creativity, well-being, and peace by prompting them to engage thoughtfully and contemplatively with themselves, the natural world, and the technologies that shape our lives.

Read an Excerpt

KICKSTART CREATIVITY IS FOR YOU IF YOU’RE PREPARED TO:

TRUST THE CREATIVE PROCESS. Ideas need time to grow and develop. When you set your dreams and endeavors aside to incubate, it may not seem like any creative movement is happening. But while you ponder a new concept or intention, you’ll find that new insights reveal themselves in unexpected moments.

PURSUE DISRUPTION. Despite what legend and lore has led so many of us to believe, the creative process is not really all that mysterious. Getting stuck or needing a spark of inspiration is all part of the deal. Take a disruptive (a productive!) break with Kickstart Creativity.

PROCEED ONWARD! One of the best-kept secrets for creatives and problem solvers is what Einstein called combinatory play, the act of opening up one mental channel by dabbling in a completely different activity; for example, Einstein would play the violin when he got stuck on a math problem. By using these cards to take imaginative leaps forward and to connect dissimilar dots, Kickstart Creativity gives you specific strategies for moving toward your visions, hopes, and dreams. Especially in this wild, wooly, and sometimes cruel world, all human beings deserve a little time and space to explore their creative potential. If we want to create a better future for ourselves and for generations yet to come, we need all imaginations engaged and all hands on deck.

BE OPEN. BE DETERMINED. BE FEARLESS.