Ways of Thinking

You can imagine how it is in art schools: clusters of images, sheaves of delightfully exploratory stuff stuck up on any available wall and in nooks and crannies, each testing the functions and boundaries of visual communication.

Well, that's just where this project begins. But in the case of Ways of Thinking, it wasn't just stuff, and it wasn't just any available wall space that sparked our imaginations: this project began as a visual meditation on language, discovery and wonder... As the idea for Ways of Thinking took shape, we put out a call for collaborators in our creative community - to include writers, typographers, designers, illustrators, photographers, painters, sculptors - to send us an image of something they had found intriguing, and that had led directly or indirectly to an outcome based on that initial wonderment.

Visual stimulation is vital to the way we think, and not just for us creative thinkers.

As an infant, every human needs visual stimulation to develop proper brain function.

However, a creative brain will perhaps draw inspiration from things that many people would find mundane.

A case in point is Salvador Jimenez-Donaire (p.35) who has extracted fascinating imagery by peering deeply into a roll of transparent packing tape. Or Sarah Strachan (p.39), whose most significant inspiration on an outing to visit a Matisse exhibition was the disused advertising frame she saw on the train she took into London. Or Sylwia Dylewska (p.43) who, while doing her civic duty by picking up litter in her neighbourhood, collected aluminium drinks cans to recycle into pinhole cameras. Or Sarah Gibson Yates (p.65) who used the photo of a fast food van in Eastern Europe as the scene of a murder for her novel for young adults.

These are just a few examples from many within this book - creative thinkers reaching beyond the boundaries of the delimited use of objects and places, and delvingdeeply into the relationships that have touched their lives.