It’s World Creativity and Innovation Week, April 15-21, and we at Catalyst Ranch are, as you can imagine, pretty chuffed. (We’re being worldly with our lexicon, too. 😉)
This is a full week devoted to inspiring creative potential and encouraging innovation in everyday life. It’s a reminder that creativity isn’t just for artists or designers — it’s for everyone. Whether you’re solving a business challenge, writing a poem or brainstorming new ways to connect with your community, creativity is a powerful tool for progress and connection. Truly, World Creativity and Innovation Week (and its culmination, World Creativity and Innovation Day) was born from the same truths that propel everything we do at Catalyst Ranch!
To celebrate last year, we shared titles from our Catalyst Ranch Bookshelf, an ongoing reference list of published books that provoke imagination and critical thinking.
Find the first installment of Our Catalyst Ranch Bookshelf in our blog post here!
This year, we’re not just reading but *doing*. Throughout WCIW, we’re unpacking our Creative Toolbox: a selection of tools, resources and tactics that have served us in creating and exploring ideas. With them, we catalyze our creativity into something productive instead of just theoretical. Follow us on social media (Instagram and Facebook) where we’re sharing one tool in the box each day!
For Wednesday, we highlighted CreativeMornings. But our admiration for and history with this collective warrants a deeper dive, perfect for our Creative Juice Blog.
Different CreaetiveMornings events
CreativeMornings: Everyone is creative, Everyone is Welcome
For those who are unfamiliar, CreativeMornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series founded on the belief that everyone is creative and everyone is welcome. What started as a humble gathering in NYC for creatives has grown into a global movement with chapters in hundreds of cities.
Catalyst Ranch has been lucky enough to host CreativeMornings Chicago twice, and we experienced firsthand the positive, contagious energy this community generates.
The CreativeMornings Chicago team
What we love about their event model is that it prioritizes connection with peers in pursuit of making a difference, be that in the world, in your neighborhood, or within yourself. The subject of each talk will vary, but they can dependably relate to that month’s global theme. And the themes are broad but potent: past themes have been Revolution, Magic, Taboo, Symmetry, and Sanctuary.
To highlight how fruitful the community connections are, when CreativeMornings came to us in 2019, Shilpa Alva spoke to the theme of Water. She was so enamored with Catalyst Ranch, and the Ranch, too, of Shilpa’s work, that she brought the next event for her humanitarian organization here, starting a years long relationship with our dear client, Surge for Water.
Shilpa Alva speaking at Creative Mornings and Surge for Water events at Catalyst Ranch
Strengths in stoking creativity
We are lucky to have, as a unique event space, been in the CreativeMornings orbit. It has served to bring so many diverse minds to the Ranch. To see our values championed in such a smart way has been so rewarding and reassuring.
Fittingly, the aspects which make CreativeMornings welcoming and diverse also make it readily accessible and versatile for your creative needs:
- Local chapters can be found in a wealth of regions, so you can engage from all over the globe and in a range of languages.
- Beyond their flagship morning events, the organization offers a number of FieldTrips every week. These interactive, community-led virtual (and sometimes in-person) workshops dive into everything from mindfulness and storytelling to creative entrepreneurship and typography, and, being online, they can be attended by folks who can’t access in-person events.
- All events are free to attend!
We encourage you to use this resource as a tool for yourself. And what better opportunity than during Happy World Creativity and Innovation Week: Chicago’s next event is this Friday, April 18, with speaker Amanda ReCupido.
The global theme is Crossroads.
Find out more at creativemornings.com.
