Notes from the Edge of Change

Being Creative at a Museum of Art

The Communications & Marketing team at Michigan Engineering recently had a staff Offsite, held appropriately enough at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. What better setting to reflect, be creative and peer into the future. 

Some highlights…

One of the ideas we came up with in a brainstorming session was to produce a daily podcast or video with engineering stories. We liked the idea of creating something regular and interesting to encourage folks to make us part of a daily routine. 

There were also ideas for making our workspace a more creative environment. We talked about everything including piping in music, rearranging the furniture, special meetings, a massive project wall. 

In the weeks leading up to the Offsite, we interviewed each other and came up with a lot of personal info and stories. At the Offsite, the tidbits of info and quotes from the interviews were handed out — without any indication of who said what. Then we tried to match the info and quotes with the right person. Even though we work with each other every day, we discovered there was plenty we don’t know about each other. And we learned that our colleagues had lots of interesting perspectives and experiences. 

There were lots of other ideas that we generated. The biggest challenge now will be following up on the ideas that we came up with. Nobody likes spending a day creatively thinking about the future, only to see all the great ideas forgotten in the days and weeks that follow.  

I’ll keep you updated. And hopefully the creativity that we experienced at the Museum of Art will turn into real projects being produced by our office in the weeks and months to come.