Tinspiration | HostingTransformation

Tinspiration

Tinspirations are little tins or boxes that stimulate your creativity in a problemsolving or ideation process. Tinspirations are based on human curiosity and bring a touch of playfulness into your office, to your desk, or your seminar room.

What is
Tinspiration
about ?

What is

Tinspiration

about ?

What is this Method about ?

You might know the tradition of Advent calendars: you have 24 little packages with sweets or small toys and open one per day to help children overcome the LONG time till Christmas. I grew up with this tradition and also prepared many Advent calendars for my children. It is a delight to witness this moment just before they open the package, this tension and expectation of surprise. So one December the idea occurred to us to make an advent calendar with inspirations for tricky problem solving.

When and why is this Method used ?

Sometimes finding new ideas just happens and it is extremely uplifting. But sometimes the idea lurks just around the corner, almost there, on the tip of the tongue. Or a little further away. We dedicated the tinspirations for those cases: if the problem seems too huge to know where to start or if you come up with the same ideas again and again -- time for some playful ease.

This method operates on a very reliable human motivation: curiosity. In the moment of curiosity, mind and heart open to welcome something new. This basic attitude is extremely helpful to allow new thoughts to occur. Tinspirations then invites you to combine thoughts and find analogies you would not normally think of: the content of your tin will solve your problem. But what the hell has this little gearwheel to do with my problem? Here you are find out and you will see that it takes very little to lead you into a whole universe of new inspiring ideas and playful solutions.

Where does this Method come from ?

Original Source Details

Visionautik Akademie

Audience

Is participant experience relevant for Tinspiration ?

It's okay if participants haven't seen the inside of a classroom in years

Requirements

Experience level of the facilitator

Self explanatory, no experience needed

Location requirements

Not specifically

Run Through

Pre Exercise

Steps

Needing an idea

You want to have a good idea.

Find a guiding question

Find a specific question: What exactly do you need a good idea for? What problem do you want to solve? This step is really important. The clearer your question is the more likely you will find an answer.

Get frustrated

You don’t have a clue. You could get a little angry or frustrated about it. In fact it often helps to get a little bit angry about not knowing how to solve the problem.

Choose a Tinspiration

Think of your question while you intuitively choose a Tinspiration with your left hand.

Find the solution within the tin

Examine the content: What can you learn from the content of the container in order to solve your problem? How can the object be the solution you’ve been looking for? You'll find the solution within the tin. Really! If it doesn't show up immediately it is an especially good one.

Celebrate

Be happy about the idea, jump up and down and shout “Eureka!” or something similar. Celebrate your success!

Harvest

Implement the idea. Ready.

Variations

Cultural Variations

-You can use other containers than tins. Adapt it to the style and culture of your organization. For example, for a textile company it is especially nice to use textile bags instead of little boxes. -You can provide them in a modified chewing gum or cigarette vending machine: an Inspiromat. In some cultures it enhances the trust in the method and helps to set a clear intention if you need to pay for your Tinspiration. It is also a nice accessory in the lobby of your creative enterprise.

Material for

Material

Additional Material Description

It takes some time and care to prepare a set of Tinspirations, but be sure that all the love and care you put into the preparation will automatically flow out when a Tinspiration is opened and spreads its good spirit!

What you need:

-20-30 little containers (tins, matchboxes, little jars, etc.) The shape is not important, but it is important that you cannot see what is inside and that they looks nice (It should be a delight and surprise to open one).

-A collection of little items that are of no practical use anymore but have the potential to inspire, e.g. a button, uncooked noodle, broken zipper, or feather.

Put one or two items into each container, close it properly and put them in a nice bigger box or a basket. Download and print out the step-by-step guide template and attach it to the box. Your Tinspiration set is ready to answer any kind of creative question.

Additional Resources Description

Create materials with tender, love and care in : 4 hours

Create materials quick and dirty in : 60 min

Impact

Hidden Curriculum -Don’t take the creative process too seriously! -Problem solving is easy. -There is no such thing as useless or unimportant. You can find solutions everywhere, even in the most unlikely situations, even if you think ”this has nothing to do with my problem.”

author(s)

OF THIS method

ERASMUS +

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union. Find more information about the program and its goals here: https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/.

Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

Creative Commons license:

CC-BY-SA You are free to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes with mention of the source: Transformation Hosts International, www. hostingtransformation.eu. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.