Coming soon

The Publisher is a platform for creative work and stories made by refugees. Its development was started by six graduate students of the school of the Arts in Utrecht (HKU) and the website launched in January.
The team includes Sacha Schemkes, Welmoed Terpstra, Mirthe Vos, Jöran Zeeuw, Sophie Dochterom and Sophie Roumans. All studying different disciplines; art and economics, fashion design, spatial design and product design.

Sophie Roumans: “In the summer of 2015 the ‘refugee-crisis’ was all over the news. We had the feeling that we had to do something… We didn’t know each other back then, but a school project about re-defining society brought us together, all having the same frustrations about the topic.
We started to research the situation and visited many talks and meet-ups to learn more about initiatives. One in particular was very important for our thought process, “De vluchtroute” in Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. Here we found our leading goal; changing the tone of the debate. To provide another sound in the pool of negativity.

But how? We learnt that a lot of initiatives aren’t exactly what refugees are looking for. So we tried to set aside ourselves and our opinions of what we think is good and started listening to their stories and needs. When we heard what they wanted, our story began.”

At Creative Mornings we will talk about our creative learning process, what we have encountered and the challenges we are facing while taking this platform to its next level. We would like to brainstorm about how we can grow and discuss our future goals.

https://creativemornings.com/talks/the-publisher-independent-refugee-source

photo: Aad van Vliet

We love this quote by one of our favourite speakers Marrije Schaake. Check out the full talk on the CreativeMornings website.

https://creativemornings.com/talks/marrije-schaake/1

February Is Ethics

We navigate the muddy waters of ethics every day. They’re present in everything from the values we define for our identities to how we interact with clients to the principals of engaging with other creative work on the internet. How have ethics, particularly in the creative world, evolved since their philosophical conception? Why do we create these codes of ethics in the first place? When should we examine what dictates our conscience? And what really makes up a solid, moral value system, anyway?

This month, 133 CreativeMornings chapters are exploring questions like these — and what their various and complex answers might be.

The theme was chosen by our Madrid chapter and illustrated by the Madrid-based CESS (César Cid).

Speaker: Peter Wagenaar

Theme: LANGUAGE

Interview for Creative Mornings Utrecht

Who is Peter?

Peter Wagenaar is an online copywriter at health insurance company CZ. Before that he was already a language fan: initially a journalist, later a web editor and always a great copywriter.

What are you up to these days, working with language?

At CZ my mission is to help the brand say what it wants to say and do so effectively in a way that represents what our brand stands for. In my view, all brands have a voice. Copywriters refer to the ‘tone of voice’ of a brand: in other words, the way a brand conveys her message. This has everything to do with language, because brands are not entities of their own, they come to life through communication

So would you say that brands are a bit like people?

Certainly! Brands have a personality and values that they stand for. Those values are transmitted through the way the brand interacts with her clients across a range of situations. For us at CZ this means that as our brand engages with the outside world, it never loses its uniqueness and its core values that make the brand. What changes is the type of situation, and thus the way in which this uniqueness and values are communicated. For instance, it is not the same to thank a client and welcome them to our brand than to give an error message on an online form. The tone with which the brand communicates is different according to what is right for each interaction.

How do you know which language and which style to use in each situation?

We have developed a style guide. This is quite innovative and different, but we felt we needed it because we believe that it is good for our brand to be outspoken and recognizable. This means making choices, as we know by experience that the more candid the brand is the stronger the quality of the interaction and potentially of the relationships we develop. Just like people, brands are loved for being themselves. In order to aid that process across our organization the style guide general clear guidelines aligned with the core values of the brand and specific guidelines which are dependent on the type of interaction. So for example, one of our core values is ‘decisiveness’, this means that our language is very assertive, clear and to the point. Specifically, when we communicate to pregnant women, we will add a layer of joyfulness to the style of our communication. This is because it is a happy moment in women’s lives, and you can be candid and direct while also being positive.

What would you like to share with our creative community?

Well, for us language is the first step. I personally believe that language is a part of design. The further design process for us still has to take shape, I would love the talk to be interactive and to hear back from the crowd, what inspires them about the way we present our brand and what opportunities they see for visual communication, interactive experience and further content management.

Oh yes, one more thing: I will be presenting in Dutch! Speaking in one’s mother tongue is just so much richer, it allows us to bring in the nuances, the emotion and the details into our story. I thought it was appropriate, given the theme, to make a statement!

REGISTRATION is OPEN

It’s not what you say, but how you say it

A customer experience is a roller coaster of (micro) emotions. How can your copy influence these emotions? Easy, it’s all about your tone and voice.

How to create one voice for your brand and multiple tones for your customers. How can tone and voice help you find the sweet spot between what your company wants to say and what your customers want to hear. And how do you maintain that specific voice within large and complex organizations where everyone has their specific interests and goals. Online copywriter Peter Wagenaar of CZ shares his knowledge, tricks and war stories.

Peter Wagenaar is an online copywriter at health insurance company CZ. He is about as old as the Internet itself and has worked for companies like Microsoft, Vodafone and Ditzo.

https://creativemornings.com/talks/peter-wagenaar-online-copywriter

DJ Jim Q’s Playlist: Language

Do you know our CreativeMornings playlists? No? Check them out! Jim Quindlen is a visual designer, DJ, aspiring drummer and curator of the Creative Mornings monthly playlist. 

Jim: “The playlist this month is right at 30 songs. Lately I’ve had trouble editing the playlists down to a reasonable track count, but language themed tracks proved to be a little harder to find. I had to do a lot of searching. I took some liberties, for instance the track “Tongues (everybody’s got one)” may not be specifically about language, but the word language does come from the latin “lingua” meaning tongue and the artist is Modey Lemon, a great Pittsburgh band, and since the Pittsburgh chapter picked the theme, I wanted to include at least one hometown band. We have the Beatles talking us “Across the Universe” , Drake has us speaking “The Language” (explicit as it is), and Sammy Davis Jr. shows us how to “Talk To The Animals”. “

https://creativemornings.com/blog/dj-jim-qs-playlist-language

We proudly present our next speaker - Peter Wagenaar - online copywriter

It’s not what you say, but how you say it
A customer experience is a roller coaster of (micro) emotions. How can your copy influence these emotions? Easy, it’s all about your tone and voice.
Online copywriter Peter Wagenaar of CZ explains how to create one voice for your brand and multiple tones for your customers. Tone and voice help you find the sweet spot between what your company wants to say and what your customers want to hear.
Peter Wagenaar is an online copywriter at health insurance company CZ. He is about as old as the Internet itself and has worked for companies like Microsoft, Vodafone and Ditzo.
https://creativemornings.com/talks/peter-wagenaar-online-copywriterRegistration opens next Monday.

January is Language
Communities are built on common ground and sustained by human connection. It’s easy (and safe) to say that human connection is driven by communication, and that communication is achieved with language. Yet our CreativeMornings community shares many more languages than the 40+ we speak. There are so many languages of CreativeMornings: generosity, love, hugs, high-fives, passion, excitement, creativity — the list goes on. Really, language boils down to expression. And isn’t that what creativity is really about?

January’s theme was chosen by our Pittsburgh chapter, illustrated by Ryan Hamrick, and presented in partnership with MailChimp.

This month 130 cities in 55 countries will be exploring our common languages and how we express them — whether cooked, crafted, or coded; spoken, written, or intuited — with speakers.

Join us to talk about language: https://creativemornings.com/cities/utr

On December 18, 8:30am - 10:00am CET, to be precise, at In de Ruimte, Oudegracht 230A a/d werf, Utrecht, 3511 NT, Carel Huydecoper will talk to us about TIME. Grab a seat and let him take you on a fascinating time travel experience and help you see things from new, fresh perspectives. All is relative, after all… including of course, time!

Who is Carel?
Carel Huydecoper talks about art. He studied Art History and Iconology in Utrecht and after working for several museums started his own company: Lokroep Art.

He offers a different perspective on the history we already know. He combines his knowledge with wit and humour and entertains his audiences with stories, often during historically themed dinners his company organizes.

The theme this month is TIME so he will talk about historical time. How time has been viewed throughout the ages. Oddly enough, time has not been a constant through history. In its own peculiar way, time is relative. Calendars have changed but so has our understanding of time - and all of this is reflected in art.
Carel is also the house art historian of Paushuize and its collection here in Utrecht.

How would you describe the work you do?
My field is the history of art, and in particular Iconology. This is, by the way, not the study of icons but has more to do with the psychology of perception and with symbolism in art. This field is on the one hand very interesting while on the other it is completely useless. No one will ever shout: “quick we need an iconologist!” unless they are in a story by best-selling author Dan Brown.

The interesting part of my field is that so much of it is made out of stories. These are the biographies of artists, their clients and of course their subjects. Art deals with issues that are important to us; life, death, love, loss to name but a few. Good art shows us ways of dealing with our world through the stories it portrays and the way it portrays them.  

It helps that many of these stories are entertaining, funny even. Through telling these stories I like to teach people a way to enjoy art. Ultimately I hope to use stories and art to help people look at their own world through new eyes.

What led you to do this kind of work?
When I started in university I found that storytelling was a great way to make a living. whenever I was short on cash, which was most of the time, I would guide groups of people through Rome, Athens, Istanbul or whatever beautiful city in Europe. We have so many of them.

I also worked in Museum Speelklok here in Utrecht, first as a guide, later as a curator. Caring for delicate artwork is one of the few things I was actually trained to do but I must admit it is not for me. I am much more interested in sharing the stories behind the objects. That is what makes them come alive.

Often it seems we are required to  appreciate famous works of art. The Mona Lisa is as good an example as any. So many people are disappointed when they see it in the Louvre. It is a brilliant painting, and I love to tell people why this is so, but I choose to do so while also telling you about Leonardo da Vinci. History focuses on the successful, and Da Vinci was definitely one of those, yet the majority of his projects failed. Even his most famous works clearly show us where he went disastrously wrong. Museums tend not to tell you about these things, but to me part of his genius was that he continued to try new things throughout his life in spite of the risks. Did you know Da Vinci was also known as a performer? He played the lute and at parties he would play and improvise lyrics on the guests. Many  of his contemporaries commented on his ready wit, his friendliness, generosity and  his willingness to help younger artists. It is details like these that make him more human and can help to make his work more accessible.  

What is the role of time in art history?
For reasons no one yet fully understands there seems to be a familiar relationship between objects made in a certain period. With only a limited knowledge of art and history you can start to place paintings in a general region and period. It is not that difficult to see a painting for the first time and place it for instance in the 15th century Northern Europe. 

This shows us that there is a relationship between artists who never met and might never even have seen each other’s work. In part this can be explained by the fact that artists within the same period and region had similar materials and techniques available to them, but there is more to it. Probably in any culture or society there is a web of social and cultural links and unseen connections. 

Many of those will not even be obvious to people in those cultures and most are probably impossible to uncover from the distance history creates. Still for many works it is obvious they could not have been made in a different time than they were.

The ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel is a perfect example. It took a very peculiar set of circumstances to get the world’s most famous sculptor stuck doing a painting in an obscure chapel against his will. He was forced to do it by a pope who might not have been able to read, and who was much more interested in fashion and his own fame than in theology. It also took a large series of new inventions in art, made over the previous decades, that could all be incorporated in such an unlikely project by such an unlikely artist. 

So the Sixtine Chapel’s ceiling is a work that is very definitely fixed in its time but on the other hand is timeless. It is timeless because it has so long been admired and emulated. Ideas tried by Michelangelo on that ceiling for the first time have been copied so often it makes him the most influential artist of all time. Today there are still many artists who consider their work as part of the tradition started by Michelangelo.

How do art history and time intertwine?
Art can be perceived as a symptom of its period. History describes events and creates timelines or narratives that help us make sense of the enormous amounts of dates and other data we have available. History has to rely on the written word, which gives us an incomplete picture. This is because sources are lost, libraries burn down and in some cases complete languages are forgotten.
Art History and archaeology focus on objects. Neither field can exist without the other. The study of objects gives us a much broader and more detailed picture than only texts could do. At the same time we couldn’t begin to place objects in a timeline without the framework of history.

Of course if you study time itself in a historical sense you start to see that it is not exactly a straightforward subject. You might think for instance, that a year is simply that; 365 days and a few hours and they follow each other numerically. But as usual, if you look closer the story gets more complicated, more interesting and that makes it more fun.

What inspires you to talk about ‘time’ to our creative community?
One of the things I like to show people is that when you look at something more closely, or from a different angle than you are used to, a new picture emerges. I try to inspire curiosity. You don’t have to travel the world to see new wonders.

 For instance, when you walk through your own city, look up. Or, on second thought, to be on the safe side, stand still and then look up. The ground floor only offers you the stuff people want to sell you today. The upper floors are where you find the beauty of a city. I’d like to show you the value of looking at the world with different eyes. Not just now but all the time.

Astrid Willems will be our next speaker on November 27, 8:30am - 10:00am CET. To be hosted at In de Ruimte, Oudegracht 230A a/d werf, Utrecht, 3511 NT. The theme of this month is WORK and her ‘flexdenken’ approach will give us new ideas on how to get in the flow of things at work by becoming more flexible thinkers. Here’s a taster of some of the inspiring ideas Astrid will be sharing with us soon… 

Who is Astrid?

Astrid Willems is a designer and philosopher who studied communication, philosophy, and fine arts. She is an entrepreneur and illustrator who gives workshops and trainings based on her flexible thinking (‘flexdenken’) philosophy. Read more about Astrid and her work on www.flexdenken.com

You have coined the term ‘flexdenken’, what intrigued you about flexibility and led you to research it for your book?

I’ve been training people in adopting a creative, flexible mindset for five years now, due to my background in creative thinking. What puzzled me was the fact that organizations were fixated on creating flexible workspaces in the hope that this would bring flexibility (flexible jobs). There is no point in making spaces flex if the people in those spaces cannot think flex. It takes a change of mindset to cope with a constantly changing world: you need to think flex.

So how does one become flexible?

It struck me during my research that our educational system teaches us to plan, structure, see patterns, and to have a constant focus (narrowed attention). These skills then stand in the way of our creative capacity. The biggest challenge is letting go of this focus and control, to go with the flow, to switch perspectives and to see opportunities instead of trying to stick to processes and procedures.

What inspires you to bring ‘flexdenken’ to our creative community?

One great source of inspiration was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus (+/-540 b.C to 480 b.C). He was different from other philosophers of his time who were looking for truth and certainty. Heraclitus introduced the idea of ‘Panta Rhei’ which translates as ‘everything flows’ or ‘everything is changing’. I embrace that philosophy. We need it in today’s changing world. I realized that the key to living a creative life is daring to learn instead of needing to perform. You can only fully embrace your creativity when you let go of expectations of how things should be, when you stop controlling the outcome and start enjoying the input. I hope to share this inspiration with your community and with it, the realization that to stay creative it is important to create space in which new ideas can incubate and arise. It is that space that gives you flexibility, as opposed to a focus on performance, results and having a full schedule that makes you super busy and stressed. Although this creates the illusion of productivity, you are not accomplishing that much.

What are your next challenges, now that you have incorporated ‘flexdenken’ into your work?

New things keep arising, new ways of applying flexdenken! I am now into topics like flex-living (flexwonen) and flexuality (flexualiteit). Because once you dare to open up to the flow of things around you, opportunities are everywhere. Flexdenken forms the basis on which I can build and expand. I wish someone had told me that at the arts academy: that the creative capacity we all have is so much more than just making pretty things. It is the very capacity of reinventing ourselves and our surroundings, constantly.