Convenor
Convenor's affiliation
Daria Podmetina
Peter Robbins, Anne Berthinier-Poncet
Co-convenors
CNAM Paris
Abstract
Note: The session follows a Professional Development Workshop (PDW) format and does not require a paper submission. Details on how to participate in the PDW will be provided after 2nd February.
This experiential workshop complements the paper session “Arts-Based Initiatives, Creativity and Innovation” by offering participants a creative exploration of how artistic practices foster innovation in times of disruption.
Building on the theoretical contributions discussed in the paper session, the workshop allows participants to experience how collective fiction writing — inspired by the Japanese Renga form — can stimulate imagination, shift perspectives, and spark unconventional ideas, thus nurturing creativity as a key resource for innovation.
Participants collaboratively write two micro-fictions set in different time periods — the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and a speculative 2055 — and compare their stories with an AI-generated future, opening a reflective space on human–machine imaginaries.
By engaging with narrative tension, uncertainty, and transformation across eras and perspectives, the workshop also helps participants explore how fiction can support resilient innovation practices, encouraging adaptive thinking and openness to emerging futures.
Description
From Crystal Palace to Living Lab 2055: a creative collective writing workshop that explores the link between Art and Innovation
This interactive workshop offers participants an immersive, arts-based experience of creativity, resilience, and innovation in times of disruption. It complements the paper session “Arts-Based Initiatives, Creativity and Innovation: Insights from Art, Science, Business, and Society for Responsible and Sustainable Futures”, forming a coherent pathway where participants are invited to both explore research findings and experiment through practice.
Drawing on recent research (Berthinier-Poncet, Podmetina & Robbins, 2025), which shows how Arts-Based Initiatives (ABIs) can enhance innovation by stimulating perception, imagination, and transformation, this session brings to life the power of artistic engagement as a means of expanding how we think, feel, and act in innovation contexts. ABIs are more than creative interventions: they are strategic, experiential tools that help organisations and individuals build new capabilities for navigating complexity.
The workshop uses collaborative fiction writing as an arts-based method to reflect on innovation. Inspired by the Japanese technique of Renga (linked poetry), participants will collectively write short, interconnected micro-fictions unfolding across two different time periods. The first story is set in 1851, during the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace — a key moment of historical convergence between artists, scientists, and inventors. The second takes place in a speculative 2055, during a fictional “Living Innovation Expo” shaped by AI, bio-design, and synthetic creativity.
While groups work on their future stories, facilitators feed the past micro-fictions into an AI model to generate its own version of the future. In the final part of the session, participants compare three outcomes — the human-written past, the human-written future, and the AI-generated future — and reflect together on what it means to create, imagine, and innovate as humans in an age of technological disruption.
The 90 minutes session is structured in three phases:
1. Ignite (15’): A short collective framing introduces the power of fiction as both an artistic and research-based method for exploring creativity and resilience.
2. Explore (60’): Groups write collaboratively using the Renga process, first in the past, then in the future, with minimal constraints and maximal imagination.
3. Reflect (15’): Stories are shared and compared, opening discussion on the aesthetic, cognitive, and strategic dimensions of innovation.
This creative process nurtures creativity by encouraging participants to generate novel associations, question assumptions, and explore speculative futures. It also strengthens resilience by engaging with uncertainty, contrasting human and machine imaginaries, and supporting adaptive thinking in the face of rapid change. Ultimately, the session provides a lived experience of how ABIs can support responsible innovation through imagination, dialogue, and shared storytelling.