Shortly before Christmas, I was talking to my friend Alison about creativity. Before we knew how we'd got there, we found ourselves scheming a Creativity Workshop which included Alison's friend Tess, an accomplished portrait artist.
"We'll call it Freeing the Tiger", said Alison.
I baulked silently - don't tigers eat people? Well yes, but perhaps so do some ideas. And in any case, tigers are rather beautiful, majestic creatures. And wouldn't one look great at the top of an email persuading organisations to part with their cash?
"We'll call it Freeing the Tiger", said Alison.
I baulked silently - don't tigers eat people? Well yes, but perhaps so do some ideas. And in any case, tigers are rather beautiful, majestic creatures. And wouldn't one look great at the top of an email persuading organisations to part with their cash?
And then it struck me how ideas and tigers have something else in common: they don't thrive in captivity. Ideas are at their best when they can leap from one mind to the next, feed and grow, and move on. Take their freedom away and you lose the essence of what it is to be a tiger. Same for ideas - look at how Tim Berners-Lee's idea has the freedom to change the world. Imagine the world today if his idea had been unable to roam at will.
Well I couldn't be so thoughtful about tigers as a metaphor for ideas without consulting William Blake who waxed lyrical on tigers - even though he couldn't spell it!
Well I couldn't be so thoughtful about tigers as a metaphor for ideas without consulting William Blake who waxed lyrical on tigers - even though he couldn't spell it!
So here is my second link in as many weeks to his great poem.
Tech Tip: If the words are too small to read, type ctrl+ to zoom in and ctrl- to zoom out again.
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