For me, one of the highlights was exploring some of the disused stations, tunnels and hidden spaces of the London Underground.

There is something thrilling about stepping below the familiar city and finding another world waiting underneath.

Behind unassuming doors and beyond busy platforms are dark passageways, abandoned routes, old shafts and forgotten spaces. Places once built for a purpose, then altered, bypassed, sealed up or simply left behind.

It feels like discovering the bones of London.

And what struck me most was how much the Underground really contains. It is far more than a transport system. It is a vast, layered piece of collective problem-solving: engineering, architecture, design, wayfinding, geology, politics, culture, identity and business planning, all built up and adapted over generations.

That is what makes it so fascinating architecturally.

The Tube combines bold, heroic engineering with one of the strongest design identities in the world. It solves enormous practical problems, but at the same time creates an atmosphere, a language and almost a mythology of its own.

And these hidden spaces reveal a tantalising design possibility:

London has another city beneath it!

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We can apparently survive three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter and three minutes without air.

But sometimes it feels as though we can’t manage one moment without Wi-Fi.

I wrote about this a few years ago, when AI was just an expectation, but now it’s an established reality, that joke seems more true than ever.

The original post looked at how rapidly developing technologies - from AI and robotics, to connected buildings and personalised digital systems - are influencing the restructuring of the environments around us. At the core of this, the real change looks ever-likely to be more personal: technology is not only changing what we make and how we live - it is increasingly influencing how we think, make decisions and form our aspirations. The question now is not simply what technology will allow us to do, but how consciously we choose to use it, to retain our thinking independence.

The importance of independent thinking

Technology has become extraordinarily good at occupying the spaces where our own thoughts used to happen. There is always something ready to answer us, entertain us, guide us, correct us, recommend something or complete the… sentence. And increasingly, to think for us.

I don’t think the answer is to reject technology. Far from it. AI, digital tools and connected systems are astonishing extensions of what we can do.

But perhaps the more powerful they become, the more important it is occasionally to check in on who (or what) is in leading the thinking process.

For example, a pencil and a piece of paper are remarkably good examples of technology too. They allowed us to do more. They allowed us to connect with others and articulate our ideas. And they allowed industry and cultures to progress. But developments like these helped us think better. They didn’t do the thinking for us. And I believe that’s the big differentiator compared to where we are now.

I see four cornerstones that underpin our own creative and independent thinking, which can be identified with commitment, confidence, courage and curiosity.

Everyone is different - which is what makes us all special as individuals - but for me these four cornerstones translate as -

Commitment: the commitment to use my own words.
Writing something down forces us to decide what we actually think, rather than choosing from thoughts presented by somebody (or something) else.

Confidence: the confidence to draw.
Drawing isn’t about producing perfect images. It is a way of making an idea visible to yourself and others, even before you completely understand it. A sketch gives uncertain thoughts layers of clarity.

Courage: the courage to explore ideas with maths.
Numbers, proportions, patterns and geometry let us test our assumptions. Maths is an important part of creativity, and an important mode of thinking.

And curiosity: the curiosity to test ideas out in the real world.
I like the quote ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy’ from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, and in this context it means that no matter how good an idea or design is, the unexpected obstacles of reality will have the last say. With design, physics and gravity are usually the harshest critics, and that’s why kinaesthetic (hands-on) learning is a wonderful way of thinking in the real world.

Words, drawing, maths and making: My four simple ways of thinking.

Perhaps creativity needs more moments of deliberate disconnection, to step outside the stream of information long enough to hear the processes happening inside our own heads.

Technology can extend our intelligence, but sometimes the most useful starting point for creativity is still a blank sheet of paper, a pencil, and the confidence to put a meaningful mark on it.

Let me know what your favourite ways of thinking are.

Thanks for reading.

The Moon will pass between the Earth and the Sun, creating a partial solar eclipse.

If you’re in London, it begins at around 6:17pm. The most exciting moment comes at about 7:12pm, when roughly 90% of the Sun will be hidden behind the Moon.

But before you rush outside, there’s a problem to solve: Where should you stand to see it? And that’s where architecture comes in.

Architects follow the Sun

When architects design buildings, we don’t just think about walls, windows and roofs. We think about the Sun: which direction a building faces, where morning and evening light enters, where shadows fall, whether trees or buildings block the light, and how all of this changes through the year.

Tonight, you can become an architect and investigate exactly the same things.

Find your eclipse-viewing spot

Tonight’s eclipse happens quite late in the day, so the Sun will already be getting low in the western sky. Your challenge is to find somewhere with a really good view towards the west.

A large park or common, the top of a hill, an open field, a riverbank, or another wide-open space could work well.

Once you’ve found somewhere, look at what’s around you. Are there buildings in the way? What about trees? Could moving ten metres improve the view? Would being higher help?

You’re doing something architects do at the beginning of a project: analysing a site.

Watch the world around you

Don’t spend the whole eclipse staring upwards. Some of the most interesting things may be happening around you.

As more of the Sun disappears, pay attention to the light. Does the sky look different? Do colours change? Does it feel cooler? What happens to the shadows cast by buildings and trees?

Choose one building, tree or object and take a photograph every ten minutes. Compare the photographs afterwards. Has the changing light altered the way the same place looks?

Make your own eclipse projector

Take a piece of card and make a small hole in it. Stand with your back towards the Sun and allow the sunlight to shine through the hole onto another piece of white card or paper.

Normally you’ll see a little circle of sunlight. During the eclipse, as the Moon moves across the Sun, that little circle should become a crescent. You may also spot tiny crescent Suns beneath trees, where gaps between leaves act like natural pinhole cameras.

VERY IMPORTANT: protect your eyes!

Never look directly at the Sun without proper solar viewing protection.

Normal sunglasses - even very dark ones - are not safe. To look directly at the eclipse you need proper certified solar-eclipse viewing glasses. If you don’t have them, use an indirect method such as the pinhole projector and enjoy the changing light and landscape instead.

Tonight’s Architecture for Kids Challenge

Before the eclipse starts, draw a simple map of your viewing place. Mark YOU, the direction of the SUN, and the buildings, trees and landscape around you.

Then imagine you were asked to design the perfect place for watching the sky. Would you put it on a hill? Would it have walls? Would you make a huge opening facing west? Would people sit, stand or lie down? Could it also be used for sunsets, stars and meteor showers?

Draw your Eclipse Observatory. It can be as sensible - or as outrageous - as you like.

Because architecture isn’t only about designing buildings. It’s about understanding place, light, landscape and how we experience the world around us.

And occasionally, it’s about knowing exactly where to stand when the Moon decides to hide the Sun.

Enjoy the eclipse!

The partial solar eclipse is visible from the UK on Wednesday 12 August 2026. In London it begins at approximately 6:17pm, reaches maximum at around 7:12pm and finishes shortly after 8pm. Viewing times and the amount of the Sun obscured vary by location.

Thanks for reading

Most of us know what it feels like to be ‘in the flow’, even if we’ve never heard the term before.

It’s that feeling of becoming completely absorbed in what you’re doing. Time seems to disappear. You’re focused, engaged and present. The work feels enjoyable, not because it’s easy, but because you’re making steady progress. You’re challenged enough to stay interested, yet not so overwhelmed that you want to give up.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying this state, which he called Flow. He found that people experience it in all sorts of countless activities from playing music and climbing mountains, to solving puzzles. What they have in common isn’t the activity itself, but the quality of attention it creates.

Most of us assume that flow is something that happens after we’ve become good at something. We practise, improve, gain confidence and eventually begin to enjoy it.

But what if we could reverse-engineer that relationship.

What if those moments of deep engagement aren’t simply the reward for learning, but one of the things that makes learning possible in the first place?

It’s an intriguing thought, particularly when we think about children who struggle with certain subjects.

For example, in our Architecture Kids workshops, a child who believes they ‘aren’t very good at maths’ may think nothing of calculating the span of an art-straw bridge and experimenting with different structural solutions. Equally, a child who is less enthusiastic about English can become deeply engaged when the task begins with creating a narrative to shape a design brief.

What’s changed isn’t the subject. And it may not even be the child’s ability.

What’s changed is the way they’ve been invited into the learning.

Instead of wondering how we can persuade children to work harder at subjects they find difficult, what if we asked:

How could we redesign the experience so that moments of flow become possible?

Because if flow can be encouraged rather than left to chance, it may offer something much more valuable than enjoyment alone. It might help children discover confidence, curiosity and a genuine way into subjects they once believed simply ‘weren’t for them.’

So what creates flow?

If flow isn’t simply something that happens by chance, what brings it about?

Csikszentmihalyi’s research found that flow tends to appear when a small number of conditions come together.

First, we need a clear goal. We know what we’re trying to achieve, even if we don’t yet know exactly how we’ll get there. A child designing a bridge knows they need to span a river. A writer knows they’re trying to tell a story. A musician knows the piece they’re learning. The destination is clear, even if the route is still being discovered.

Second, the challenge needs to be just beyond our current level of comfort. If a task is too easy, we become bored. If it feels impossibly difficult, we become anxious and often give up before we’ve really begun. Flow seems to live in the space between those two extremes, where the challenge stretches us but still feels achievable.

Third, we need immediate feedback. Every sketch, calculation, sentence or model tells us something. We can see what works, what doesn’t, and what to try next. Instead of waiting until the end to discover whether we’ve succeeded, the activity itself becomes our teacher.

Finally, we need enough freedom to make decisions. Flow rarely appears when every step has already been prescribed. It grows when we’re able to make choices, test ideas, adjust our approach and gradually feel ownership over the problem we’re solving.

Each ingredient is simple enough in itself, but put them together, and something interesting happens:

Our attention narrows, distractions begin to fade, and the constant voice in our heads asking, ‘Am I doing this right?’ becomes quieter. Instead of worrying about ourselves, we become absorbed by the task. That’s why time seems to disappear.

And since none of these conditions depends on the subject itself, it all comes down to how the learning experience has been designed.

Time focused on any curriculum subject can create flow if the environment is right. Equally, a creative project can completely fail if the challenge is wrong, the goals are unclear, or if every decision is already prescribed for the learner.

In a nutshell, flow is available wherever a meaningful challenge meets curiosity.

Helping Children Find Flow

If flow depends on how an experience is designed, perhaps we need to stop asking, ‘How can I get this child to work harder?’ and start asking a different question:

How can I create the conditions in which they want to think?

The answer isn’t necessarily more worksheets, longer homework sessions or greater pressure. More often, it’s about changing how children first encounter an idea.

Start with a meaningful problem rather than a page of information. A bridge to build, a mystery to solve or a world to design gives knowledge a purpose and invites curiosity from the very beginning.

Break large challenges into smaller, achievable steps. Flow grows when success feels just within reach, allowing confidence to build through a series of small discoveries rather than expecting one giant leap.

Give children genuine ownership wherever possible. Different approaches, different ideas and different solutions encourage far deeper engagement than simply following a set of instructions.

And perhaps most importantly, protect uninterrupted thinking time. Flow rarely appears in the first few minutes. It often arrives only after children have settled into a challenge and begun to lose themselves in it.

None of these ideas guarantees flow. Every child is different, and what captures one imagination may leave another completely unmoved.

But they all increase the chances that learning becomes something children actively engage with rather than simply endure.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson from flow.

We often assume that confidence leads to engagement. But perhaps, at least some of the time, the opposite is true.

Perhaps engagement comes first, and confidence simply grows alongside it.

And that may be one of the greatest gifts we can offer young people: not simply helping them learn what to think, but helping them discover their own way in.

A final thought

Flow tells us that learning doesn’t have to be something we simply endure.

When the conditions are right, thinking itself becomes enjoyable. Curiosity replaces reluctance, confidence grows through small successes, and children begin to discover that subjects they once found difficult may simply have needed a different doorway.

For paid subscribers, I've shared a simple framework I use to design workshops that encourage flow, together with practical ways you can adapt it for children at home or in the classroom.

Thank you for reading. I hope this has helped to give a different way of thinking about creativity, learning and the remarkable state of flow.

More soon,

Architecture Kids

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Ask a group of children if they enjoy drawing, and you’ll usually get a mixture of enthusiastic hands and hesitant shrugs.

Ask instead who enjoys building with LEGO, creating worlds in Minecraft, or imagining impossible places, and almost every hand goes up.

That’s because many children don’t necessarily think of themselves as artists. They think of themselves as builders, inventors, explorers and storytellers.

So what if drawing wasn’t only about producing a beautiful picture?

What if it became another way of building?

One of the simplest ways I’ve found to unlock that way of thinking is through isometric drawing.

Why Architects Love Isometric Drawing

Architects use many different types of drawing to communicate ideas.

Plans show spaces from above. Sections cut through buildings to reveal what is inside. Perspectives create more realistic views.

But one of the simplest and most satisfying ways to explore ideas is with an isometric drawing.

Unlike perspective, nothing disappears towards a vanishing point. Objects don’t become smaller as they move into the distance. Instead, the drawing is built on three equal directions: height, width and depth.

All three use the same scale.

That means children can count blocks along the grid and quickly begin to build forms in three dimensions. The grid does a lot of the hard work, so the focus shifts from “How do I draw this correctly?” to “What could I make?”

For children in our design workshops, the real magic happens when the first cube appears out of the grid.

That is usually the “aha!” moment.

Suddenly they are not just drawing in two dimensions. They are building in three.

Drawing Makes Thinking Visible

One of the biggest misconceptions about drawing is that it is simply about making a nice picture.

In architecture, drawing is often something else entirely.

It is a way of thinking.

When architects sketch, they are not always recording an idea that is already fully formed. More often, they are exploring possibilities, testing alternatives and discovering new ideas as the pencil moves across the page.

The drawing becomes part of the thinking process.

Isometric drawing is especially useful because it removes much of the complexity of other forms of 3D drawing. Children can start with a single block, add another, and gradually discover what the drawing might become.

As the first few blocks appear, different questions begin to emerge.

What could I build?

Who might it be for?

How would people get inside?

What happens underneath?

Their imagination and their ability to communicate begin working together. And their thinking becomes visible.

Drawing Is a Superpower

One lesson has stayed with me throughout my career as an architect.

In design meetings, there is often one person who can imagine an idea and sketch it quickly enough for everyone else to understand.

They may not have the loudest voice or the most senior job title, but they have the ability to turn an invisible idea into something everyone else can see.

That matters.

Once people can see an idea, they can discuss it, improve it, challenge it and build upon it together. Without a drawing, those same ideas often remain trapped inside separate minds and imaginations.

That is why drawing is not simply a graphic skill - It is a communication skill, a thinking skill and it’s a way of helping other people see an idea clearly enough to respond to it.

And isometric drawing is a wonderfully accessible way to begin.

A World Built One Cube at a Time

Once children discover they can build with blocks on an isometric grid, something lovely happens.

They stop worrying so much about drawing and begin designing: a block becomes a wall, a few walls become a room, a room becomes a building, and a group of buildings becomes a world.

That is the idea behind Blockworld Architect. Rather than copying a picture, each challenge begins with an imaginative brief. Perhaps it is a secret base hidden inside a volcano, a village on the back of a gigantic creature, or a colourful world of rainbow unicorns.

There are no wrong answers - only different ideas.

Every child will imagine something different, and every world begins with the same first step: one block.

Free Download

To help you get started, we’ve included a free Blockworld Architect Starter Pack, with a printable isometric grid and a simple guide to drawing with blocks.

Whether you’re eight or eighty, we’d love to see what you create.

For paid subscribers, we’ve also included below our first Blockworld Architect resource pack.

It includes printable challenge sheets for three creative missions, along with a guide sheet on using colour, light and tone, and additional isometric grids.

The sheets can be used at home, in school, or as part of a creative workshop.

The aim is simple: have fun, experiment, and let children’s imagination flow.

There is no perfect answer, and no right or wrong way to complete the challenges. Some children may design carefully, some may invent wildly, some may focus on one brilliant detail, and some may fill the whole page.

All of that is welcome.

Encourage them to start with one block, see what it becomes, and enjoy the process of making their ideas visible.

We’d love to hear how you use these sheets at home, in school or in workshops. Your feedback will help shape future challenges.

Have fun building impossible worlds.

Thanks for reading,
AK

A Note for Parents and Teachers

This pack is designed as a playful starting point for drawing, design and storytelling.

The aim is simple: have fun, experiment, and let your child’s imagination flow.

Download the Pack Here

There is no perfect answer, and no right or wrong way to complete these little design challenges. Each child will approach them differently. Some may design carefully, some may invent wildly, some may build one brilliant detail, and some may fill the whole page.

All of that is welcome.

Encourage them to start with one block, then see what it becomes, and enjoy their process of making their ideas visible.

We’ll add more Blockworld challenges from time to time as the idea develops, and we’d love to hear how you use these sheets at home, in school or in workshops. Your feedback will help shape what comes next.

Have fun building impossible worlds.

When architect Denys Lasdun was designing the Olivier Theatre at London’s National Theatre, he did not arrive at the final arrangement in a single flash of inspiration.

He built and tested model after model after model.

By the end of the process there was an enormous pile of discarded study models. Each explored a slightly different relationship and experience between audience, stage, sight-lines, acoustics and aesthetics. Some worked better than others, searching for the optimal solution.

Lasdun kept the design discussion going and the result, the National Theatre is a masterpiece.

Contemporary architectural practices work in much the same way. The aim is not simply to find a solution. It is to search for the best solution among as many possibilities as can be imagined.

This is perhaps one of the key misunderstandings about creativity.

We often imagine creativity as searching for the right answer whereas in reality, creative people are often doing something quite different. They continue exploring long after they have found an answer that works.

Many of the world’s most celebrated buildings exist because architects refused to stop at the first idea that seemed to work.

The Danger of Stopping Too Soon

When we lose our keys, we often say that something like ‘it’s always in the last place you look’.

This might be true for lost keys, but Creativity asks a different question:

What happens if we keep looking?

In architecture and creative design, there are rarely right and wrong answers. There are usually many possible answers, each with strengths and weaknesses. One scheme may maximise daylight. Another may improve circulation. A third may create a stronger relationship with the landscape.

The creative challenge is not simply to find a solution. It is to explore enough possibilities to discover the most appropriate, elegant or generous response.

The same is true far beyond architecture: Scientists continue experimenting after their initial hypothesis appears to work, writers rarely publish their first draft, and designers continue sketching after the first workable idea emerges.

The first answer might often be obvious or compelling but the really interesting ideas frequently arrive later. This is why creativity often involves staying uncertain a little longer.

Frameworks for Creative Thinking

Researchers such as Ron Ritchhart at Harvard’s Project Zero have developed simple thinking routines that help learners explore ideas, question assumptions and consider alternatives. These structures are particularly valuable in creative disciplines, where there may be many successful responses to a challenge rather than a single correct answer.

The aim is not simply to arrive at an answer, but to keep the thinking open long enough for better possibilities to emerge.

Testing Ideas from Different Angles

This is something we deliberately build into our Architecture Kids workshops.

Children, like adults, often reach a point where they arrive at a solution they are happy with. The natural instinct is to stop there.

But in our workshop environment, every student is an Architects - so they rarely do. Instead, they test their ideas in different ways.

An idea that works as a quick sketch may reveal unexpected problems when drawn in plan, section or perspective. A design which then looks convincing on paper may behave very differently when turned into a physical model. Structure and physics come in to play and suddenly it behaves differently. A model that appears successful at small scale may require new thinking when scaled up as a full-size installation. Materials, aesthetics, and physics don’t always scale as expected, which takes the student back to the sketch again.

Each step asks different questions, and whole-process feedback is really powerful.

At Architecture Kids we often revisit the same project through this multiple media / multi-scale approach: concept sketches, isometric drawings, plans and sections, perspective views, models and whenever possible full-scale constructions.

The aim is not simply to present the same idea in different ways. It is to discover what each medium reveals through design, what the materials tell us through kinaesthetic learning, and what scale tells us in relation to real-world physics.

Children usually find that their original idea evolves as it is tested, takes on new information, new possibilities emerge, constraints add value to the creative process and unexpected opportunities appear - with a few ‘Ah-ha!’ moments.

Perhaps this is one of the most important creative habits we can develop. Not getting things right first time, but instead resisting the temptation to stop too soon.

Because in creativity, the danger is rarely failing to find an answer. The danger is in believing that the first answer is ‘correct’.

More soon,

Architecture Kids

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The biggest misconception about creativity may be that it begins with new ideas.

Many of the world’s most important breakthroughs did not start with something entirely new. They began with an unexpected connection - a relationship between two things that everyone else thought were unrelated.

Once seen, the connection feels obvious. Before it is seen, it is invisible.

This raises two intriguing questions.

Why do some people spot these connections when others do not?

And more importantly, can the rest of us learn to do it too?

For more than half a century, psychologists, educators, scientists and creativity researchers have been exploring exactly these questions. One of the most intriguing answers comes from a simple observation:

Most thinking happens inside patterns. Creativity happens between them.

Creativity Lives Between Patterns

Our brains are extraordinary pattern-recognition machines.

When you see a chair, you immediately know what it is for. When you hear the first few notes of a familiar song, you can often predict what comes next. When somebody asks, ‘What colour is the sky?’, most people answer without hesitation.

Patterns help us navigate the world efficiently. Without them, every decision would require enormous effort.

The trouble is that patterns do more than help us understand the world. They also shape what we expect to see.

If I ask you to think of a bird, you will probably imagine a robin, a sparrow or a pigeon. You are less likely to imagine a penguin. Not because a penguin isn’t a bird, but because your mind has followed the most familiar path.

Much of human expertise works in this way. Engineers rely on established principles, doctors on recognised symptoms and drivers on familiar road signs. Expertise itself is built upon recognising and applying patterns.

Creative thinking appears to do something slightly different.

Instead of staying within a single pattern, it sometimes jumps between them.

This idea fascinated the Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler. In his 1964 book The Act of Creation, he asked an unusual question:

What do jokes, scientific discoveries and works of art have in common?

At first glance, very little.

One makes us laugh. One helps us understand the world. One helps us see the world differently.

Yet Koestler believed they all emerged from the same underlying process, which he called bisociation.

The principle is surprisingly simple. Most thinking takes place within a single frame of reference. Creative breakthroughs often occur when two previously separate frames suddenly connect.

A scientist links two fields of knowledge.

An inventor applies an existing technology to a completely different problem.

A comedian leads us down one line of thought before unexpectedly revealing another.

In each case, something new emerges - not because the individual ideas are new, but because the relationship between them is.

This is why creative ideas often seem obvious in hindsight.

The ingredients were already there.

The connection was not.

Stepping Sideways

If Koestler explained what happens during a creative breakthrough, Edward de Bono became interested in a different question:

Can we encourage those breakthroughs to happen more often?

Like Koestler, De Bono recognised that most thinking follows familiar routes. Patterns exist because they are useful. The more experienced we become, the stronger these mental pathways become. We learn what works, what does not, and how problems have been solved before.

Most of the time, this is a strength.

Occasionally, however, the obvious path becomes a trap.

The more familiar we become with a problem, the more likely we are to approach it in the same way - asking the same questions, applying the same assumptions and often arriving at the same answers.

De Bono called this vertical thinking.

Vertical thinking analyses, refines, improves and tests. It is logical, rigorous and essential.

But it rarely takes us somewhere genuinely new.

Lateral thinking works differently.

Instead of moving deeper into an existing pattern, it deliberately steps sideways. It introduces random stimuli, challenges assumptions, reframes questions and explores unexpected connections.

The goal is not to abandon logic. It is to escape familiar patterns long enough to discover new ones.

This is why many creativity exercises can feel strange at first. Random word challenges, alternative uses tasks and impossible design briefs are not designed to produce ridiculous ideas. They are designed to interrupt familiar thinking and reveal connections that might otherwise remain hidden.

When these connections appear, they often feel less like inventions and more like discoveries.

As if the idea had been there all along.

We simply had not seen the link.

Finding Patterns in the Gaps

When people talk about creativity, they often imagine somebody sitting alone waiting for inspiration to strike.

The reality is usually much messier.

Many breakthroughs emerge at the intersection of different disciplines, experiences and ways of seeing.

The inventor of Velcro was not studying fasteners. He was studying burrs stuck to his dog’s fur. Buckminster Fuller was not simply asking how to build stronger structures. He was asking whether buildings needed to be so heavy in the first place. Biomimicry researchers routinely look to forests, shells, spider webs and termite mounds for engineering inspiration.

Again and again, innovation appears when somebody notices a connection between worlds previously considered separate.

Artists borrow from science. Scientists learn from nature. Designers draw from psychology. Engineers study biology.

Children, perhaps more than anyone, move effortlessly between different worlds. They have not yet learned which connections are supposed to be impossible. A cardboard box becomes a castle. A stick becomes a magic wand.

Adults often dismiss this as imagination.

Perhaps it is something more.

Children are naturally skilled at finding patterns in the gaps.

Many of their ideas lead nowhere. Some lead somewhere surprising.

And that is often where creativity begins.

Creativity is not a mysterious gift possessed by a fortunate few.

More often, it is the ability to notice relationships that others have overlooked, to question familiar assumptions and to see possibilities where others see none.

Edward de Bono called it lateral thinking. Arthur Koestler called it bisociation.

Whatever name we give it, the principle remains the same:

Most thinking happens inside patterns. Creativity happens between them.

Often the ideas that seem strangest at first turn out to be the most interesting. I'd love to know which exercise produced the most surprising connections for you.

Thanks for reading,

Architecture Kids

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For a long time, learning has often been treated as something that happens mainly inside the head. Sit still. Listen carefully. Absorb information. Repeat it accurately afterwards.

And yet many of the things we understand most deeply are learned in a very different way.

We learn by testing, by moving things around, by building, drawing, adjusting, experimenting and occasionally getting things wrong. Children do this instinctively. Designers, scientists, engineers and artists continue doing it throughout their lives.

Very often, making is how thinking happens.

A sketch can clarify an idea that felt vague moments earlier. A model can reveal a structural problem that discussion alone missed. A prototype can teach more in five minutes than an hour of explanation.

This is one of the reasons creative workshops can feel so energising. The moment materials appear on a table, thinking changes. Ideas stop being abstract and begin interacting with the real world, and that interaction matters.

Thinking Was Never Meant to Be Motionless

Modern learning environments often separate thinking from making.

The clever student is usually imagined as someone sitting quietly, concentrating carefully and producing the correct answer with minimal distraction. As children move through education, learning gradually becomes more abstract. Information is increasingly delivered through words, screens, instructions and assessment rather than through direct interaction with materials, space or physical experimentation.

And yet human beings rarely learn about the world in such a passive way.

Children learn structure by stacking objects until they collapse. They learn communication through movement, drawing and play long before formal explanation appears. Even as adults, many people understand problems more clearly once they begin sketching ideas, rearranging notes on a wall or building rough prototypes with their hands.

This does not make physical interaction a distraction from learning. In many situations, it is the learning.

Educational thinkers such as Ken Robinson repeatedly argued that intelligence is far broader than academic recall alone. Some people think best through words. Others think spatially, physically or visually. Some need movement, conversation or experimentation before ideas fully connect. The problem is not that these approaches are unusual. The problem is that many systems quietly treat them as secondary.

Creative workshops often reveal this surprisingly quickly. The moment materials are introduced into a room, the atmosphere changes. Ideas become visible. Conversations become more active. Participants stop trying to hold every possibility internally and begin interacting with thoughts physically, socially and spatially.

The thinking has not stopped, it has simply become visible.

Learning Through Making

Educational researcher Seymour Papert described this idea as ‘learning-by-making’. His argument was not simply that practical activities make learning more enjoyable, but that understanding often develops through the process of constructing something external and meaningful.

Children frequently understand structural ideas surprisingly quickly once they begin building. A triangle does not need a long technical explanation before its strength becomes obvious. A square bridge twists almost immediately under load unless it is reinforced. Folded paper suddenly becomes stronger than flat paper. Lightweight structures begin carrying surprisingly heavy objects once forces are distributed more effectively.

These discoveries are memorable because participants are not simply receiving information about structures. They are interacting with structural behaviour directly.

Papert argued that this kind of learning becomes especially powerful when people are engaged in making something that matters to them. A bridge, a model city, a drawing or a machine creates a reason to think more carefully. Curiosity increases because understanding becomes immediately useful rather than abstractly theoretical.

This is one of the reasons hands-on creative work often leads to deeper understanding. The process naturally encourages testing, adjustment and reflection. Weaknesses become visible. New possibilities appear. Ideas evolve through interaction with materials and feedback from the real world.

In this sense, making is not the reward after learning. Making is part of how learning happens.

Why Prototypes Change the Way We Think

Making also changes our emotional relationship with ideas.

Ideas that exist only in the mind can feel fragile and high-risk. People often wait for the ‘perfect’ solution before they begin, worrying about getting things wrong too early or producing something incomplete. But creative work rarely develops in a straight line. Most useful ideas begin as rough experiments.

This is why designers, engineers and creative teams often work with sketches, models and prototypes rather than waiting for finished solutions. A rough prototype creates something to react to. It turns uncertainty into something visible and workable. The conversation changes from ‘Will this idea work?’ to ‘What happens if we test this?’

Once people begin building, thinking often becomes clearer. Problems that remained invisible in discussion suddenly become obvious once an idea is tested physically. Unexpected opportunities appear. One adjustment leads to another. Even failure becomes useful because it produces information that can guide the next attempt.

This process can be seen clearly in creative workshops. Initial ideas are often cautious and predictable. But after testing, rebuilding and adapting, participants usually become more confident and ambitious. The making process itself generates momentum. Participants stop trying to protect ideas from failure and begin using failure to improve them.

This is one of the reasons experimentation matters so much in creative thinking.

A prototype is not simply an unfinished version of the final idea. It is a tool for discovery.

The Hands Are Part of the Brain

Perhaps this is why creative activities often feel energising in a way that passive learning rarely does. Human beings are not designed only to receive information. We are designed to interact with the world around us.

Throughout history, people have learned by shaping materials, testing ideas and adapting to feedback from the physical world. Builders learned through structures. Scientists learned through experiments. Artists learned through observation and composition. Craftspeople learned through repetition, adjustment and refinement.

Knowledge did not develop separately from making.

It developed through it.

Creativity is not separate from learning. It is one of the ways human beings learn best. We understand more deeply when we can test ideas, manipulate materials, adjust structures and interact directly with the world around us.

When people are allowed to make, experiment and explore ideas physically, understanding often becomes deeper, more memorable and more personal.

The hands are not separate from thinking, they are part of how thinking develops.

Workshop Challenge: Build a Bridge

Introduction

In this challenge, teams must design and build a bridge capable of crossing a dangerous river, lava stream or monster-filled canyon.

The bridge must:

• Span the gap

• Stay above the danger below

• Allow space underneath for a ship or lava creature to pass

• Carry increasing live loads without collapsing

Participants work in teams using simple materials to test how structures behave through experimentation, building and redesign.

You will need:

• Paper

• Card

• Art straws

• String

• Connectors (ours fabricated with pipe cleaners)

Importantly there is no glue or tape!

How It Works

Teams work individually, in pairs or groups of 3 to 4.

Optional variation:
Teams build from opposite sides of the table and must meet accurately in the middle.

Begin with a quick introduction to:

• Bridge types (on request)

• Structural systems

• Loads

• Tension and compression

Then introduce the challenge and testing process.

Bridges are tested using increasingly heavy live loads, for example:

• LEGO figure

• Toy car

• Tennis ball

• Banana

• Tin of beans

• Or small packets of sweets which can be won as a prize if the bridge can support them.

Teams begin building immediately.

Encourage:

• Quick experimentation

• Testing ideas

• Adapting designs

• Learning through failure

As the bridges develop, participants naturally begin exploring:

• Why triangles create strength

• Why squares twist and bend

• How folded paper becomes stronger

• How loads move through structures

• How lightweight structures can carry surprisingly heavy loads

After initial testing, teams redesign and improve their bridges before the final load tests.

Takeaways

This workshop explores how understanding often develops through making, testing and experimentation.

Participants learn that:

• Different structural types have different personalities

• Structures behave differently under load

• Materials can become stronger through geometry

• Failure helps improve ideas

• Creative thinking develops through iteration

• Teamwork and communication improve outcomes

Rather than simply being told how bridges work, participants discover structural principles by interacting with materials directly.

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Thanks for reading - and enjoy building!

Best
Phil
AK

There is a difference between being clever and being creative, although schools, workplaces, and society often treat them as the same thing.

Cleverness is easier to recognise. It appears in fast answers, strong memory, neat logic, high test scores, and the ability to work efficiently within existing systems.

Creativity behaves differently. Creative thinking is slower, messier, and less predictable. It asks unusual questions and explores possibilities before outcomes are clear.

A clever student may solve the problem quickly but a creative student may start questioning the problem or wondering whether it could be approached differently.

Educational systems naturally favour the first type of thinking because it is easier to measure. Correct answers can be marked but original thinking is harder to quantify.

Over time, this shapes how we think. Some children begin to see themselves as ‘the clever ones’ because they succeed within structured systems. Others, despite being imaginative and inventive, may assume they are less capable simply because their thinking does not arrive in neat straight lines, or as swiftly.

The issue is not choosing between cleverness and creativity. The strongest thinkers usually develop both.

The real challenge is making sure curiosity survives alongside correctness.

When Creativity Starts to Feel Risky

Carol Dweck’s work on mindset explored how strongly people can become attached to appearing intelligent. When being ‘smart’ becomes part of someone’s identity, failure starts to feel personal. Many people then begin avoiding situations where they might struggle, need to experiment publicly, or get things wrong.

Creativity asks something very different of us: It asks us to experiment before we know the outcome and stay with uncertainty long enough for new possibilities to emerge. That can feel uncomfortable in systems built around evaluation and comparison.

Ken Robinson often argued that schools do not intentionally suppress creativity. The problem is that standardisation naturally rewards predictability. Systems built around testing and measurable outcomes tend to favour answers that can be repeated and assessed efficiently.

Original ideas rarely arrive that way. They usually begin awkwardly, as unfinished thoughts, as strange questions or as possibilities that seem unrealistic before they become useful.

Architects like to sketch possibilities before buildings exist. Writers draft and redraft. Scientists test failed hypotheses. Designers explore ideas that initially fail before finding the direction that works.

Creativity is not irrational thinking. It is disciplined thinking that stays open longer.

Staying Open Longer

Many adults who were once labelled ‘clever’ eventually become deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty.

You can sometimes see it in work meetings. A new idea appears, and the room instinctively searches for flaws before possibilities. Conversations close down too early because nobody wants to suggest something incomplete or unrealistic - or be seen as silly.

The pressure to appear knowledgeable greatly overrides the freedom to explore.

Yet most original ideas begin as awkward fragments: A half-formed sketch, a strange question, or a connection between things that do not obviously belong together.

Rod Judkins describes creativity as escaping accepted patterns. The difficulty is that many systems reward people for appearing competent within those patterns rather than challenging them.

Cleverness often protects the known, but creativity steps into the unknown. Perhaps that is the real distinction? Cleverness usually wants certainty quickly, whilst creativity stays open a little longer.

Creativity allows space for unfinished thoughts, failed attempts, and unexpected connections before arriving at judgements.

Creative thinking is rarely a straight line from problem to solution. More often, it is a willingness to remain curious long enough for better possibilities to appear.

And perhaps that is something worth protecting. Not just in schools, but in ourselves as adults too.

The ‘Wrong Answer’ Challenge

Here’s a short creative thinking exercise designed to separate correctness from possibility.

This works particularly well as a fast-paced workshop activity in small groups, where participants can build on each other’s ideas without worrying too much about finding the ‘right’ answer.

The aim is not to produce the best solution. Instead, it is to move beyond the first safe answer that most people instinctively reach for.

Workshop Structure

The workshop works best as a sequence of short design challenges completed quickly, with brief reviews between each round.

For example:

• Design a chair

• Design a bus stop

• Design a bag

• Design a shelter

Allow for a short introduction, then around 5 minutes per challenge, followed by a quick discussion to review the ideas before moving on.

The short time limit keeps the energy high and prevents participants from overthinking their ideas too early.

Building Complexity Gradually

The workshop becomes far more engaging and easier to hold the creative momentum if the materials and creative freedom expand with each challenge. For example:

Challenge 1 - Start with Drawing Only

Begin simply using:

• pencils

• pens

• coloured pens

The restriction encourages fast thinking and within a simple set of parameters.

Challenge 2 - Add the Option of Manipulating Paper

In the second round, allow participants to:

• fold

• cut

• manipulate

• layer

the paper into simple 3D forms and structures.

This cuts out repetition which might lead to boredom with some participants, and immediately changes how they need to think about objects, space, and construction.

Challenge 3 - Level-Up with Mixed Craft Materials

In the final round, introduce additional making materials such as:

• pipe cleaners

• scooby string or string

• craft pom poms

• craft eyes

• lollypop sticks

• art straws

• tape

• cotton wool

• glue sticks

At this point the workshop often changes dramatically, and the energy rises even further.

The narratives become more elaborate, and the participants usually become far more engaged in the workshop ‘flow’.

The ideas also become even more playful and far-fetched.

What begins as a simple design task often evolves into storytelling, world-building, character creation, engineering, and collaborative experimentation.

How This Works

Most people instinctively move toward safe and recognisable answers. This exercise interrupts that pattern.

It pushes participants beyond the first layer of expected thinking and encourages them to stay open to unusual possibilities for longer. Often the most fascinating ideas appear only appear after the sensible answers world has been left behind.

The activity also links closely to wider themes explored in previous Architecture Kids posts around:

• drawing as a thinking tool

• structures and spatial experimentation

• storytelling through design

• learning through making and iteration

Reflection Questions

At the end of each exercise have a review and ask:

• Which was your favourite idea?

• Which idea initially seemed ridiculous but later became most interesting?

• Which ideas only appeared once you stopped worrying about getting it right?

And Here’s What This Helps Develop:

• Creative confidence

• Divergent thinking

• Risk tolerance

• Spatial thinking

• Playful experimentation

• Comfort with uncertainty

• Rapid idea generation

And perhaps most importantly:

Creativity is not always about having better ideas first or fast.

Sometimes it is about staying curious for longer than everyone else.

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Thanks for reading

AK

👍🙏🚀💡⚡️

One of the most common things I hear in creative workshops is:

‘Am I doing this right?’

The question usually appears very early.

Before a model is finished.

Before the drawing has developed.

Sometimes before anything has even started.

It is rarely a lack of imagination.

More often, it is the fear of getting something wrong too quickly.

But something interesting happens when the environment shifts from performance to exploration.

When participants are allowed to test ideas freely, experiment with materials, change direction halfway through, or build unusual responses without immediate judgement, the atmosphere changes noticeably.

Energy rises.

People become more willing to contribute.

Ideas become more ambitious, playful, and unexpected.

What looks like “play” from the outside is often something much more important happening underneath:

people thinking in motion.

Play is often treated as the opposite of serious work.

It becomes associated with distraction, entertainment, or the temporary suspension of useful activity. In schools, workplaces, and adulthood itself, play frequently becomes something we are expected to grow out of.

And yet many of the world’s most serious disciplines rely heavily on forms of structured play.

Scientists run experiments.

Architects test models.

Designers prototype ideas.

Musicians improvise.

Writers draft possibilities that may never be used.

In each case, possibilities are explored before outcomes are certain.

This is not the absence of thinking.

It is thinking in motion.

The misunderstanding begins when play is mistaken for aimlessness. In reality, play is often one of the primary ways humans explore uncertainty safely. It creates space for experimentation before judgement arrives too early, allowing ideas to develop before they are fully formed.

What Play Actually Does

This is one reason play matters so much within creativity and learning.

Many formal environments are built around correctness. A question is asked, an answer is expected, and progress is measured through accuracy, speed, or completion.

Play operates differently.

Possibilities remain open for longer.

Ideas can shift direction halfway through. Unexpected outcomes can become useful rather than problematic. Rather than moving directly towards a predefined answer, the mind begins testing relationships between ideas, materials, actions, and consequences.

Children do this naturally. A cardboard box becomes a spaceship, a shop, or part of a larger imagined world. But the same pattern continues throughout adult creative work.

Architects sketch multiple options before committing to a direction.

Design teams prototype ideas quickly in order to learn from failure early.

Scientists test possibilities before certainty exists.

In each case, play functions as a form of low-risk exploration.

Why Creativity Depends on Low-Risk Exploration

This matters because creativity rarely emerges under conditions of constant caution.

New ideas are often incomplete, awkward, or difficult to explain clearly at the beginning. Playful environments create temporary spaces where those ideas can exist before they are fully resolved.

A rough sketch does not need to be perfect.

A strange suggestion does not immediately need defending.

A prototype can fail without the failure becoming personal.

When the fear of being wrong is reduced, people become more willing to test possibilities, combine unusual ideas, and move beyond the safest available answer.

This shift is often visible in Architecture Kids workshops.

At the beginning of a session, some participants are cautious. They want reassurance that they are “doing it correctly”. Others hesitate before sharing ideas publicly.

But when the environment becomes more exploratory - when unusual ideas are welcomed, materials can be tested freely, and projects evolve through iteration rather than immediate judgement - participation broadens noticeably.

Energy rises.

Ideas become more varied.

Participants begin building on one another’s suggestions rather than protecting themselves from mistakes.

Importantly, this does not mean structure disappears. The workshops still contain constraints, briefs, materials, users, and practical problems to solve.

The difference is that exploration is treated as part of the process rather than evidence of failure.

This is where many systems encounter difficulty.

Exploratory thinking can appear inefficient from the outside. A room full of experimentation is often noisy, unpredictable, and difficult to measure neatly.

What Schools and Workplaces Often Suppress

Schools understandably need structure and accountability. Workplaces require coordination, deadlines, and reliability. The problem emerges when efficiency begins replacing exploration entirely.

In many environments, certainty becomes rewarded more consistently than curiosity.

A neat answer appears safer than an unfinished question.

Correctness becomes more comfortable than experimentation.

Over time, people begin asking:

“What answer is expected here?”

rather than:

“What might happen if we tried this?”

This matters because uncertainty is not a flaw within creative work.

It is part of the process itself.

Designers rarely arrive at strong ideas immediately. Scientists do not run experiments because they already know the outcome. Creative development depends partly on allowing ideas to remain unresolved long enough for new connections to emerge.

Why Architecture and Design Already Depend on Structured Play

Architecture provides a particularly useful lens through which to view this because the profession already depends heavily on structured experimentation.

Very few buildings emerge fully formed from a single idea.

Architects sketch possibilities, build rough models, test materials, explore alternatives, and refine proposals continuously through iteration.

This is not treated as a distraction from serious work.

It is the work.

A sketch model is not simply a miniature building. It is a thinking tool.

The same principle appears repeatedly in creative workshops. Children building temporary structures from paper, timber, or modelling materials are not “just playing” with objects. They are exploring relationships between ideas, materials, constraints, and possibilities in real time.

This is one reason making can become such a powerful educational process.

Thoughts that remain vague internally often become clearer once they are externalised physically. A rough model allows someone to see consequences and opportunities that may have remained invisible through abstract planning alone.

From this perspective, play begins to look far less like a break from learning and far more like one of the mechanisms through which complex learning actually happens.

Play and the Future of Creative Thinking

Perhaps this is why genuinely creative environments often feel different from highly performative ones.

They leave room for exploration before demanding certainty.

They allow people to test possibilities before arriving at conclusions.

They recognise that serious thinking is not always linear, efficient, or immediately measurable.

This does not mean abandoning standards or expertise. In fact, the most effective creative environments are often carefully designed. But they also recognise something increasingly important:

people rarely produce original ideas while feeling under constant pressure to avoid mistakes.

Adults continue using forms of structured play constantly, even if we no longer describe them that way.

We brainstorm.

We prototype.

We sketch.

We rehearse.

We test versions of ideas before committing to them publicly.

The language changes, but the underlying process remains remarkably similar.

Play is not the opposite of serious thinking.

In many ways, it is one of the conditions that makes serious thinking possible.

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Thanks for reading.

Give a group of children the same design brief, the same materials, and the same amount of time, and very quickly different thinking patterns begin to emerge.

We see this repeatedly in our Architecture Kids workshops.

The projects vary. Sometimes the brief is to design a playground ‘for children, designed by children’. Sometimes it is a friendship pavilion, a snug, a shelter, or a small public space. The materials change too, with paper, card, timber, modelling materials, correx, construction components, and even full-scale building elements.

The same brief and resources are given to all, but the beginnings are rarely the same.

Some participants pause first. They sketch ideas, ask questions, organise their thoughts, or test the materials and assess, before committing themselves to a direction.

Others dive in almost immediately. They fold paper, stack components, test shapes, handle materials, or begin talking through ideas while physically building them. Some begin with wildly imaginative concepts. Others focus on details or carefully sequence the stages of the project before anything is made.

Some prefer working independently. Others naturally form pairs or small teams.

The dynamic differences are fascinating, particularly because the brief itself is shared.

The same challenge, same room and same starting point.But with completely different beginnings.

And yet, over time, the workshops often move towards the same outcome, with rising energy, increasing confidence, louder discussions, shared ideas, and a growing willingness to test possibilities publicly.

What changes is not simply the work itself. It is the participants’ relationship with the process.

What Different Beginnings Actually Reveal

What makes these differences interesting is that they are often misunderstood.

A child who pauses before beginning may be seen as hesitant, cautious, or lacking confidence.

A child who immediately starts building may be seen as impulsive, distracted, or unfocused.

But in practice, neither interpretation is necessarily true.

Both may be thinking carefully and creatively in very different ways.

They are simply approaching it from different directions.

Some people prefer to establish a sense of structure before acting. They want to understand the shape of the task, the boundaries of the problem, or the sequence of decisions ahead of them.

Others discover structure through movement itself. Thinking happens through testing, handling, discussing, adjusting, and physically interacting with materials and ideas.

In other words, some minds build clarity before action, and others build clarity through action.

The distinction sounds small, but its consequences can be significant.

Because creative environments - including schools, workplaces, meetings, and even design studios - often reward one style of beginning more visibly than another.

The person quietly planning may appear organised and capable.

The person experimenting openly may appear energetic and inventive.

But those impressions are shaped as much by the environment as by the individuals themselves.

This is one reason confidence can be so misleading.

What appears to be confidence is often familiarity with the ‘correct’ way to begin within a particular system.

And what appears to be uncertainty may simply be friction between the environment and the way someone naturally approaches a problem.

Educational thinkers such as Howard Gardner argued that human ability is far broader than traditional academic measures often recognise.

Similarly, the work of Ken Robinson repeatedly questioned whether education systems unintentionally narrow our understanding of intelligence and creativity.

The issue is not simply whether someone is creative.

It is whether the environment gives them a usable way into the process.

The Problem with Single-Doorway Environments

Most learning environments are designed around visible forms of progress.

A neat plan.

A quick answer.

A clear sequence of steps.

The ability to explain an idea immediately and confidently.

None of these things are inherently wrong. In many situations they are extremely useful. The problem begins when they gradually become the only recognised signs of intelligence, creativity, or capability.

Because once a system begins rewarding only certain types of beginnings, other forms of thinking can start to look like weakness.

The child who needs time to explore materials before forming an idea may appear distracted.

The person whose thinking develops through conversation may appear unfocused in a silent classroom.

The student who experiments openly may seem less organised than the student who produces a tidy plan before starting.

Yet in creative work, these behaviours are often not signs of inability at all. They are signs of different cognitive approaches unfolding in real time.

This pattern does not disappear in adulthood.

The same dynamics often reappear in meetings, workplaces, design studios, and collaborative projects.

Some people arrive with structured plans and clearly defined pathways. Others think aloud, test possibilities socially, sketch ideas rapidly, or discover solutions through iteration and discussion.

Both approaches can produce excellent outcomes.

But many professional environments still reward the appearance of certainty more readily than exploratory thinking.

This matters because environments shape confidence.

When someone repeatedly experiences friction at the entry point of a task, they can begin to assume the problem lies with themselves rather than with the structure surrounding the task.

Over time, this can become deeply self-reinforcing.

People stop contributing ideas.

They become quieter in group discussions.

They conclude that they are ‘not creative’, ‘not academic’, or ‘not good at design’, when in reality they may simply require a different route into the process.

Educational researcher Ron Ritchhart argues that thinking itself is often invisible unless environments deliberately create opportunities for it to become visible.

This is perhaps one of the greatest hidden challenges in creativity and learning.

Many people are not struggling with thinking itself.

They are struggling with the doorway they have been asked to enter through.

Why Architecture Creates Multiple Ways In

This is one reason architecture can become such a powerful vehicle for creative learning.

Architecture rarely depends on a single way of thinking.

A project might begin with a sketch, a conversation, a material experiment, a diagram, a model, a story, a problem, or a question about how people might use a space.

Some people think visually. Others think spatially, verbally, physically, socially, or systematically.

Architecture naturally allows these approaches to coexist.

A participant who struggles to explain an idea verbally may suddenly communicate clearly through a drawing.

Someone who finds drawing difficult may excel when handling materials or constructing spaces physically.

Another may begin by organising the stages of a project, identifying users, or planning how people move through environments.

The process becomes less about producing a single ‘correct’ answer and more about developing relationships between ideas, people, materials, constraints, and possibilities.

This flexibility matters.

Because when people are given multiple ways into a task, something important often changes.

Participation broadens. Engagement deepens. Ideas become more varied.

And individuals who may previously have remained quiet or hesitant often begin contributing in meaningful ways.

In Architecture Kids workshops, this shift is visible repeatedly.

A participant who initially appears uncertain may become deeply engaged once materials are introduced.

Someone who struggles with written planning may suddenly become highly focused when building at model scale or full scale.

Others gain confidence through collaboration, discussion, or iterative testing rather than solitary planning.

The workshop environment begins to recognise a wider range of strengths and approaches to thinking.

This idea connects closely to the work of Howard Gardner, whose theory of multiple intelligences challenged the idea that human capability can be reduced to a narrow set of academic measures.

It also reflects a wider shift in creative education and innovation thinking.

Increasingly, creativity is understood not as a rare talent possessed by a few individuals, but as a set of human capacities that emerge differently under different conditions.

The role of the environment, therefore, becomes critical.

Not simply as a backdrop for learning, but as an active participant in shaping who feels capable of contributing.

Unlocking the Narrow Definition of Creativity

One of the hidden risks in any learning environment is that people begin confusing familiarity with ability.

The students who naturally align with the expected way of working often appear more confident from the beginning. Their approach fits comfortably within the structure surrounding the task.

Others may take longer to find momentum.

Not because they lack ideas, intelligence, or creativity, but because they are attempting to enter the process through a doorway that was never designed with them in mind.

Over time, these experiences accumulate and some people begin to see themselves as creative. Others slowly conclude that they are not.

Yet the distinction may have far less to do with talent than with repeated exposure to environments that either recognised their thinking or overlooked it.

This matters far beyond schools.

Workplaces, organisations, and institutions also tend to reward familiar forms of participation: Quick responses, linear planning, verbal confidence, visible certainty.

But many important ideas emerge differently.

Some arrive through experimentation. Others through reflection, discussion, testing, observation, or slow development over time.

Creativity rarely disappears completely.

More often, it becomes hidden beneath environments that fail to notice it.

Perhaps this is why genuinely creative spaces feel different.

They do not reduce people to a single method of thinking.

They create multiple ways to participate, contribute, test, question, build, and imagine.

And when that happens, people often begin to rediscover abilities they did not realise they had.

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Thanks for reading.

It’s easy to design for ourselves because we know what we like. We know what feels comfortable, so we make decisions based around ourselves without even noticing. It’s natural, and even seasoned professional designers unconsciously do this.

But it’s important to remember that as designers, we are designing for someone else, and this makes an effective change to the way we need to think.

This is what we do in this workshop tailored tor students aged 8 to 14 years, with a very simple brief:

‘Design a bedroom. It’s for a very special client who needs your expertise. They have a lot of challenging requirements. And they just happen to be…a giraffe.’

That one small twist is really powerful because it:

• takes ‘normal’ away,

• turns the exercise into an exciting challenge,

• and assumptions don’t apply, so students are prompted to think differently

Giraffes are up to 6 metres tall, often sleep standing up and have to crouch awkwardly just to drink water.

So what does a comfortable space look like now?

What begins as a playful exercise quickly becomes something deeper. Students start thinking:

• What does my client actually need?

• What might be difficult for them?

• How does this space feel from their point of view?

And this is the moment where design thinking begins.

At the same time, they’re introduced - lightly - to a powerful tool:

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Using the One-Point Perspective

We introduce the one-point perspective, not as a technical exercise, but as a way to explore space, test ideas, and bring imagination into form.

Students aren’t just drawing, they’re:

• imagining,

• testing,

• adapting,

• visually articulating their ideas,

• and building confidence in their own ideas.

This is why the this workshop works so well, it’s:

• simple to set up,

• engaging from the first minute,

• and surprisingly rich in what it develops.

It’s flexible around an hour, so fits into a single lesson in school or a period of focused guided play at home, and the thinking it unlocks goes much further.

If you work with children, or have one at home, this is one of those rare activities that is simple to run, but genuinely changes how they think.

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Because in any classroom, some students connect quickly and others take longer, with a few never quite find their way in at all: In the same lesson, with the same teacher and the same content. Every student has a very different experience.

It’s easy to assume this comes down to the student’s ability or effort, but from my own experience (and I’m sure you’d agree too) I believe that its often down to something else.

The Misunderstanding

It’s too easy to put this down ability or effort, that some students are naturally ‘good’ at certain subjects, while others aren’t. But that explanation just doesn’t stand up when the same student who struggles in one subject can often thrive in another. What changes isn’t their intelligence, but how they are being asked to think.

Sometimes the issue isn’t one of understanding but one of translation.

Different Ways of Thinking

No two people think in the same way. Some process ideas through words and others through images. And some of us need to move, build, or test things to understand them while others prefer to step back and think carefully before responding.

These aren’t strengths or weaknesses. They’re just different starting points.

Research from authors like Howard Gardner helps to explain this, but you can see it clearly in classrooms and in our workshops. Different people approach the same task in completely different ways. For example:

• Visual thinkers understand through diagrams, drawings, and spatial relationships

• Verbal thinkers process through discussion, explanation, and writing

• Kinaesthetic thinkers learn by doing, making, and testing

• Analytical thinkers prefer structure, sequence, and clear steps

• Reflective thinkers need time and space to process internally

None of these are better than the others, but they do affect how easily someone connects with a subject.

The challenge is that not all subjects are taught in all of these ways.

The Shift

So when the way a subject is taught doesn’t match how someone naturally thinks, it can feel difficult. This isn’t because the subject is out of reach, but because the default way into it isn’t working.

Instead of asking students to try harder in the same way, we can ask a different question: What if we changed the way in?

What if understanding isn’t about more effort, but about a better connection?

Creative Bridging

Here’s the good news: If the way into a subject isn’t working, let’s change it!

Here are a few simple ways we might investigate that:

1. For the visual thinker struggling with English, try this

Turn a piece of writing into something you can see:

• Sketch out the structure of a story

• Map relationships between characters

• Use diagrams to track themes or ideas

Mind maps are great for this.

This helps because translating words into images creates a format that feels more natural. Using keywords, images and different colours helps to bring multiple parts of the brain in to the thinking process.

And in this process, stay objective in your focus. Reference and refer to facts and key information, rather than more subjective notes such as feelings and emotive references.

2. For the kinaesthetic thinker struggling with Maths

Make the abstract physical:

• Build shapes to explore geometry

• Use objects to represent numbers or equations

• Test ideas through making and experimenting

Specific origami and modular origami exercises can be a great help to understanding geometry.

Also for kinaesthetic thinkers, the abacus is a very powerful aid for numeric work because it turns maths into something physical, visible, and interactive.

Here, we’re turning something theoretical into something you can handle and test.

3. For the verbal thinker struggling with Science

Explain and articulate the subject areas out loud:

• Talk through a process step by step

• Describe it as if you’re teaching someone else

• Turn it into a simple story

• Work through exam questions in discussion with a study partner

Peer-study groups can be useful here, because discussion helps verbal thinkers test and refine their understanding. If that isn’t possible, try the same method with a parent or trusted adult.

Alternatively, structured dialogue can be effective with an AI tool such as Claude or Chat GPT. This is best done where subjects are set up in structured projects, with the course text, exam questions and model answers uploaded for direct reference.

This works for verbal thinkers because learning often becomes clearer through explanation, discussion, and hearing ideas expressed in language.

4. For the reflective thinker struggling in fast-paced lessons

Try creating space first to think first, before responding:

• Create space to think first.

• Write down your thoughts before answering

• Pause and organise ideas in your own time

• Build your response quietly before sharing it

• Break the question into key parts and tackle to each one in turn

• Sketch a quick structure (keywords, bullet points, or a mini mind map) before speaking

If possible, it can also help to give yourself a simple internal sequence:

• What is the question asking? Break it down into parts,

• What do I already know? Note 2 -3 key ideas before speaking,

• What’s the clearest way to explain it? Use a quick structure to frame a response (e.g. keyword statements for verbal responses and bullet points for written responses).

Even a short pause to run these questions in your head can make a big difference.

This works because reflective thinkers don’t struggle with understanding. Instead they often need a moment to process and organise their thoughts before expressing them.

By giving yourself that space, you move from reacting quickly, to responding clearly.

Thinking slowly, at the right moment, often leads to clearer thinking overall.

5. For the analytical thinker struggling with creative subjects

Try adding structure:

• Break the task into clear steps

• Define what you’re trying to achieve at each stage

• Set simple rules or constraints (materials, time, scale, theme)

• Start with a framework before exploring variations

• Use references or examples to analyse what works and why

You can also use a simple sequence of analytical questions such as:

• What is the brief asking for?

• What are the key elements I need to include?

• What options can I generate within those limits?

• Which one works best, and why?

Creativity doesn’t have to start with a blank page. It can start with a structure.

This works because analytical thinkers are strong at working within systems, patterns, and logic. By adding a framework and structure, creativity becomes something they can navigate step by step, rather than something vague, unpredictable or subjective.

Structure doesn’t limit creativity. It gives it somewhere to begin and a context to operate within.

Remember, we’ve not changing the subject. We’re changing how you engage with it.

Architecture as the Bridge

This is where architecture becomes particularly powerful because it doesn’t rely on just one way of thinking, it brings multiple ways of thinking together in the same activity.

When someone is working on the design of a project, they will:

• sketch ideas (visual thinking)

• build models (kinaesthetic thinking)

• explain their concept (verbal thinking)

• test structure and constraints (analytical thinking)

• reflect and refine (reflective thinking)

All of which is within the same process.

That means students don’t have to force themselves into a single way of working. They can start with what feels natural to them, and from there, connect to the parts they might usually find more difficult.

A student who struggles with writing might begin with a sketch while a student who finds maths challenging might explore it through structure and form. A student who prefers to think quietly might develop ideas before sharing them.

Here’s proof that the subject hasn’t changed, but the way into it has. And this is something I see regularly in our Architecture Kids workshops. Give a group an open-ended design challenge, and they naturally begin in different ways: Some draw, some build, some talk it through and some pause to think.

But over time, those approaches start to connect, and that’s often when the most interesting ideas emerge. When different ways of thinking are allowed to work together, more students find their way in and some of the most fascinating results emerge.

So maybe the goal shoudn’t be to make every student think in the same way, but instead to recognise that they don’t. Then, from that understanding, create ways for them to begin confidently from where they naturally think. Because when someone finds a way into a subject that works for them, everything changes: Confidence builds, understanding deepens and subjects that once felt difficult start to make sense. Not because they’ve become easier, but because the connection has been made.

Next…

Next, we’ll explore the different kinds of thinkers we tend to see: The planners, the explorers, the ones who need structure, and the ones who discover it as they go. Because once you can see those patterns, a lot of this starts to make sense.

Thanks for reading,

Phil

AK

Creativity improves when we deliberately switch between different thinking systems. Most people get stuck because they only use one.

Everybody thinks differently.

Everybody thinks differently. It’s one of my favourite things about working in a team.

In an architectural design competition, that difference can be the magic ingredient between winning and being an ‘also ran’.

But in schools, it’s rarely treated as a superpower.

Education often follows a more ‘cookie-cutter’ approach, where achievement is measured against test results and set metrics.

Different curriculum subjects naturally lean towards different ways of thinking. And as a result, students tend to gravitate towards the ones that feel more comfortable - the ones they have a natural affinity with.

But just because a student connects more easily with arts or humanities, it shouldn’t mean they can’t excel in maths or physics.

What if the issue isn’t the subject… but the way we’re approaching it?

Using different thinking strategies - deliberately switching how we approach a problem - can help break down those barriers.

And when that happens, subjects that once felt inaccessible can start to open up.

1. Lateral Thinking from Edward de Bono

Sometimes the problem isn’t that we don’t have ideas. - It’s that we get stuck approaching the problem in the same way.

Lateral thinking is about deliberately stepping sideways. Instead of following the obvious path, it asks you to interrupt it: To challenge the first answer or to explore something that doesn’t immediately make sense.

It’s a shift from ‘I need to find the right answer’ to ‘What else could this be?’

This matters because most of us are trained to think logically and sequentially, especially in school. That works well when the path is clear but when we get stuck, that same approach often keeps us stuck. Lateral thinking encourages us to break that pattern.

Here’s a simple way to try it. Take the problem you’re stuck on and deliberately look at it from a different angle. You might ask:

• How would someone else approach this?

• What if the constraints were different?

• Can i break this down in to smaller parts, or is it part of something larger?

• How would I explain it to my best friend, or how might they they explain it to me?

The aim isn’t to find the perfect answer straight away, but to loosen your grip on your primary way of thinking. Often, it’s that shift in perspective that unlocks something new.

2. The Six Thinking Hats, also by Edward de Bono

If lateral thinking helps us break out of a single line of thought, the Six Thinking Hats helps us organise how we think, especially when we’re working with others.

One of the biggest challenges in group discussions is that people are often thinking in different ways at the same time, with one person being logical, another being cautious and Someone else is throwing in lots of new ideas, etc.

So instead of building momentum, the group dynamic can stall or turn into disagreement.

The Six Thinking Hats method separates these modes of thinking. Instead of doing everything at once, each person plays a role to focus on one type of thinking any one time, in sequence, and as a group.

For example, one moment might be focused purely on facts and information, with the next on possibilities and new ideas, followed by risks and challenges

By doing this, everyone is thinking individually (differently) but together - Working in unison like magic. It reduces friction and makes it easier to explore ideas more fully in teams, workshops or when making decisions where different viewpoints are involved.

Here’s a simple way to try it. Take a problem and split your thinking into stages.

Start with ‘What do we know?’ (facts and information)

Then move to ‘What are the possibilities?’ (ideas, options, alternatives)

Followed by ‘What are the risks or challenges?’ (what might not work)

And finally ‘What feels right, and what should we do next?’ (judgement and decision)

The important part isn’t the exact order, it’s that you separate each type of thinking and give it space before moving on. Instead of everyone thinking in different directions at once, the group moves through the same process: Everyone thinking independently, but together.

3. Thinking in Systems from Donella Meadows

Sometimes the difficulty isn’t the problem itself. It’s how we’re looking at it.

Systems thinking is about stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. Instead of focusing on a problem in isolation, Donella Meadows encourages us to look at the wider context: How different parts connect and influence each other.

This is because most real problems don’t sit neatly in one place. They sit in relationships.

In schools, in teams, and in organisations, we often try to fix things by focusing on a single issue, with the mindset to work harder, try again, and add more effort.

But if the underlying system for approaching a problem doesn’t change, the patterns tend to repeat, and the problem remains.

That’s because human behaviour, just like the problems we’re trying to resolve, is shaped by the systems we operate in. We’re not separate from them. Instead, we’re very much part of them.

This way of thinking is particularly useful when the same problems keep repeating, progress feels slow or stuck, or the issue seems bigger than one subject or one person.

Want to test it out? Instead of asking ‘What’s the problem?’, try thinking about:

• What’s happening here over time?

• What factors might be influencing this?

• How are these things connected?

You don’t need to map everything out, but just notice where the connections can start to shift your understanding.

For a student struggling with a subject, this can be powerful. It moves the focus from ‘What am I getting wrong?’ to ‘What might be influencing how I’m learning?’

4. The Growth Mindset from Carol Dweck

With all of the above, and even with the right environment, there’s another factor at to consider: Whether we allow ourselves to think differently in the first place.

A growth mindset is the idea that ability isn’t fixed. It can be developed over time through effort, strategy, experience - and belief!

That might sound simple but it has a big impact, because if we believe our ability is fixed, we’re far less likely to take risks, try new approaches, or explore unfamiliar ways of thinking. We tend to stay within what feels safe, and with the methods we already know.

But if we see ability as something that can grow, it changes how we can respond when things feel difficult. Struggle then becomes part of the process and a positive, not a negative sign of our abilities.

This is particularly important when we’re learning something new, approaching a subject that feels challenging or trying a different way of thinking.

A simple way to try it is, when something isn’t working for you, pause and reframe the situation. Instead of thinking ‘I’m not getting this’, think ‘I haven’t yet found a way into this’.

It’s a small shift in language but a huge shift in approach, and opens us up to the idea that this different approach might work.

Before we can switch thinking systems, we have to believe it’s possible to do so. Very Ted Lasso!

5. Multiple Intelligences from Howard Gardner

If growth mindset is about believing we can improve, multiple intelligences is about recognising that we don’t all think in the same way, which is at the core of what this post is all about.

We each have different strengths in how we process and express ideas: Some people think best through words, while others think through images, movement, patterns, or relationships.

These aren’t just preferences, they shape how easily we connect with different types of work. In schools, this matters more than we often realise because many subjects are taught in a fairly narrow way, usually leaning towards one dominant mode of thinking. When that aligns with how a student naturally thinks, things feel easier. When it doesn’t, the same subject can feel difficult or even inaccessible.

But the subject hasn’t changed, only the route we need to get into it is different. This approach is particularly useful when a student connects with one subject but struggles with another, or usual methods of teaching aren’t landing, or confidence drops in a specific subject area.

Here’s a simple way to try it: Take something that feels difficult and approach it through a different mode.

• Use methods most comfortable with you, for example diagrams, sketches or drawings, if you are not comfortable with writing.

• Talk it through out loud or in conversation with a partner, if you lack confidence with solo thought.

• Build or model it, to represent it physically if you’re a kinaesthetic thinker.

• Connect it to a real-world situation if thinking it through in context helps.

You’re not changing the content, you’re changing how you engage with it.

The best breakthrough moments don’t come from trying harder, but from finding a different way in.

A Case Study Win: Mindmapping from Tony Buzan

For me, this is very true, and became very real through mind mapping.

At school, I loved English literature, but to be perfectly honest… I was rubbish at it. I’m not a literal thinker and I struggled to organise and articulate ideas in a way that worked in essays. That changed when I came across mind mapping.

Instead of writing and thinking linearly, I could work visually - using keywords and connections, using colours, and images to explore ideas and link them together flexibly to form effective arguments. That shift changed everything and enabled me to find my different way in to the subject and connect to the material.

What was difficult and heavy suddenly became engaging and light - a game-changer!

6. Visible Thinking from Ron Ritchhart

One challenge with thinking is that most of it is invisible to others. We process the problem inside our head, see the outcome, and display or articulate an answer, but the process remains unseen.

Visible thinking is about making that process external so that others, with different thinking styles, can understand us better. It encourages us to slow down and show how we’re thinking, not just what we think. That might be through discussion, sketching, note-making, diagrams, or simple prompts that help structure ideas.

Because when thinking becomes visible, it becomes something we can all engage with. And develop with teams, workshops and the classroom more easily.

This is particularly useful when ideas feel unclear or underdeveloped, students struggle to explain their thinking, or learning becomes focused on answers rather than understanding.

And here’s a simple way to try it: Instead of jumping straight to an answer, pause and capture your thinking as it develops.

• What do I notice?

• What does this make me think about?

• What questions does it raise?

It doesn’t need to be polished - creativity is often a messy process. The value is in making the thinking visible, which is usually when the subject becomes unsstandable to others.

7. Whole-Brain Thinking from Daniel Pink

For ages, we’ve been taught to separate thinking into two types: Logical and analytical on one side, and creative and intuitive on the other.

And in many areas of education, logic has traditionally taken the lead - prioritising STEM learning over STEAM for example.

But this division is very simplistic and not very helpful. The most effective thinking doesn’t come from choosing one over the other. It comes from combining them.

Daniel Pink’s whole-brain thinking is about bringing these different modes together. Using logic to structure ideas, and imagination to expand them. Using analysis to understand, and creativity to explore. On their own each has limits, but combined they become much more powerful.

For example, logic helps us make sense of what exists, and imagination helps us see what could exist.

This is particularly useful when solving complex or open-ended problems, working across different subjects, or moving from understanding to creating.

Here’s a simple way to try it. When working on a problem, deliberately use both modes.

Start with ‘What do I know? What makes sense?’ Then ask ‘What could this become? What else is possible?’

Let one inform the other.

The most powerful ideas often sit at the point where structure and imagination meet.

8. Creative Disruption from Rod Judkins

Even when we try different ways of thinking, we can still fall into familiar patterns, especially in subjects we find difficult. We follow the methods and if they don’t work for us, it can feel like the subject itself is the problem.

Rod Judkins’ creative disruption offers a different perspective. It’s about deliberately stepping outside of the usual approach and trying something unexpected, not to be different for the sake of it, but to find a way of thinking that actually connects.

Often, the barrier isn’t the subject, it’s the method we’re using to engage with it.

This is particularly useful when a subject feels repetitive or frustrating, the usual approach isn’t working, or confidence starts to drop.

Here’s a simple way to try it. Take the way you’ve been asked to approach something, and change it:

• Turn notes into a diagram or visual

• Explain the idea as if you were teaching it to someone else

• Reframe the problem in a completely different context

• Break the rules of how it’s ‘normally’ done

You don’t have to abandon your original methods. But exploring an alternative can reveal a new way in.

Sometimes understanding doesn’t come from doing more of the same, but from doing something different.

Routes to Understanding

Looking across these approaches, one thing stands out: There isn’t a single way to understand something, and there are multiple routes in. So when a subject feels difficult, it’s often because we’ve only been shown a small number of them.

The methods we’ve explored here aren’t just creative techniques, they’re different ways of approaching the same idea until something connects.

Which raises an important question - If subjects naturally lean towards certain ways of thinking what are these different types of thinking that we, as adults, kids and students use to learn with?

That’s what we’ll explore next.

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Thanks for reading

AK

It can happen quite quickly, usually in a few short minutes, with a little scene-setting.

A room that starts off quiet, cautious and slightly guarded, where participants are weighing each other up and wary of how competitive the environment might be. That’s when we need to set the tone so that ideas can begin to develop and move.

It’s not about competing. It’s about building on everyone’s experiences and ideas. We want to get to a point where one thought leads to another. Ideas are added to with valuable contributions from others, bringing twists, layers and connections into the discussion. Here, the momentum is not driven by one person, but by the group.

That shift has very little to do with talent, but it has everything to do with positive collaboration. And once that dynamic finds its own momentum, the creative flow works like a dream.

I said it takes a little scene-setting, but it’s not magic. It’s about creating a level playing field in the room and setting a working framework where competition and hierarchy are neutralised from the start. In a fresh design workshop environment, no one walks into the room with the answers, but everyone wants to feel heard and valued.

This post is about how we achieve that.

Creating the conditions

The key thing is that this kind of participation doesn’t just happen. It has to be set up. And once it’s established, it needs to be maintained and guided. But that’s not too tricky once everyone buys into the same mindset, and you know what to look for if things start to go sideways.

At the beginning of a session, there’s often some apprehension where no one quite wants to speak. That’s the moment to take.

I’ll often start by saying something simple like:

‘Let’s warm up with a little brainstorm’

or

‘Why don’t we throw down some ideas onto sheets of paper and see what sticks?’

Get some initial ideas flowing. No commitments, everything can be dismissed, so there’s no pressure on people to speak out. Make positive contributions to any ideas offered and invite thoughts from others in the room. Reframe negative feedback in a positive way, or find a constructive counterpoint so all contributions retain value.

This creates space. No one is being judged, and people gain the confidence to contribute.

This loosens the tension in the room and gets the discussion flowing. Relationships start to build as ideas are shared and developed. Try to capture as much as possible and make it visible - pinning work to the wall or spreading pages across the table. Before long, the room fills with shared thinking that can be collectively developed, rather than individuals pushing their own positions.

And those throwaway ideas from the first few minutes suddenly become shared material that everyone can build on.

This is the mindset we want to create and maintain throughout the workshop or design process. It’s also the position we return to if the energy starts to slip into criticism or self-promotion.

Here are some simple guidelines I use to establish and protect that mindset:

• ‘There’s no one idea.’ We’re not looking for a single solution, but exploring as many options as possible.

• ‘There’s no wrong idea.’ We don’t assess the validity of ideas until we’ve gathered as many as we can.

• And one of my favourites, from innovation thinker Phil McKinney:
  ‘No one is allowed to say an idea won’t work unless they can give five reasons why it will.’

This cuts out a lot of negativity. Just because something hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it won’t work now. There are always variables, and different people will see different ways forward.

This shifts the conversation from looking for flaws to looking for value. And once that mindset takes hold, people contribute more than they expected. Not because they’ve suddenly become more ‘creative’, but because the environment allows them to take part.

The shift

So this shift isn’t about helping people feel more creative. It’s about removing the pressure of needing to be right.

Because once creativity becomes something you measure - against other people, against outcomes, against your own internal standards - it becomes harder to access.

That’s when people start assessing the room, comparing themselves to others, and holding back. Editing before anything has had a chance to form.

Letting go of that is about stepping back from comparison, not being afraid to be wrong, supporting other people’s ideas, and allowing yourself to stay in that early, unfinished stage of thinking a little longer.

It’s about approaching things with a beginner’s mind. Not needing to prove anything. Just staying open to what might emerge.

And in practice, it can be as simple as trying a few of the small shifts we’ve explored here and in previous posts. Not as a way of becoming ‘more creative’, but as a way of participating in a shared process moving in a common direction.

Creativity isn’t a type of person. It’s a way of participating.

And when people feel able to take part, more often than not, something interesting happens.

Small ways to try this

If you’re interested in what this feels like in practice, here are a few simple approaches I use.

Most of the shift comes from how the session starts, and how the tone is set in those first few minutes.

I mentioned ‘a little scene-setting’, and in workshops I’m involved in, I try to lead by example. I’m not afraid to say ‘I don’t know’, to make a first mark on the page, and to invite feedback from the room.

Those who contribute are encouraged to capture their ideas and keep the discussion moving, so no single voice dominates. You’re acting as a facilitator - creating an atmosphere of safety and support for open, creative thinking.

So in summary, here are a few techniques I use:

1. A quick start to get ideas moving

At the very beginning, take the pressure off by throwing some ideas around. Nothing is fixed and nothing needs to be right, but keep it relevant.

The aim isn’t quality. It’s momentum.

2. Keep everything visible

Even early ideas have value. Keep them visible - pinned to a wall or spread across a table.

They become reference points and show how much can be generated quickly.

3. Build on ideas. Don’t compete with them

Give ideas enough space to develop. Encourage positive feedback and gently resist anything that shuts them down.

Ideas become richer, more connected, more dimensional, and ownership becomes less important than development.

4. Start with a beginner’s mind

If the room feels hesitant, go first. Set an imperfect example.

It lowers the barrier and gives others something to respond to.

5. Set the mindset - Three simple rules that protect the space

If the energy drifts, reset with simple rules:

• there’s no one answer,

• there’s no wrong answer,

• and no one can say an idea won’t work unless they can give five reasons why it will.

Ideas are there to be explored, not judged.

Reflecting on Creativity

None of this is about teaching people how to be creative. Because we already are.

It’s about creating the conditions where people feel able to take part.

When that happens, creativity follows. Ideas move. Energy rises. People contribute more than they thought they could.

Not because we’ve changed who they are, but because we’ve changed what’s possible.

Let me know your thoughts. I’d genuinely be interested to hear how this lands for you.

Thanks for reading.

AK

Creative thinking is everywhere in today’s education landscape. It’s in the National Curriculum. It’s in Ofsted’s Education Inspection Framework. It appears in school development plans, subject audits, CPD sessions, and governor reports.

And rightly so.

But schools are being asked to do more than deliver subject knowledge. They’re expected to equip young people with the ability to think independently, explore ideas, and solve complex problems - skills that will serve them far beyond the classroom.

But here’s the catch:

Most schools are told to develop creative thinking…

Yet few are shown how to do it in a way that’s practical, curriculum-linked, and sustainable.

So, how do you meet these expectations without taking time away from core subjects, overwhelming staff, or relying on a few gifted individuals to make it happen?

One answer is design thinking, and I believe one of the richest ways to teach it is through Architecture.

Creativity is hard to plan, teach and evidence

From our experience, teachers and subject leads are supportive about about promoting creativity, but are unclear or have questions on how to deliver it:

‘We believe in it, but we don’t always know what it’s supposed to look like in practice.’

‘We try to plan creative tasks, but they often feel rushed or disconnected.’

‘We’re not sure how to show impact, especially when time and resources are tight.’

There’s often a disconnect between the ambition of fostering creative thinkers and the day-to-day reality of curriculum delivery.

• Creative thinking can feel vague. Is it a group discussion? A drawing? A brainstorming session?

• Creative outcomes can feel hard to assess. How do we show progress? How do we record it for Ofsted or internal tracking?

• And creative tasks can feel like ‘extra’ work, rather than something that deepens understanding in core subjects.

This can leave schools stuck. The desire to teach creativity is there, but it needs a framework that feels purposeful, clear, and curriculum-relevant.

That’s where architecture can help.

Architecture as a solution to structure and spark creative thinking across the curriculum

Architecture isn’t just about buildings. It’s about people, places, stories, and problem-solving. It offers a practical, structured pathway into creative thinking that aligns beautifully with the curriculum, and engages pupils on multiple levels.

What architecture can offer:

Because it’s rooted in real-world challenges, it requires pupils to:

• Think critically and creatively

• Apply knowledge from across subjects

• Develop and explain their ideas

• Design, test, reflect, and adapt

But more than that, architecture draws from every corner of the curriculum:

• Maths and physics inform structure and stability

• Geography shapes site-specific design

• Art and DT guide visual expression and construction

• Literacy comes into play through design narratives and presentations

• History and citizenship influence how space serves people and society

Architecture isn’t a bolt-on. It can be used as a thread that can weave subjects together through a common creative process.

And it is engaging -

Because it gives students a story they control.

Instead of following instructions, children are invited to:

• Respond to a meaningful brief

• Define their own users, priorities, and materials

• Create a design that says something and has meaning to them

That sense of ownership helps draws them in. They’re not just completing a task, they’re making decisions, solving problems, and imagining something new. And that’s exactly what creative thinking is all about.

Real curriculum links through architectural challenges (KS3)

To meet creative thinking targets, tasks must do more than ‘look creative’. They must ask pupils to think creatively within subject-specific knowledge.

Here are two small examples where architecture-based challenges can achieve exactly that:

📍 Geography: Climate-Responsive Design

Challenge:

Design a home or shelter for a family living in a flood-prone area, such as the Brahmaputra floodplain in Bangladesh.

Curriculum Links:

• Understand how physical processes affect human environments

• Explore the interaction between people and landscapes

• Develop geographical enquiry and decision-making skills

Creative Thinking Outcome - pupils must:

• Research climate risks and population needs

• Evaluate available building resources, materials and structure types

• Balance conflicting priorities (e.g. raised floors vs. accessibility)

• Communicate their design clearly through sketches, models or presentations

This isn’t just about drawing houses - it’s about applying knowledge, empathising with users, and problem-solving under constraints. A perfect example of design thinking rooted in curriculum content.

🧪 Chemistry: Designing with Materials and Change

Challenge:

Design a research outpost for scientists in a cold, remote climate (e.g. Antarctica), with special attention to heat, materials and energy efficiency.

Curriculum Links:

• Properties and uses of materials (e.g. conductivity, insulation, durability)

• Physical changes: Melting, freezing, and state transitions

• Apply scientific ideas to real-world contexts

Creative Thinking Outcome - students need to:

• Select and justify materials based on performance

• Predict how substances behave in extreme conditions

• Design to minimise energy use and support practical lab work

• Visualise space and explain their scientific reasoning

They’re not just recalling facts, they’re using chemistry to solve a specific design problem, and showing that understanding through drawings, models, or digital prototypes.

A simple, powerful tool for creativity across subjects

Architecture might not appear on the school timetable, but it does offer something schools are increasingly being asked to deliver:

• Structured creative thinking

• Curriculum-relevant problem solving

• Engaged, confident learners

And it does all this by weaving together what children are already learning in geography, science, maths, art, DT, and more - into a purposeful, creative process that feels exciting and relevant, rather than abstract.

It’s a model that works because it’s:

• Structured - with a clear beginning, middle and end,

• Inclusive - giving space for verbal, visual, spatial and kinaesthetic learners,

• Scalable - easy to adapt for a lesson, a project week, or a termly theme, and

• Meaningful - students apply knowledge to something they care about.

And you start to notice something else too. When a student leans in to the process, adds their own ideas, invests in the exercise, shows a ‘spark’ of care - that’s when you know creative thinking isn’t just happening, it’s sticking.

Architecture gives children tools to explore, express, and own their ideas. It builds connection, not just content. And for schools, it offers a powerful way to show impact—on paper, in person, and in every student’s growing confidence.

We Can Help Make Creative Thinking Click

If your school is working on creative thinking, or looking for a practical way to bring it into Science, Geography, DT, or Art, then Architecture might be a missing link.

Whether it’s a one-off enrichment session, a classroom-ready activity pack, or a bespoke project tied to your curriculum, we’re here to help.

We work with schools across the UK, US and Canada to create practical, ready-to-run creative packs that fit straight into your teaching.

Whether you’re looking for something off-the-shelf or tailored to a specific topic, we can help you:

• Access ready-made, curriculum-linked design challenges,

• Request bespoke packs built around your subject, theme, or student group,

• Bring creative thinking into the classroom without adding to your prep time, and

• Support evidence of engagement and impact for inspection frameworks, school leadership and parents.

If you’d like sheets on the above projects or you’re looking for something specific, just get in touch.

📩 Get in touch to talk about what your school needs

And subscribe here for more posts with creative thinking ideas and strategies for schools.

Subscribe now

Thank you for reading. We’d love to help you bring more creative, connected learning into your school.

AK

The ingredients are simple: A mix of empathetic design, biology, physics and a touch of mechanics, brought together in a workflow designed to capture imagination and creative energy. Students develop their own ideas for a design solution and then take them further by building their installation.

An important outcome was that each student developed their own response to the design challenge. There were no worksheet templates and no fixed outcomes - just individual ideas being developed, explored, tested and built. In fact one of the key guidelines we work to, and share with the students is that

There is no one answer, and no wrong answer.

It doesn’t take long for the creative energy to build. Students are fully engaged and focused on their ideas, and it was great to be back working with the Ri.

If you would like to hear about future workshops, subscribe for updates or take a look at what’s coming up via the Ri.

Subscribe now

And please feel free to share with parents and carers looking for fun, creative holiday workshops for children.

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Thank you for reading and hope to see you there soon.

AK

If you’re staring down the long stretch of holiday time wondering how to keep young minds engaged without defaulting to screens… you’re not alone.

The good news is this doesn’t need planning, prep, or specialist materials.

Inside this post is a simple set of creative design challenges that turn everyday materials into moments of curiosity, conversation, and imagination. No pressure - and no wrong answers. Just an opportunity for engaged discussion and a chance for ideas to flow.

These are the kinds of activities we use in Architecture Kids workshops to get students thinking, making, and sharing ideas quickly. And once they start, things tend to snowball.

You might be surprised where the conversations go.

👇Unlock the full set of challenges below and give them a try this week.

Read more

When creativity falls out of focus

I’ve been running a sequence of design workshops recently with groups aged from 7 to 18, and the difference in how each group approaches creativity is striking.

The younger groups, especially 7–8 year olds, arrive full of energy. Give them a brief and a set of instructions and they are off; drawing, making and testing ideas without hesitation. These workshops almost run themselves as the creative energy takes over. With older groups, it’s different. Students are more considered and cautious. They need warming up, working through things step by step, with the creative flow tending to come later.

It’s the opposite of what you might expect. If education is building confidence and creativity, you would assume this would increase with age.

What I see instead is that creativity doesn’t disappear. It shifts out of focus and falls out of practice.

As we grow up, through school and everyday decisions, we make decisions about what feels sensible, what will work, what is accepted and what others will agree with without questioning. That begins to shape how we think, and that’s where the cost to creative thinking starts.

Working from precedents

In practice, there’s a strong pull towards using precedents. Looking at what has worked before and applying it again. It’s encouraged in schools and in society, to the point where it can feel like accepted truth. It helps work and life move forward efficiently and with confidence. That’s fine for BAU.

But the most engaging work I’ve been involved in is where there isn’t a clear precedent to follow. Where you’re not refining something that already exists, but working things out from first principles. Starting with a blank sheet of paper requires a different kind of thinking. You’re not asking what’s been done, but what might be possible. That’s when the fun begins, when the work becomes interesting, and creative thinking starts to warm up.

When sensible choices take over

What sits underneath this isn’t a loss of creativity, but a change in how we handle ideas. Over time, we get better at judging what is likely to be accepted and what isn’t. Ideas are assessed before they are explored. We learn to shape responses so they land well, rather than letting them develop freely. That shift is subtle, but it changes how we think. By adulthood, this filtering process feels like good judgement.

Resetting the creative flow

I’ve seen this in my own work as well. Most architectural projects rely on tried and tested approaches: Standard details, ideas from past projects, things that are known to work. It’s efficient, economical and sensible. But part of the job is always to question whether those decisions are right for the situation in front of you. That critical thinking sits alongside everything we do.

Alongside that, there’s always been a pull for me towards something beyond BAU. Particularly around how learning environments and creative thinking can be brought into everyday practice. Not by turning everything on its head, but by keeping that mindset active. It can be as prominent or as subtle as the project requires, but it’s something that needs to be maintained. That’s where I see the opportunity - bringing creative thinking back into day-to-day work.

Shifting how we look at things

So with creative thinking we don’t need to take big risks or change everything. It’s a lot simpler (and playful) than that.

It starts with how we look at the situations in front of us. Take the same project, the same workflow, the same decisions that need to be taken and approach them with a few challenging questions. Sometimes we return to what’s expected and other times things open up to unexpected new opportunities.

In my experience, creative thinking doesn’t come from forcing new ideas, but from the practice of looking at situations slightly differently and seeing what happens next.

Below, I’ve put together a set of simple techniques you can use to test this in your own work: 5 ways of looking at the same situation differently, and seeing where it leads.

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In primary school workshops, the energy in the room is immediate: Curiosity is natural and engagement comes easily. Children tend to accept that everyone works differently and that ideas can unfold in many directions. Their main hesitation, if at all, comes at the beginning of the workshops and is not about creative confidence - It’s usually the simple and honest question:

“What are we doing again?” (Which to me says that kids live with creative thinking - but just don’t always listen - which is good and part of the process because it adds to the imaginative and unexpected returns).

Once they realise that the task is about exploration rather than arriving at one correct answer, the dynamic starts to shift. Learning still happens, but it happens through doing, testing and experimenting rather than a set direction. The moment students recognise they lead the design narrative, the creative momentum builds, confidence grows and adventure takes over.

There is no ‘wrong idea’, and there is no ‘one idea’ in creative thinking.

As students get older, their response to new creative challenges often becomes subdued and more measured. Many look first for examples that feel ‘correct’ or safe, as a way in. This is understandable. Much of formal education rewards arriving at a single right answer and then moving on. Creative work however, is a bit different in that it asks us to stay with uncertainty for a while and to allow ideas to develop in their own time.

In our workshops, that creative engagement often returns when students are encouraged to experiment with the unexpected (or ‘play’ - in an educational context) by looking at how characteristics like light, scale, colour, shadow or orientation can surprise and capture the imagination, turning preconceptions on their head, and re-opening that door to new ideas and creativity again. When that happens, the response is often one of genuine fascination. Students recognise that old spark within themselves and creativity feels less like a skill to be exercised and more like a natural way of exploring the world.

Adults frequently describe creativity very differently. As adults we often feel it is something you either possess or do not. Yet when we look back at how young children naturally approach making, it becomes clear that creative capacity was once simply part of everyday experience. It was not labelled or analysed. It was just lived.

One of the clearest ways this emerges in practice is through hands-on structural design challenges. In our sessions exploring Buckminster Fuller’s ideas, students are asked to assemble something that seems straightforward and evert-day: A cube. Most assume this will be quick and easy but when they discover that the kit of parts they are given has no stiffness at the vertices and the form will not stand up without additional structural help, preconceptions are challenged and curiosity is obliged to take over. Experimentation begins and through testing and adjusting, students get to understand structural principles such as compression, tension, moment forces and the integral strength of triangular shapes, in a hands-on, kinaesthetic process. Understanding in this way improves confidence, and the students’ own ability to learn creatively through investigation returns. Measured risk-taking starts to feel more comfortable and natural, as understanding deepens.

Playing with the Jitterbug, with Buckminster Fuller.

Everyone thinks differently and understands the world in their unique way. That’s what makes an organisation, business or society special. A diverse collective conscience is far more powerful than a narrow one. And just because something has been done the same way a million times, for a millennia, doesn’t make it the right, best or optimised way.

Another important observation is that children work in many different ways and at many different speeds. Some think carefully before acting whilst others jump straight in with sketching, writing, or model making. All of these approaches are valid. Here, encouraging students to develop ideas using more than one mode of thinking can be particularly powerful. For example, exploring a concept across a double page of a notebook - writing interpretations of an idea on one side and then sketching them on the other - allows analytical and visual thinking to develop together. Creativity strengthens when different ways of understanding are allowed to operate in tandem.

Top tip for creative students - Always carry a notebook and pen.

From a facilitation perspective, much of this depends on setting the right environment. In our workshops, students are given a clear framework to work within but the direction of their ideas remains open. There is no single solution requested and no hierarchy of outcomes. Each response carries personal meaning and relevance for each student. Within these conditions, young people are able to think, invent and simply be.

For parents and educators, this raises a hopeful possibility. Creative ability does not need to be manufactured. It already exists. What matters is protecting the habits that allow it to flourish - curiosity, experimentation, reflection and the freedom to develop ideas over time.

Perhaps creativity is not something children need to be given. Perhaps it is something they need space to keep.

In the next post, we will explore how small, everyday creative habits can be nurtured beyond workshops and classrooms, so that this natural way of thinking continues to grow into adult life.

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More soon.

Architecture Kids