VANCOUVER—Facilitator, consultant, former ballerina, and all-around creative person, Amanda Gibbs inspired Vancouverites at Friday’s CreativeMornings/Vancouver.

Gibbs’ talk aimed to motivate a design/communications-oriented audience to take action in the sphere of civic engagement. She envisions a future where cities create platforms for conversation and places for people to gather.

Gibbs said, “I think the people in this room have the power to change the future.” She explained to the audience that they as creative people can use their communication skills to transform cities into engaging, exciting places.

She noted how there is a worldwide shift towards city living. With this movement, cities are becoming bigger and therefore less personal. Gibbs, who showed up to present wearing an “I [love] Strathcona” T-shirt, said about Vancouver, “I find it disorienting to live here.” (Strathcona is an eastside Vancouver neighbourhood.) She noted that Vancouver gets constantly rated as having one of the highest qualities of life, yet there is a lack of social cohesion. She noted that this is due in part to the extreme income gaps that exist in Vancouver, but more importantly, due to a lack of creative collaboration.

She shared many examples of projects that citizens are doing around the world to create social change in their cities, from pop-up learning labs to collaborative art spaces.

Listeners left armed with inspiration, ready to make change in their neighbourhoods; to create spaces conducive to conversation, to beautify and green their neighbourhoods, to define areas where people can get together.

Creative Mornings will continue to engage all types of creative people with February’s speaker Gagan Diesh of DesignStamp who has asked a question in advance of his talk: How many in the audience have the word “design” in their titles?

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Time: 5:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: VFS | Main Theatre | 420 Homer St.

This is not your typical grad show! Each graduate will be presenting the one project of which he or she is particularly proud in back-to-back three minute presentations. Followed by a festive networking social where the students' work will be on display and where you can get to know them a bit more depth about their work over light food and drink.

The project presentations will include:
Brand Identity
iPad Publishing
Online and Mobile Experiences
Motion Design
Come and meet these promising designers before they are snatched up by industry.

About the Keynote Speaker:
As part of his work in innovation and research in Mountain View, Peter leads the Google+ Photos UX team on conceptualizing and rapid prototyping next-generation applications. Peter is also the Creative Director at WellDone International where he helps provide clean water to communities in need. His past roles include Group Creative Director at the world-leading interactive agency Blast Radius and National Creative Director at Tribal DDB Canada. He’s also a graduate of the program (from way back in 1996). When

RSVP: Email
Deadline: December 12, 2011
Include: Your Name, Company and how many in your group (if you are a group)

Wine and beer will be served from 5:00 to 5:20 with the presentations starting promptly at 5:30pm. The bar will reopen after the presentations.

Friday night, at our 4th annual Practivism event, the audience was asked to participate in a simple survey and answer "What three skills are required for sustainable design?" in order to be included in the door prize draw. The answers were inspiring -- see the Wordle event volunteer Jen Nichols created using the words!

As the theme of Practivism was Collaboration for Sustainable Design, I'm happy to see a 'collaborative' collage summing up our learnings!