Season 8 | SPECIAL
Finding Time for the Mini-C Moments of Creativity with Josh Seidenfeld and Mark Lion
“like, how do I go through that context switching moment in a way that really benefits him, benefits me, and makes me present for that experience.”
– Mark Lion
Hosts & Guests
Cyndi Burnett
Matthew Worwood
Episode Transcription
SPECIAL: Finding time for the mini-c moments of creativity with Josh Seidenfeld and Mark Lion
Mark Lion:
You know, for me, coming off of a work day and then, you know, picking up my 14 year old from school, like, how do I go through that context switching moment in a way that really benefits him, benefits me, and makes me present for that experience. And as I started experimenting with different exercises for myself as well as different exercises when the teenager jumps in the car, I was like, wow, this is, there’s real magic here. And, you know, not to sound too altruistic, but I started applying it other places. I was like, wow, I’m feeling a little bit down before I’ve got to go do this pitch. How do I get my brain ready for it? And I experimented with a couple different exercises. I was like, this one works well for me.
Matthew Worwood:
Hello, everyone. My name is Doctor Matthew Worwood.
Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Doctor Cindy Burnett.
Matthew Worwood:
This is the fuelling creativity in Education podcast.
Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.
Matthew Worwood:
Will be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.
Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.
Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And of course, this episode is outside our regular season and therefore it’s a special. And it is a summer special because on this episode, if you are interested in getting your creative juices flowing during over the summer, this is an app for you because we’ve got two amazing guests. And Cindy, why don’t you introduce those amazing guests now?
Cyndi Burnett:
So we have Josh Seidenfeld and Mark Lyon, who are the founders of Messier, a platform to help people enjoy the benefits of a consistent creative practice. So Messier advisors include some of the leaders in creativity, psychology, research and some of our guests on the show, like James and Zarana Pringle, who have done episodes with us. Josh is a longtime creative person, having produced two albums with his band Boy in the Bubble. What a great name. Day jobs most recently included climate projects at Apple and Meta. He lives in Oakland with his wife and two daughters, whose creativity constantly inspires him. And Mark founded and led Lion Interactive, a digital design agency in the San Francisco area. For 25 years.
Cyndi Burnett:
Clients have included McKinsey and the Asian Art Museum. Notable projects include design, leadership, and texture, which is acquired by Apple and incorporated into Apple News. Mark also lives in Oakland with his wife and son, where their weekends are usually filled with maker projects. Oh, I love a good maker project. So welcome to the show, Josh and Mark.
Mark Lion:
Thanks for having me.
Josh Seidenfeld:
Thank you.
Cyndi Burnett:
So can you tell us a little bit about your experience in building this platform of creative practice?
Josh Seidenfeld:
Sure, I can start, and then I’d love to hand it over to mark because he’s really the main builder. The idea for me kind of came from as life got more complicated. As I got older, jobs got busier, kids, it just got harder and harder to be creative. And I just, I know that for me, that creative moment is really the most special moment of my day, most days, and I just wasn’t allowing myself to have it. And meanwhile, I started using, like, habit forming apps, like calm and headspace and sort of have this insight, like, you know, for me, my meditation, my mindfulness, is creativity. So, you know, let’s create a platform sort of based on that idea that allows people to have a creative moment. However, I’m not a software designer or really a designer at all. And so I was lucky enough to meet Mark, who really helped fuel the.
Josh Seidenfeld:
Who really has led the design process.
Mark Lion:
Yeah. And for me, you know, I was really excited at the very beginning here, starting to dive into creating something that was so focused on creativity. I grew up in a creative household, and, you know, from my very earliest years, you know, I had the opportunity to learn to draw and paint and get involved in Woodshop and other things. And my whole life has been spent around creativity and benefiting from that, my digital agency. But, you know, so much of that time that I spent working for other people, you know, I really wish it had been applied to me, to my family, to experiences that really help grow more and more perspectives. And as we started talking about building an application and really building a system to support people’s creative development, we started realizing that so many of the things that we heuristically believed really are backed up by science. And as we started talking more and more with our science advisory board, we started keying into these, like, values. Like, the act of creativity doesn’t have to be perfect.
Mark Lion:
You know, we live in this world of Instagram and these pretty pictures that everybody curates so nicely. But ultimately, the act of being creative doesn’t have to be for anybody else, but for ourselves. And it can be so expansive, and it doesn’t take a lot of time, either. Just doing a five minute exercise can do so much for a person. And through this kind of modalities of life that we live in today and how to live that life work, life balance, and everything else, we started to realize that these five minute exercises could be applied in so many different ways. You know, for me, coming off of a work day and then, you know, picking up my 14 year old from school, like, how do I go through that context switching moment in a way that really benefits him, benefits me, and makes me present for that experience? And as I started experimenting with different exercises for myself as well as different exercises when the teenager jumps in the car, I was like, wow, this is, there’s real magic here. And, you know, not to sound too altruistic, but I started applying it other places. I was like, wow, I’m feeling a little bit down before I’ve got to go do this pitch.
Mark Lion:
How do I get my brain ready for it? And I experimented with a couple different exercises. I was like, this one works well for me. And I come back to Josh, and Josh and I are talking, he’s like, wow, that exercise worked for you? Well, this one worked for me. We started to realize kind of the personalization and the individual associations that we have towards different domains and modalities of creativity. And the mind keeps expanding as we go through this, and it’s like, wow, okay, gardening. Gardening is a form of creativity. I never would have thought of that. My dad, who was a management consultant for his entire life, he’s like, I’m not creative.
Mark Lion:
And start talking. It’s like, all you do is problem solving that’s created. This is amazing. How do we bring this to more people? Lower that bar so it’s accessible and help people get that kind of immediate benefit so that they start to realize and really dive into it. And we really hope that’s what we built. And we’re really excited to be here with you guys.
Matthew Worwood:
Just reflecting on the two stories that you shared. About two weeks ago, my wife, sister, and husband and their children came around the house, and my brother in law, like many of us, is totally immersed into his work, has very little opportunity to do anything. But everyone was downstairs, and he was upstairs with my youngest son, and they’d been up there for about 1015 minutes. And I suddenly saw him and my youngest son drawing a picture. My youngest son, actually, then left him and went downstairs to go and play, and he was left on his own. And I saw him continuing to kind of, like, draw this image. And I said to him, I said, are you going to come? He said, yeah, I want to finish this picture. And as we kind of had a bit of back and forth, because obviously I’m in creativity.
Matthew Worwood:
And I noted that he spoke about the fact that he doesn’t always get a chance just to kind of, like, go and draw and express his creativity in that way. And so for me, I think it’s really fascinating that you’ve identified, identified that as a problem, developed this solution, and am I right in thinking a lot of these kind of activities that you’re offering, they’re short?
Mark Lion:
That’s absolutely correct. Yeah. I mean, in our mind, five minutes. Like, just get five minutes, and then if you’re in flow, go to ten minutes, go further. And, I mean, we’ve done lots of user research here as well. You know, there’s certain people that are like, hey, I’d rather do it once a week on Thursday night, and, you know, the kids are asleep, and I can, like, really focus on it. So I think there’s a lot of different ways that people can adapt this to their lives and finding what works for them, that’s, like, the key. And to your question, yeah.
Mark Lion:
When we looked at the list that we collected of all the different types of creative domains that people can focus on, it’s like 20, 30, 40 different types. And some of them can get a little bit obscure, but so many of them, when you kind of remove the ego and remove the sense that somebody’s gonna be critiquing us, grading us, we’re doing it for work or for some sort of project at school, like, when you were all of those different pressures, the innate joy and kind of, you know, the return to, like, that childhood learning perspective all of a sudden just unlocks. And, you know, I think the society over time, like, you know, we’re asked to conform, conform, conform, and we don’t appreciate taking time for ourselves to do those moments. And that’s what we really want to bring to people. And as soon as you start to get that bug and you play a little bit inside of one domain, like, for me, I’m a lot more comfortable in, like, drawing and divergent thinking and painting. Josh is much more about writing and a variety of other domains. And as I’ve dabbled back and forth, it really challenges your brain to work in a slightly different way and helps unlock all of those neural pathways that are so important for us to be able to grow, to think differently and to be happy. Yeah.
Josh Seidenfeld:
And I would just add to that. I think one of the fundamental insights of messier is that some creativity is better than no creativity. Like, I think people have it in their minds that, like, if I really, truly want to be creative, I have to, like, sell all my belongings and, like, move to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and become a true artist. And, you know, I think one of James Kaufman’s great insights is that there are different levels of creativity. And, you know, many see creativity is in many ways just as valid as all the other types of creativity. And so we’re just trying to give people five minutes a day of mini see creativity. And just one more thought on this is we recently did a really fun activity in person at an art gallery in oakland. We had people do a prompt, which is like, make a representation of your inner critic.
Josh Seidenfeld:
And a lot of, I think, what we’re doing, if we find if people just can do five minutes a day, it’s just consistent sort of refutation of your inner critic and saying, settle down, inner critic. And I just want to say for this audience of teachers, I hate to say it, but there were at least two fourth grade teachers that were the people’s inner critic. So unfortunately, people are learning early on, and I’m sure the teachers listen to this, are not, don’t want to be that person, but just, just to say how important it is to foster lifelong creativity from early age. Cindy, it looks like you had a thought.
Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah. So it’s really interesting. I’ve been playing with the app for about a month, and one of the things I loved about it is right up front, it said, would you like to make creativity a daily habit and setting a time that it would send me a notification every day. So my time, interestingly enough, based on our previous conversation, was 330, which is the transition time of right before my kids get home, because I feel like I’m overwhelmed. And then they walk in the door and I’m half talking to them, half trying to finish up all the emails. I’m like, no. What if I took that time to really do something creative? So every day I get that notification at 330, and even if I don’t open up the app, I do stop to take a moment and think, have I been creative today? Because if I haven’t, I need to make some time in the evening to do that. And so I love just that simple thing that’s just a quick reminder every day that says, don’t forget to be creative.
Matthew Worwood:
And to build on that. And going back to my example with my brother in law, the reason why I brought that story up is that without my youngest son saying, hey, do you want to draw with me? Which is ultimately what triggered his decision to draw in that moment. Otherwise, he probably would have just sat there and watched. And so I think you can go and download this app, and it can facilitate and encourage you to go and take those moments out the day. Like you were saying, cindy, there’s probably times during the school day, whether it’s just before you go and transition from a classroom or maybe is a case of you’re just having lunch and you want to kind of, like, just give yourself an opportunity to think about mini C creativity before you take on the class again. There are probably moments during the day where you can fit these in. And of course, we spend so much time, Cindy, on the podcast, lots of episodes. Episodes has said about the need for teachers to go and find moments and opportunities to go and express their creativity.
Matthew Worwood:
And five minutes focus on mini C seems like a great way to do that.
Mark Lion:
You know, we’ve seen that both in, in the classroom as well as the workplace. This opportunity, like, hey, I’m about to do a two hour meeting with. With other people, right? And one of the beauties of creativity and creative moments together is it lowers that bar. It brings people together. There’s no judgment. So, yeah, going into a new class and, you know, you’re about to do an hour and a half block on a project with some other people, spending five minutes together doing an icebreaker, getting warmed up, doing something that’s not associated with it, has these brilliant rewards all throughout it. I’ve done it inside. In my workplace, we’re bringing together the engineering team and the project management team, and, you know, sometimes there can be a little bit of contention, and we do a little 15 minutes exercise together.
Mark Lion:
And some people are like, I’m a little bit nervous about. And once they get over it and they, like, actually dump it out, there’s this relief, and everybody is feeling good and kind of synergizing together. So the capability of creating connection through creative acts, this kind of third space of creativity together, I can’t speak enough about it.
Cyndi Burnett:
So why do you think it’s so hard for people to stick to a creative habit?
Mark Lion:
Society has programmed us all to follow what we’re told to do. And, you know, creativity is for these, you know, the special elite class. And I know my son felt that way. You know, having creative parents, it’s like, hey, man, you want to come paint with us? No, no, no. That seems. That seems scary. And it’s like, here, take the paintbrush. We’re going to walk away, and, you know, you come back 15 minutes later, and he’s, you know, still messing around with it.
Mark Lion:
You’re like, all right, see, that wasn’t that hard. So, yeah, I think that there’s a lot of kind of pre judgment that we have as humans in the culture that we live in right now that tells us that, you know, it’s either meant for some people or not. And, you know, back to the fourth grade teacher, I’ve heard this from so many people myself as well. So, you know, I think creativity is there in all of us. You know, if you look at the world of different species on this planet, we are the ones that are innately creative. And I think it really should be fostered lifelong, whether you’re a very young child that’s just growing up or you’re getting on in your years and you’re trying to keep those neural pathways really in sound shape to enjoy the rest of your life.
Josh Seidenfeld:
Yeah, I would totally agree that. I think a big part of why people have a block in creativity is, I think it’s just the professionalization of creative acts. And I talked to the friend who happens to be professional creative person, but he was sort of saying, it’s really sad that people just sort of the death of folk art, basically, that people don’t just pass around a guitar at a party as much as they might have 50 years ago. And there’s this sort of, like, stage on a stage view of artists, too, which I think is a shame. I think the other piece is that it can feel like work. Maybe that’s related to the other one, but people feel like, oh, if I’m doing something creative, I’m doing my work. One of the taglines messier is thrown around is like, give yourself a creative recession. Like it should be play.
Josh Seidenfeld:
We’re trying to help people reconnect with the idea of creativity as play. It’s okay to be messy. It’s okay to color outside the lines. It’s low stakes. Just enjoy yourself.
Cyndi Burnett:
Well, and I think the important thing to also note, and this is something we’ve talked a lot about on the podcast, is the art bias, that it’s not. Creativity isn’t just about the arts. It is about the arts and a lot of other things. And it’s really about the way we look at the world. It’s about being authentic and open and curious and seeing things from different perspectives. And I think there’s lots of activities on there that go beyond the arts. So do you have any activities that you might want to try out with Matt and I right now so they can. Our listeners can hear one of the activities 100%.
Josh Seidenfeld:
One of our favorites is actually from James Kaufman. It’s actually sourced by a colleague of his. I can get you the name later, but fundamentally, it’s a. It’s just a divergent thinking exercise. And the prompt is, a friend of yours is getting married in your town today, but you don’t want to go. So think of as many excuses as you can in two minutes.
Cyndi Burnett:
All right, Matt, challenge accepted.
Mark Lion:
I’m starting the club.
Cyndi Burnett:
Why can’t you go to the wedding?
Matthew Worwood:
I got contagious skin condition right now. I want to go. I want to go. I just can’t.
Cyndi Burnett:
I really want to go, but I have something going on with my foot and I’m not able to stand on it.
Matthew Worwood:
My kid is going to the soccer championships next week, and right now he’s outside, and I need to monitor him because I’m scared he’s going to injure himself.
Cyndi Burnett:
We have a bees nest, and it’s taking over our house, and if I don’t take care of it, then we’re going to have a major infestation issue.
Matthew Worwood:
Are you serious? My whole ceiling just fell down. Like, I’m going to have to go. I’ve got water pouring everywhere. I can’t make the wedding today.
Cyndi Burnett:
I’m really sorry. I just have nothing to wear. All of my clothes have turned into pandemic clothes. I got rid of all my nice clothes, so unless you want me showing up in my pajamas, it’s just not going to happen.
Matthew Worwood:
Well, actually, I was planning on getting a lift in because I don’t have my car right now. It’s in the shop. And my brother, who was going to give me a lift, his car just broke down. He’s not available to take me.
Cyndi Burnett:
I’ve got pink eye, and I don’t want to give it to other members of the party, and I’m a big hugger, so, you know, it would be hard for me to stay away.
Matthew Worwood:
I’ve just signed an NDA, and I’m not allowed to have any photographs taken of me. And they’ve actually instructed me not to go because of my current appearance at this moment, I can’t talk anymore about it, unfortunately, because of the NDA.
Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I’ve just been invited to travel across the world for secret reasons, and those reasons are to share my creativity with a secret group of people who I can’t talk about either.
Matthew Worwood:
I just found out my ex girlfriend’s gonna be at the party, and my wife said that if I’m ever in the same room with her again, she’s gonna divorce me. I’m sorry. I wanna go, but my wife’s made it really clear. And my relationship matters.
Cyndi Burnett:
I mean, that’s a good way to end it.
Matthew Worwood:
That’s not true, by the way.
Josh Seidenfeld:
Y’all good at that.
Matthew Worwood:
That was fun. That was fun.
Mark Lion:
So how did it feel?
Cyndi Burnett:
I love coming up with ideas, so I could do that all day long if you had asked us to do that for like the next 6 hours. But honestly, one of the responses I give when I don’t want to do something is blah, blah, blah. I’m sorry, I blah, blah blahed it. So I just can’t today. But it was great fun.
Matthew Worwood:
It was. I think that was the key because we just, we released an episode, a higher education episode, and I can’t remember if we spoke about this on the show itself, but it was with Cindy’s colleague John Canberra. They’ve just released a new book around releasing creative thinking into the higher education classroom. And as part of the conversation, one of the examples that was shared was infusing fun into the curriculum and play into the curriculum. And sometimes, you know, Cindy quite rightly says that I don’t like having fun. I like to play, but I don’t like having fun. But, but I will say what, what I’ve said that I’ve said it. I’ve said it in that I don’t.
Cyndi Burnett:
Playful, don’t play football.
Matthew Worwood:
I don’t think I’m fine. Yeah, sometimes. But the key point is when I do have fun, I think I do enjoy it. What’s interesting, I think I enjoy it when it’s facilitated. And so that was a facilitated experience that allowed me to have fun. There was obviously fun within boundaries. I knew I didn’t have to have fun more than two minutes. So I think that was helpful.
Matthew Worwood:
But it was fun. I really enjoyed it. I’m being sarcastic. See, this is what I’m saying. I can’t have fun because it’s dry sense of humor. No one gets it. That’s why I don’t have fun. Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, curiosity to create.
Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.
Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.
Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org comma. Or check out the links in the show notes for this episode.
Matthew Worwood:
So obviously, that was a great activity. We really enjoyed it, but that activity didn’t just come from anywhere. You’ve mentioned James Kaufman, who’s been a guest on our show twice now and will actually be a guest in an upcoming episode in the near future. You’ve been working with James and other creativity scholars. Can you talk a little bit about that relationship with creativity research and how it’s been informing the activities that are available on the app?
Josh Seidenfeld:
Well, so I’ll say that working with this creativity scholars has been just an absolute pleasure. And also, I think for the educators out here, just a lesson in, like, if you’re interested in somebody’s work, you know, academics want to hear from you. So it started with, I got really obsessed with this idea of helping people promote creativity and sort of what are the benefits of creativity? And I was trying to, on my own, through my own reading, make a connection between creativity and happiness, which is, as I think y’all know, is not such an easy connection to draw from a psych research perspective. So I was reading, I got myself a copy of the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Research, which I recommend to anybody who’s listening to this. And as you all know, James Kaufman edits it. And I just saw his name all over it. And I was like, who is this guy? So I googled him, and he has his email address on his web page because he wants people to reach out to him, because he wants to connect with people doing stuff in the real world. And he was just a lovely person to talk to.
Josh Seidenfeld:
We scheduled a call. We had an intro, and we just started talking routinely. And he was super encouraging and just had a ton of resources for us. And he said, josh, if you want to build this from a scientific perspective, it would be important for you to have people with different areas of expertise and focuses, because he’s like, I do a couple of things well, but I don’t do everything well. And so he brought in this just amazing team of people you mentioned Zorana Ichevic Pringle at Yale, who’s been affiliated with the Happiness lab. Adam Green, who’s a neuroscientist at Georgetown, is just incredible. Sierra Mahad Rahimi, who’s an expert in gaming, and I think they call it covert observation. So learning from sort of how people play games, Ronnie Reitner Palman, who’s an expert in organizational psych and sort of like creativity at work.
Josh Seidenfeld:
So James put together this just dream team of advisors. And as we made the app, we showed them versions of the app and consistently gotten their feedback. An early version of the app, we actually had scientific citations in the app for exercises. We backed off with that because we felt like it was a little much, but it’s just been a real privilege and a pleasure to work with this group.
Mark Lion:
Many of the things that we were able to tap into with that team helped us really understand how to support people best in learning creativity and building that habit, how different domains could be applied for different benefits. And to Josh’s prior notion about happiness coming out of creativity and or fun, there is some definite research that backs that up fully. We took a little bit of a leap of faith going forward, though, in terms of how can we apply creativity in day to day life? So both Cindy and I have just talked about our transition from workday to home life and how we utilize it there, starting with just our own heuristic experimentation. It seemed like it worked wonders. As we went back to our creativity advisors, they’re like, yeah, we don’t have firm data that backs up that particular situation. And I twice out five more. And like, yeah, kind of. And so this is why, in part, what we built the app to do was to help people explore how to apply creativity into both kind of daily needs as well as different contexts of their life, and through the process of using the app.
Mark Lion:
One of the things that we really love is this reflection screen. After you do it, we want to know, we want you to help document and journal how it made you feel. And by doing this, we’re able to understand kind of the areas of benefit an exercise has for both individual people as well as whole communities. And through that process of personalization and learning, we’re able to continue to modify that so that we can present more and more good exercises for people based on different situations. And, you know, as we started to build this, the advisors are like, wow, I’d really. That data sounds amazing. This would be so impactful. We could use this in so many different ways.
Mark Lion:
Now, of course, we don’t want to give away people’s personal information. Everything is anonymized and so forth. So we’re really excited about kind of this next frontier in terms of how we can understand creativity, how it can be, you know, used for individuals, as well as be able to be distributed in lots of different.
Cyndi Burnett:
Wonderful. Well, we are running out of time. Now, before we go into your three tips, which were actually, we’ve asked you to come up with three exercises you have that teachers might be able to use in the classroom. But before we do that, we will make sure we link the app and the page on our show notes. How much does it cost? What does it take to sign up? Can you just let our listeners know?
Josh Seidenfeld:
Well, for now, it’s totally free. So all of you teachers out there, I know you’ll appreciate that at some point we’re going to need to charge to be able to fund the growth of the app. But for at least the next six months. So that includes this summer, the app will be totally free. It’s downloadable on Apple and Android and very easy to sign up with your email address.
Cyndi Burnett:
Excellent. So could you share three exercises that teachers could use inside their classroom?
Mark Lion:
Okay, I’ve got number one. I really love this one. It’s really easy, too. When we looked at the tools that people had available, many, many of us are all walking around with our phones and they have cameras in them. And it’s a great tool to be able to learn different perspectives. So it’s simply put, take three pictures of something that you see every day. Different angles is the key to this particular exercise. It really helps unlock new understandings, different perspectives.
Mark Lion:
And sometimes you realize something that’s mundane, that’s sitting there in front of you every single, single day. Wow. It’s a thing of beauty. It’s a thing of mystery. It’s a thing of wonder.
Josh Seidenfeld:
Another one would. And this seemed like this resonated with y’all. Cindy and Matt is to make a playlist. So one of the things we realized is like making a playlist, 1020 songs on your favorite music app is a totally creative, generative activity. People don’t think of it as necessarily creative, or wouldn’t it be a go to for a lot of people, but it’s just a really accessible, creative thing to do. And so for those of y’all who are thinking about the fall, this could be fun for the teacher to do over the summer or for you to do with your students. Make a playlist related to fall and or fall colors. Put together a list of ten to 20 songs that speaks to you of fall.
Josh Seidenfeld:
Mark, you got a third for us?
Mark Lion:
Yeah. Well, I was just going to add to yours. It doesn’t have to be fall. Feel free to be creative. Part of creative fun is being able to modify things and turn them into whatever you want them to be. Yeah. One more here is create a poem from the perspective of a different species. This is great in terms of sitting outside of the normal perspective that each of us have in a day to day world.
Mark Lion:
It helps with empathy, it helps with understanding and connection to the rest of the natural world around us. We all really love that one as well.
Matthew Worwood:
Well, this has been a great episode, and I know Cindy and I, we’ve had an opportunity to play around with the app, and I think there are lots of connections teachers can make in terms of kind of icebreakers and different ways that they might infuse some of this into the classroom. And then also, we’ve been talking a lot about creative thinking, but as you had referenced, Mark, there’s also things like shifting perspectives as well. So there’s a lot of other kind of soft skills related to creativity that exist within these activities. So, as we said, we know that you’re getting close to the summer, so we hope that you can utilize this as a resource over the summer. And, of course, if you feel like there’s some colleagues who might also enjoy using the app, why don’t you send them this episode? This is an opportunity to learn a little bit about the app and obviously, all of the amazing thinking that went into it. So that’s us signing off, I think, for the summer before we move into our listen and learn series. I think we’ve got one more special after this. My name is Doctor Matthew Worwood, and.
Cyndi Burnett:
My name is Doctor Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is curiosity to create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.
What are some quick and easy activities that could help you bring creativity into your life?
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast, co-hosts Dr. Matthew Worwood and Dr. Cyndi Burnett are joined by guests Josh Seidenfeld and Mark Lion in a special discussion centered on overcoming creative blocks and integrating playful, creative practices into education. Josh and Mark, founders of the Messier platform, share their journey of creating a space for consistent creative practice and how they collaborated with creativity scholars like Dr. James Kaufman to develop their innovative app. The conversation delves into the significance of retaining a sense of play and the necessity of looking at creativity beyond traditional arts. A unique exercise, coming up with excuses for not attending a friend’s wedding, serves as a practical and amusing demonstration of divergent thinking. The episode also highlights the importance of facilitating fun experiences in educational settings and the role of skills such as shifting perspectives and staying curious.
Listeners are introduced to various creative exercises, including taking pictures from different perspectives, creating thematic playlists, and writing poems from unique viewpoints, illustrating practical ways to foster creativity in classrooms. Mark emphasizes that even five-minute creative activities can prompt deeper creative exploration, and Josh underscores the value of incremental creativity in our daily lives and the app’s role in encouraging these moments. This final pre-summer episode encourages educators to use the discussed exercises and resources over the break to cultivate a lifelong commitment to creativity.
Guests Bio
Josh Seidenfeld and Mark Lion are founders of Messier, a platform to help people enjoy the benefits of a consistent creative practice. Messier advisors include some of the leaders in creativity psychology research, including James C. Kaufman, Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, and Roni Reiter-Palmon.
Josh is a longtime creative person, having produced two albums with his band, Boy in the Bubble. Day jobs most recently included climate projects at Apple and Meta. He lives in Oakland with his wife and two daughters, whose creativity constantly inspires him.
Mark founded and led Lion Interactive, a digital design agency in the San Francisco area, for 25 years. Clients have included McKinsey and the Asian Art Museum. Notable projects include design leadership in Texture, which was acquired by Apple and incorporated into Apple News. Mark (also) lives in Oakland with his wife and son, where their weekends are usually filled with maker projects.
Debrief Episode
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Podcast Sponsor

We are thrilled to partner with Curiosity 2 Create as our sponsor, a company that shares our commitment to fostering creativity in education. Curiosity 2 Create empowers educators through professional development and community support, helping them integrate interactive, creative thinking approaches into their classrooms. By moving beyond traditional lecture-based methods, they help teachers create dynamic learning environments that enhance student engagement, improve academic performance, and support teacher retention. With a focus on collaborative learning and exploration, Curiosity 2 Create is transforming classrooms into spaces where students thrive through continuous engagement and growth.