This activity encourages students to embrace ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’, silence their inner critics and remove the need for perfectionism in creative work, help students think visually (even in non-visual subjects) and showcase the concept that ‘constraint breeds creativity’.

This activity can be used to help any students who are trying to solve a problem. This might be a problem more traditionally solved through visual means (art or design), or a problem that would benefit from sketching ideas down on paper, however abstract this may be. This activity is like a workout for students’ creative brains; actively pushing students to come up with lots of new ideas in rapid succession. This activity might not be easy, but ‘running out of ideas’ is usually an illusion.

First ask students to take a letter-sized / A4 piece of paper and fold it twice one way and twice the other way (to end up with 16 squares). The goal is to generate 16 new ideas/drawings in 8 minutes (30 seconds x 16 squares).

Instruct students to begin in the first square in the top left hand corner of the paper. On your signal students may begin sketching to help visually solve their problem. After 30 seconds are up, notify students and ask them to move onto the next square. Their first sketch will be incomplete (this is expected). Instruct those students hesitant to leave their first sketch incomplete to move on. In the next square, students may sketch something similar to the first, modifying it and building on it, or sketch something completely different to help them solve their problem.

Continue this process until all 16 squares are filled.

By the end of the 8 minutes, students may or may not have a workable solution to their problem, but more often than not this exercise sparks creative insights that weren’t there before the 16 squares. End by reinforcing that sometimes prioritising ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’ is a strategic decision that can help overcome the equivalent to writers’ block.