The 2022 Mentors have been playing a blinder over the last number of weeks meeting Kim on Instagram Live and passing on their Mentor marvels. As always, these Industry experts have lots to say and it can be a struggle keeping them to 15 seconds! But that’s all part of the fun and what makes Instagram Live so entertaining.

Over the past number of weeks we’ve met with Paul Lowry who is a Design Director with Tap Creative; Jessica Ibarra, a Learning Design Lead for Big Motive in Belfast; Ian Burtenshaw, the Global Head of Marketing at the Galway company, Aerogen; Aoife Condon, a Talent Partner or some people might say Recruiter for Logitech in Ireland and Ken O’Brien who is a UX manager in Unum Ireland in Carlow.

The format each week remains the same with Kim asking 5 questions to which the Mentor has 15 seconds to respond to. Fifteen seconds is not a long time and some of the answers can be quite interesting with the Mentor feeling the pressure!
The first question of who are you and what do you do generally leaves everyone feeling comfortable and relaxed. But it gets a bit trickier with ‘What does creativity mean to you’. Paul, Jessica and Ken were all in agreement that creativity is a form of problem solving. It’s finding a way to understand the problem and then coming up with ways to solve it. “For me it’s problem solving so it’s finding the right solution for the problem at hand so that means understanding the user or customer and understanding the problem itself and finding something that works for it”, Paul Lowry.

It’s always interesting to find out when people work the best and when they are the most creative. The answers to when people are the most creative are always quite disperse and this time was no different. Paul and Ken are night owls who work best late at night when the rest of the household is asleep. Ian is more of a morning person who tackles his creativity before anyone has woken up and Jessica and Aoife prefer to lose themselves into their own worlds or to get down and dirty with the kids to bring out their creativity.

There will always be creative fails and creative achievements, it’s part and parcel of the process. However, as Paul indicates there is no failure in creativity. One of The B!G Idea’s principles is fLearning (Failure + learning = Flearning). There is no such thing as failing in creativity, everything we do teaches us something. Fail your way to success. It is probably helpful to fail early in the process and to move on but no matter what way it ends up, you will have learnt something from it.

The Mentors were all very forthcoming with some advice for our students. This question isn’t timed, which is a strategic move on our part as we don’t want to miss any of these nuggets of pure inspiration. Jessica used the word ‘reflection’; she suggested that students reflect back over their work and appreciate what they have done. Ian believes the students should always keep an open mind and have fun throughout the process. If you are having fun it will pay off with great, innovative results. Aoife acknowledged all the hard work that students put into, not just this programme but school in general and to take this learning, energy and positivity and to use it confidently in all situations. Paul wanted students to develop their own path, don’t be turned off by not having the same answer as someone else. The power of creativity is in its uniqueness and in having perspective. And finally, Ken suggested to the students that they should spend at least half as much time understanding the problem as working out the solution. Also it’s important to work together as a team, don’t try to go it alone, other people’s opinions and inputs make such a difference to a creative outcome.

Don’t miss Instagram 5 Live at 11am on Wednesdays.

• Become A Mentor!