5 creativity-boosting stocking fillers
There’s no point trying to deny it. You can avert your gaze from the tinsel, swerve the seven foot pyramid of Celebration tins at the entrance to Tesco and refuse to admit you’ve already been Whamageddoned even though it technically hasn’t even started yet, but Christmas is coming. Just ask the geese, they are having a hell of a job squeezing into their summer jeans.
Thoughts start to turn to gifting, and the knotty problem of what to fill those stockings with.
Panic ye not, present purchasers, I have rounded up five brilliant stocking fillers to help with creative thinking. It’s an under-represented category of present lists, I feel, along with 5 Top vegetable presents you can put googly eyes on, and 5 Top Twig gifts for whittlers.
Rory’s Story Cubes
This is a stone cold classic when it comes to flexing those creative muscles, and there is a cornucopia of different themed packs you can buy. And it’s brilliant for every age, meaning your 6 year old, 46 year old and 76 year old can all get involved to combat the post-Christmas dinner turkey coma.
Roll the dice, ponder the nine images upon them and tell a story using these images. You can make it competitive (time it, penalise for pauses, bonus points for weaving in a celebrity or the word broccoli…) or just enjoy the ludicrous tales as they unfold. And it’s a great tool to pull out before you some solitary creative thinking, or to use before a team meeting, where everyone takes a die and you build a story one person and die at a time.
See the range and find out more, including games to play with them on the StoryCubes website. Buy them from toy retailers, starting from around £8+.
2. Lego bags
Sure, you can spend your whole piggy bank on the gorgeous Lego Architecture sets, or their Botanicals range (I would not say no to one of these turning up in my present sack on Christmas day, that’s for sure), but sometimes, just a bag of random Lego is just the ticket. And this is not just for the kids, buy a random job lot of pre-loved Lego, bag or box it up nicely and you have a creative warm up tool ready to go.
Give one to the whole family and race to create the best ‘thing’, or hand out at work and start every meeting with a Lego challenge. Thinking fast without rules, whilst using your hands to build, is a fantastic way to jump-start the creative part of your brain.
Browse eBay for ‘Lego pieces’ – you can buy it by the kilogram, pre-bagged or even, for the minimalists around you, sorted into single colours.
3. 642 things to draw
Before I start with this gift I want to put your mind at rest: you do not have to be good at drawing to use this book. All you need is a pencil or pen and a have-a-go attitude. The book is full of drawing prompts (I haven’t counted them, but my money is on the fact that there are 642 of them) to inspire you, get you drawing and ultimately, boosting your creative thinking. It’s a brilliant way to start your day, whilst you sip your coffee and ignore your to-do list.
Available from some good bookshops, probably some mediocre ones and definitely from the online one where you are helping to fund one man’s dream to visit Mars in a spaceship designed suspiciously like his private parts. Around £13.
4. Planetary Gyro Fidget
Not the name of Jamioquai’s most recent album, but a rather wonderful fidget toy from a small UK business called HD3D Prints UK.
Anything you can play with whilst thinking is a boon to creative thinking: it has been proven that stimulating your fingertips helps you come up with ideas.
This gyro fidget comes in a range of amazing colours and three sizes, with the inner rings spinning as you flick them. This is one stocking filler you might treat yourself to as well - have it on your desk so it’s at hand whenever you need to spin your thinking into more creative territory.
There is a wide range of fidget toys and 3D printed wonders by this business, so it’s well worth a browse. I am currently trying desperately to think of a justification for having a line of their Friendly Ghosts on my desk.
Prices start from £5 for the Gyro spinner and you can buy from their Etsy shop here: I’ll take one of every colour, please.
5. Art on a Postcard
I stumbled across these boxsets whilst doing a spot of Christmas shopping and promptly bought a set for myself. Art on a Postcard was set up in 2014 as a one-off secret postcard auction to raise money for the Hepatitis C trust, but its success led to a whole host of auctions and fundraising activities since. Artists involved in creating some of the postcard include Damien Hurst, Grayson Perry and Peter Blake.
The auctioned postcards are then reproduced and turned into these beautiful boxsets which you can buy direct from the website. A boxset if a great way to be introduced to artists and photographers you might not have come across yet, but from a creative thinking point of view, they are brilliant. Pull a random card and use it as inspiration for a business challenge or use it as a creative warm up – look at the image and write a short story around it, using what you see as a jumping off point. Or pick a word that sums up that artwork and use this word to spark new ideas for your challenge. Or just pin a handful on your wall and let them be visual stimulus whilst you work.
You’d have to have a heart of reinforced concrete not to be delighted by one of the sets turning up in your Christmas stocking this year.
Check out Art on a Postcard’s site and have a browse in their shop, box sets start from around £10 and proceeds are donated to the Hepatitis C Trust.
WAIT! a BONUS GIFT IDEA…
6. Build your Business on ideas.
So this is a bonus recommendation, because it’s a shameless plug. Luckily, I am shameless, so I do this with no apology. You could treat someone to my book, which is a practical guide to creativity. Small in size yet big on practical ideas, it is a perfect fit for a Christmas stocking and takes you through the creative process, how to grow a culture of creativity in your business, and gives you a tool kit of idea generation tools that you can use on your own or with your team.
It is just the shortest of hops, skips and jumps to purchase, as you can buy it in the Allotment shop for 25% off RRP, but there is limited stock... and when I say limited, I do mean it – there are currently four left!
So, I hope that has given you some inspiration to ramp up the creative quota of your Christmas stocking purchases. Creativity is for life, not just for Christmas, but the Yuletide season is the perfect place to start.
And seeing as we’re talking about Christmas, and if you’re thinking that it’s all well and generous to be showering these wonderfu gifts on friends and family but where the hell are your presents, look no further. You ask, and the Allotment provides: the Allotment Advent.
Have you signed up yet? 24 windows of wonderment, with a window landing in your inbox every day in the run up to Christmas. Behind each window is a gift, resource or chance to win something wonderful from around 15 businesses who have all spent time in the Allotment this year. Plus a raft of Allotment resources and prizes. You can sign up any time, even half way through Deember.
So before you start your Christmas shopping, sign up for the Allotment Advent. it’s THE advent for discerning business owners.