While all this fascinating correspondence about the challenges facing our world goes on, I want to introduce a new member whom I met recently and who I’m sure will be an excellent addition to our number (and some of you will know as she was in Banff for the Art of Management conference in September).

Maria Daskalaki is a Principal Lecturer at Kingston Business School, Kingston University. She is also the Liaison Director for Kingston Business School, Overseas Collaborations (Greece) for the last 6 years. She graduated with a BA in Psychology and an MA from Lancaster University in Organisational Analysis and Behaviour. She then completed her PhD in Organisation Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has been previously involved in interdisciplinary research on a wide range of themes and subject areas including labour markets (Reed-funded project), architecture, cityscapes and embodied creativity, practice-based organisation studies as well as knowledge management and interpersonal networks and identity (ESRC project). Maria’s work is predominantly based on observational studies and autobiographical methods. She has published in Business and Professional Ethics Journal, International Journal of HRM, Culture and Organisations, and a contribution to an edited book entitled Organizations as Knowledge Systems (Palgrave). Currently, Maria is involved in three projects that explore creativity as an embedded and embodied expression of human life: a) ‘Living Chuao’: An Organisational Boundary Crossing Experience through Art b) Parkour: The Embodiment of Creative Thought and c) Interpersonal Networks in the Creative Industries: The Film Industry in Greece.

She also has some interesting ideas about shaking up the less than creative side of Kingston University, which can only be a good thing.

I shall also, in due course, be recommending another lecturer I met recently, Dr Lieselotte Badenhorst, who works at Regent’s College in London and who has some interesting ideas about the sort of intelligence that people need these days.  I am just waiting for her to send me a brief biog.

A last note to say I am with Ralph in this debate.  With some of my clients, the problem is not persuading them that arts-based interventions will be helpful, it is persuading them that any development intervention will be useful.  One of my larger clients has cut their training budget by two-thirds this year (and they already cut it by half last year) – and they are still very profitable.  Another (less profitable!) has chopped their training budget entirely for the first half of this year.  Despite this, I am actually seeing an upturn at the moment with projects getting booked even into 2010, but for those of us in the UK who make our full-time living from delivering arts-based development in organisations, the last six months has been a bit of a roller-coaster time (and I don’t think I am alone in having experienced this – correct me if I am wrong, guys!).

Tim

Tim Stockil

Director

We are proud to have won two National Training Awards for a major Forum Theatre Project on values and behaviours which we delivered for ITV plc last year

Ci: Creative intelligence

+44 (0)7970 22 44 75

www.creativeintelligence.uk.com

Ci creates and delivers imaginative courses and workshops for organisations in Britain and abroad.

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