City researchers drawing on the creativity of the famous

The new Bright Sparks website produced by City researchers searches the World Wide Web for information about people who have achieved fame and provides users with clues to support creative thinking.

Through their Bright Sparks website, researchers at City University London’s Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice have produced a tool for anyone to utilise the creativity of famous persons in their creative work. The website enables users to search the World Wide Web for information about famous people and then provides them with clues to support creative thinking.

The website has been developed as part of the EU-funded Collage Project, whose goal is to design, implement and evaluate new forms of computerised support for individual and social creativity and learning, for leisure, work and education. The project is developing new forms of inspiration-based search of web sources, game mechanics and social affinity spaces to support creativity and learning.

Co-founder of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, Professor Neil Maiden, said:

“The suite of tools we have developed is a boom to human creative thinking. Bright Sparks can be used quickly and simply. In our educational setting here at City it will allow student and academic alike to be more creative and can provide us with penetrating insights into ways that we could further enhance our School.”