Who we are... and what we love!

Who we are.. and what we love!

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CONTENTS ˜ CreativeConnection Philosophy ˜ Who We Are... and What We Love ˜ What We Do ˜ Meet the Team ˜ How to Contact Us

CreativeConnection P hilosophy We believe story is the sole source of creativity, conflict, imagination, change and engagement. Since 1984 CreativeConnection has worked to close the gap between the story (narrative) you tell about what you are doing, with the story you aspire to achieve.

We reveal how you can close the gap between your current reality and your future desires. As part of this process: • W e love to listen. Listen for your unease - for your yearning - for how it is for you - for your story.

• W e love to explore the story. By ‘Story’ we mean the fundamental understanding of reality the invisible set of assumptions, images and beliefs that create the core of your organisation, teams and ourselves. That informs everything we feel, think and do. As humans we are usually unaware of this. It is simply our reality.

But learning to understand and work with this concept is a way towards finding essence or coherence in complex systems.

• W e love effortlessness. The most revealing clue to authentic change is that it is essentially effortless. Effort tends to create effects contrary to your aims. If it’s hard work it’s just not designed right… effortlessness is not easy… it takes concentration and deliberate perception… it tends to change you even more than what you are trying to change • W e to love to be curious. Curiosity kills the CAT [Corporate Apathetic Tendency]. We love curiosity and curious people who encourage questions rather than provide answers, stimulate confusion rather than certainty, challenge the validity of dearly held beliefs.

This is uncomfortable and refreshing, like a cold shower, and it can flush out some cobwebs and elephants in the room. Curiosity is the most powerful way for people to develop new skills, new knowledge and new attitudes.

• W e love complexity. We are fascinated by the way humans make sense out of complexity. The way we relate to the infinite immensity we live in. Even the smallest situations have unchartable complex systems operating in them colliding, coinciding and challenging us to make sense out of them. The way we make mountains out of molehills, how one idea leads to another like a fractal, how our interpretation depends on the context, the language we are thinking in. There are so many dots to join and so many ways to join them.

• W e love to dream... We have a dream of the dawning of the age of Trust, Integrity, Courage, and Collaborative Creativity. Interestingly this is not in conflict with commercial values because in a jaded world people are flocking to organisations they can trust and believe in.

Commercial success will correlate with a new narrative of integrity. We are dreamers but we are definitely not the only ones… we are finding more and more people who are already proving this dream.

We hope some day you’ll join us…

Who we are.. and what we love CreativeConnection are a group of Artists, Animators, Illustrators, Facilitators, Consultants, Project Managers and a brilliant administration support team working towards the core goal of visualising the communication process.

What makes us unique and a first choice for many organisations is:

We love...

• A ll our artists are bilingual and we have teams in the UK, Europe, Canada, Dubai, Australia, Brazil, Singapore and India.

• W e love ideas in any size and shape and welcome all projects which come our way.

• W e can work in any language, in any location and as we have such a large team of artist, animators and facilitators we can deliver a team with 1 days notice if needed as well as easily cover multiple event venues on the same day.

• D ue to the large number of people working with CC we can also deliver projects much quicker and still maintain the high quality standards we set for our services.

• W e work with people and companies from many different backgrounds and sectors and with over 20 years experience our teams have a strong understanding of various sector concepts and disciplines.

• W e love to support local communities / charities and children’s foundations and organisations working specifically to improve lives of children and to infuse creativity into children’s lives.

• W e love to have fun, we believe in honest open working relationships with all our clients, flexibility in our offering to clients in both delivery and budget and we aim to get our clients involved in as much of the creative process as they will allow!

In short – we laugh, live, draw, paint, dance, sing and love what we do!

What we do

We offer a range of visualisation and communication and creative services.

Click on any of the boxes below to find out more about our services!

Visual Minutes

Facilitation

Animation

Consultancy

Away Days

Events

Training

Meet the Team ~ The Founders ~ Tim Casswell CC Co-Founder & Director of CreativeConnection Tim found his passion for Facilitating, Coaching and Consultancy in 1974 while working to develop villages in India and enhance skills of those living within the villages to work together to become self sufficient and survive. He learned the hard way about the wisdom of ignorance, the power of incompetence and value of insignificance. This sparked a lifelong exploration of factors that correlate around Authenticity, Courage, Motivation and Engagement.

He specialises in enabling leaders to enhance the quality, creativity, and vitality of working relationships and navigate the intricacy, and complexity of organisational structures.

Jennifer La Trobe CC Co-Founder & Director of CreativeConnection Canada For nearly four decades, Jennifer La Trobe has been asking questions from unusual angles. She has acted as a consultant, a facilitator, an educator and a trainer for private, nonprofit and public sector organisations in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. Jennifer has a benevolent skepticism about the alignment between script and performance. She is called upon to help groups and leaders achieve organisational objectives with insightful coaching, thoughtful strategies, structures and stories.

Her early training as a choreologist gave her a keen eye for noticing patterns in human expression, nonverbal communication, context and relationship. Following an early passion for how people can work together more effectively, she undertook intensive training in learning, group dynamics and discussion methods, and spent the first 12 years of her career enabling communities to improve their economies and implement public health projects in Scotland, India, Korea, the United States and the Philippines. Following that time, curiosity for technology led her to join Technology Transfer, enabling companies to successfully integrate new technology with minimal disruption to performance.

~ Some of our Project Managers, Directors, Managers & Support Team ~ Arianna Corradi Ari is a photographer, collage and video maker, with an eye for layouts and a taste for collectible items, mainly coffee spoons. She is the backbone of the CC admin and booking team in essence she keeps us all organised!

Isolde Godfrey Is our resident star artist as by day she is a CC Visual Minute Artist and by night is an award winning performance artist working under the name Foxy and Husk (www.foxyandhusk.com).

While working for CC Isolde covers various roles from Animation Editor, Artists, Facilitator and general social media nut for CreativeConnection. Isolde loves her work with CC and believes that everyone has a story to tell (she just hopes she is there with her crayons to capture it all).

Vicky Long Vicky has worked in the Creative Sector as a Producer and Artist for 16 years. She has worked with: Southbank Centre; Eden Project; Cape Farewell; British Council; BBC; Sadler's Wells; and through these and other organisations has engaged with a wide range of clients including museums, arts centres, universities, publishers and banks. As well as being one of our Lead artists Vicky is also one of our Client Managers. She is a great asset to our team.

Jessica Harvey Jess (or Harvey as we like to call her) has been part of the CC team since 2011, moving around in her roles with the team, from Visual Minutes, to Facilitation, Project Management, and Managing the CC Animation Channel. In her other life, Jess collects and takes photos of beautiful and peculiar things that catch her eye, much like a magpie (with a camera).

Vanessa Jane Smith Vanessa is a great facilitator and also one of the Managers of CC Europe. Vanessa is fascinated in discovering how what I thought was separate and different, is neither – like what we do and who we think we are; it’s an on-going ArtWork. Our work in the world connects us and others to what is so often missing – engagement, soul, healing, potential, transformation.

Dann Casswell is one of the Directors of CC. Prior to working for CC, he worked for the BBC, writing and producing content and managing key projects for BBC Outreach as well as supporting the Southwest’s BBC Children in Need team.

~ Some of our Project Managers, Directors, Managers & Support Team ~ Alan Englestad Alan is an adjunct professor at McGill University in Montreal working with Henry Mintzberg, He is a specialist in Change.

Clare Cheeswright Clare has successfully coached hundreds of executives in the world of banking and mental health. Clare inspires her clients to lean in and create the conditions for courage and success.

Ruby Gill: Ruby started off her facilitation career as a registered nurse working in various clinical settings around the world.

Ruby identified areas of process which were in urgent need of refinement which started the next stage in her career of becoming an expert in Lean Facilitation.

Paul Simpson Paul is the Financial Director of CC and has the most important job of all – making sure we all get paid!

Ageeth van der Veen Ageeth worked as an oral historian and editor in the Netherlands.

When she was looking for new ways of recording life and corporate stories, she came across a trailer on Twitter of the CC-team.

Ageeth decided to get trained by CC in London and see how the Visual Minutes approach could be integrated in her work. She now manages the CC office in Holland and co manages the CC Europe office with Vanessa.

~ Some of our Designers & P hotographers ~ Kylie Taylor: Kylie is an amazing graphic designer based in Melbourne, Australia – Kylie works very hard designing our collateral and websites.

Federica Ciotti: Federica is one of our key photographers based in London as well as a very good designer and graphic artists.

~ Some of our Artists / Facilitators ~ Ada Jusic: Born Sarajevo 1987, Ada ruined her parents hopes that she'd become a doctor by studying illustration at Westminster University, and then did a masters at Kingston to rub it in. As a punishment she lives a simple life on the top floor of a tower block in the east end.

Ada is interested in illustration that has a social or political relevance and uses a variety of stylistic approaches, from editorial illustration to graphic novels.

Alexandra Becker: Ali was born in West Wales to an English painter and an American ceramicist so clearly there was never any hope for Ali. A BA.hons in Fine Art; Painting from Bath Spa University ensued. Ali now spends her day's in Bristol, painting portraits in ridiculously thin oil paint and roaming the country on behalf of CC.

Sine Skovsen: Sine likes to create worlds with paint. To weave facts, views and dreams from people's lives into painted landscapes.

Sine is inspired by our relationship and disconnection to nature; and how to tell dark stories in a childlike and humorous style. Sine also paints on porter cabins and people's faces and have facilitated young people in design projects.

Beatrice Baumgartner-Cohen: Beatrice is an artist and illustrator based in London. Past clients include Oxford University Press, the Open University and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. As well as being part of the CC Team, Beatrice is part of a group of creative practitioners invited by the Oxford Praxis Forum to explore how the arts and creativity can be used as a starting place for approaches to managing uncertainty and complexity.

Claire Stringer: One of CC’s long standing artists or CC ‘old School’ as we like to call it Claire works in a variety of disciplines; Community Art, Carnival Structures and Giant Puppets, Illustration, Painting and Visual Minutes. She has been doing Visual Minutes since 2007, learning the art form from Tim. She was part of the team doing the Artist Residency at Southbank Centre, London, developing working techniques, new ideas and collaborative practice. Being one of our best Claire now teaches others the art of Visual Minutes working and training local artists both in India and Aruba in the Caribbean.

Sian McArthur: Sian simply loves to draw and create!

Sian has always relished the opportunity to write on walls and enjoyed constructing things whether on paper or in 3D. So helping people share ideas by bringing life to the walls, is a dream!

~ Some of our Artists / Facilitators ~ Caroline Rudge: Away from Creative Connection, Wiltshire based artist Caroline paints. Her subversive and humorous paintings combine timehonoured techniques with postmodern sensibilities. Playing with the notion of traditional portraiture, her striking paintings juxtapose the classic with the contemporary, while her delicate Still Lifes bring to mind exquisite icon paintings.

Rowan Watts: Rowan has worked as a visual minutes artist since 2011, across the UK as well as with CC Malaysia and CC India. In her spare time, Rowan also works as a puppet designer and mentor, a design and English teacher and a Community Arts facilitator.

Holly Langley: Holly is also one of CC’s ‘Old School’ Artists. Holly is a wonderfully colourful visual minuter who's background is in TV, theatre and community arts. She loves drawing people and has her own unique style.

Since starting with CC she has grown from strength to strength.

She loves meeting people and working together creatively.

Kirsti Davies: Kirsti another ‘CC Old School artist’ is an artist who loves to combine the following in whichever way she can: tackling climate change, communities, renewable technology and communicating in the most creative way possible.

She's been scribing visual minutes for coming up to a decade and continues to enjoy the weird and wonderful events and meetings she works on.

Lara Popovic: Is a 27 year old poet and creative artist based in London.

Her work is published in magazines across the UK and US including Adanna, Vox Mom, Obsessed With Pipework and La Reata. Outside of CC work she also offers Reiki Healing and transformative art workshops which blend poetry and painting.

~ Some of our Animators ~

Simon Heath: Following 15 years in senior operational management roles in Financial Services and Consulting, Simon started working with CC as an animator and Illustrator. His style is well recognised within the CC portfolio and fan club!

Marcel O’Leary: Marcel O'Leary is an artist based in Bristol, with a passion for visual storytelling.

Nicknamed ‘The Little French Man’ since one of our clients mistakenly thought he was French – Marcel has gone from strength to strength with his own style of animation ‘The Marcel’ and a resident expert Rich Picture creator he is a core part of the CC team.

How to contact us

To book any CC services or talk through your latest project and how we might be able to help out please call one of our booking team members on +44 (0) 782 70 13 191 or email the team via info@creativeconnection.co.uk This is our central booking team for all our international offices who will connect you with the team closest to your location.

C lick on any of the boxes below to find out more about our services!

Visual Minutes

Facilitation

Animation

Consultancy

Away Days

Events

Training CreativeConnection Headquarters CreativeConnection 5 Glasshouse Walk Vauxhall London SE11 5ES Tel +44 (0) 7827013191 Email: info@creativeconnection.co.uk Transforming business: Transformingthe theworld worldofof business: UK | Europe | USA | Canada | Australia | Dubai | India