Creativity«requires both originality and effectiveness» (STEIN, 1953, pp.311-322, RUNCO & JAEGER, 2012); its development implies different conditions, including the impact on the formation of the mind by technical manipulation (LEROI-GOURHAN, 1977; DI MARTINO, 2017, EISNER, 2002) and the visual perception (ARNHEIM, 1969; VERSTEGEN, 2005) in an educational relationship where «potential space» and «transitional objects» are the guide concepts (WINNICOTT, 1972). Based on this framework, this research aims at analysing an approach Cometa VET school (Como, Italy) has been developing in order to foster creativity and self awareness in learners involved in the design of original artisanal products. This approach mainly concerns some specific tools called “ideario” (“diary of ideas”) and “moodboard”. The moodboard is the well-known tool used by all creative professionals and it plays a crucial role in the initial phase of creating a product, from concept development to interaction with the design team: it represents a reference during the design process, and gives a clear direction to style, atmosphere, sensations meant to convey. The ideario is something more peculiar and original, based on the same features of the moodboard but much more free of content and judgement. Not related directly to a project, product or brand, it works like a self-portrait, a way to know better one’s self and let others know it.

In the analysed learning process, Cometa learners are constantly involved in the production of real products (wood handicrafts, textile design, catering events ad relative fittings): their own ideario and moodboard give a trigger to the process. Learners are requested to observe reality in their surroundings, to take photographs, to browse pictures on the web or magazines, to choose them on the base of given guidelines. Afterwards, they assembly the material on a panel and present it to their working team (learners/colleagues, professionals, teachers, tutors, employers). Associations of unexpected ideas often occur: the combination of images or materials and their arrangement create new concepts, ideas and meanings. It is a process that deeply involves the unconscious (SEARLS, 2017): the choice of images takes place in such a deep and sudden way that it requires a deep reflection to give exhaustive reasons why one has chosen them. This personal pathway emerges during the presentation, when every learner presents the ideario outlining three levels of meaning (and specific questions):

-           personal emotions, feelings, memories, meanings connected to the pictures. This first level is a way of developing self awareness; the leading questions are “who am I?” and “what message I want to convey?”

-           Connection of those images with the vision of the school/company brand, in order to activate working in team based on common values. Guiding questions include “where am I?” and “who (meaning client and brand) am I working for/with?”

-           Finally, images as a source of inspiration to design products. Learners are supposed to propose “what kind of products does these images suggest?”

According with SCHÖN (1983), it provides a way of thinking-in-action, thus allowing students-workers to develop innovative products in their specific field, that are more meaningful due to a peculiar approach which sees people not as sacks of problems to solve but as searchers of meaning, lead by purpose, and therefore inverting the paradigm: innovation shouldn’t start from users and outside-collected needs but from one’s own vision, not an outside-in process but an inside-out process: «Not to improve how things are, but to change why we need them» (VERGANTI, 2016). We try to understand what kind of thinking, learning and communication processes are involved in the construction of these tools and to what extent they foster creativity development.

This qualitative research is based on semi-structured interviews in order to "obtain useful information for understanding reasons, intentions, experiences, feelings, beliefs of the subjects, but also to reconstruct the history of the group of which the subjects are part” (TRINCHERO, 2004, 94). The sample includes three teachers and six students. Teachers have been selected because of their professional background in their specific fields (carpentry, fashion, hospitality) and their role as learners in realizing their tools. Students have been selected between the three fields and form different ages and sex in order to scan the maximum width of the school’s population. Interviews focus on the relationship between learning environment and creative thinking, trying to underline which conditions and relations enhance creativity; furthermore, their perception of creativity is discussed. The emerging answers are visualized in word-clouds outlining recurrent words, as well as the main conditions and approaches affecting learners’ perceptions of creativity development. Qualitative analysis will be also integrated with data emerging from a TCD (Test of Creativity and Divergent Thinking, Italian Edition, Williams 1994), which will be administered during the school year 2020/21 to three group-classes of the first school year: the results will be collected two times, one at the very beginning of the year and the second at its end, in order to observe the difference before and after the creative methodologies and tools used in the school. Another source of meaningful results will be obtained comparing the results of Cometa’s students with another class-group of same age and field of studies but from another school that doesn’t use the same approach and tools.

Since creativity itself cannot be seen as an isolated object, and it is something that needs years of practice in one field to obtain significative results (WEISBERG, 2007), we are expecting to see an improvement in student’s self-awareness, self-esteem and creativity, due to (but not only) how such tools as ideario and moodboard are conceived and used. The interviewees’ answers are supposed to show a positive impact played by the relationship with peers and adults in building self esteem in one’s creativity potential, the positive impact of “real working assignments for real clients” and the positive impact of the “moodboard method” that is perceived as the “starting point for all things”, something that becomes “natural since you make it once”. The building of personality or the “self” is a critical issue for education in times where uncertainty is mining the view of people’s future, according with EISNER (2002) in «the arts, the locus of evaluation is internal, and the so-called subjective side of ourselves has an opportunity to be utilized. Such a disposition is at the root of the development of individual autonomy».

EISNER E., 2002: The Arts and the Creation of Mind, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS/NEW HAVEN & LONDON LEROI-GOURHAN A., 1977: Il gesto e la parola, tecnica e linguaggio, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino. Traduzione di Franco Zannino WINNICOTT D. W. (2005) Playing & reality, London: Routledge Classics VERGANTI R. (2016): Overcrowded - Designing Meaningful Products in a World Awash with Ideas. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. WILLIAMS F. (1994) TCD. Creatività e pensiero divergente. Trento: Erickson.