It may sound a bit peculiar but art is – and always has been – part of meetings.
I am not just talking about art to ‘wow’ the audience, AKA entertainment, but real art in all its shapes and forms. Since art reaches deep into people’s emotions, and since emotions are a driver of purpose, art has a place in what we do as meeting professionals.
Art is considered to be the third segment in the toolbox of Meeting Architects. The CHATTY toolbox contains five categories: Conceptual, Human, Art, Technical and Technology. (Ref. Meeting Architecture a Manifesto Meeting Support Institute 2007) Each of these categories is a container for many subcategories and in ART these sub categories are summarised in the acronym MAPS TVS: Music, Audio-Visual, Perming, Staging and Text, Visual, Story.
The Fresh conference breaks the mould and takes on the challenge to paint the complete picture (pardon the pun). We have to start by looking at design and how it influences our daily lives and how it should be a key factor in our work, too. We need to discuss theory and experience practice in sessions on music, story building, acting, etc. We need to look at cases from other conferences like TechnArte on the crosspollination of art and technology. We need to live through workshops using clay, clowning and composition for meetings and group activity.
We need to keep our eyes on the prize: Making meetings more effective! This is why Art is not only inspiration, but in meetings Fresh will demonstrate it to be the most fun and engaging driver for change, innovation and even networking.
The Fresh conference takes place in Barcelona, 21-23 June 2015.
