I found this exercise very helpful. Often when starting exercises I can find myself feeling stumped. I found that just thinking back over past experiences and writing it down really gets the thought process doing – I will be do this in all projects from now on. In the past I have found that trying to ‘think’ off an idea often leads to me being stumped and therefore not being as time efficient as I need to be.

Seaside;

Anger;

Childhood

Festival

I made the initial mind map in black. Then I asked my family for their suggestions and added them in pink and blue – I ticked all of the same words I had already got and then wrote down any new words on the map. I was honestly surprised by how many different words they suggested – I think that this is because we all have different experiences that we draw from.

I think I found festival the hardest one to think of as I haven’t been to a lot of festivals so I thought of the ones that I had been to and did my best – my husband has been to more festivals than me so he could think of plenty. Asking others for words was really useful – it’s a good way to broaden my thought process without stressing about coming up with an entire concept – the words work as prompts which then lead to a train of thought. This is a really valuable tool to my process, and as I said I will certainly be using this going on from here.