Projects

Some projects just don’t fit into a box.

Creativity and Process as Infrastructure

3-month creative process

Challenge

Traditional marketing tactics and pain-point-to-solution strategies weren’t working for Scintilla, a Wisdom Centre helping changemakers build the skills, wisdom, and community to shape change.

Approach

My approach was to help them with storytelling, to root an abstract concept into something more tangible, to shape their language, visuals, and flow of information in a way that embodied and helped people connect to their ideas.

“Having an ideas-based business, I hired Emily at a stage of needing to reimagine what my work might look like.  I was feeling tired, uninspired and disconnected from work that used to light me up.  To say she helped would be an understatement.  As a result of working together, I was able to deepen my thinking, connect how people encounter and experience my work, and imagine what architecture might support it - all while falling in love with my work again. 

I’d spent a long time looking for the kind of support Emily offered without knowing what to call it or if it even existed. While there’s an abundance of ‘business’ advice and teachings out there, there aren’t so many places that help you engage creatively with problems you may be facing, how to bring an idea to life, or help you develop your craft - all of which Emily does.

She is simultaneously able to hold huge amounts of vulnerability, create a really safe creative environment for ideas (even terrible ones!), to think about the journey and experience of those who engage with my work, to keep the bigger picture in sight and to hold anchor when I’d go off on tangents. Perhaps most brilliantly, Emily was able to tease out new directions and ideas from the least likely places. From ideas to colours to images to words, she ties every part of the business together.

Working with her was one of the best decisions I’ve made, and I cannot recommend it enough.”

-Laura Hartley


The Kennedys

On a whim, I applied to the Kennedys. It’s a 7-month program by the world renowned ad agency Wieden + Kennedy which they describe as “an experiment, disguised as a school, hidden inside a creative agency.” I was intrigued by the application process itself which consisted of the following three questions:

  1. Tell us about yourself

  2. Explain the history of the universe a briefly as possible

  3. Make a triangle

Spoiler Alert: there were over 850 applicants to the program and I was not selected as one of the 6-8 to join. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

If you have a project, question, or challenge that would benefit from working through a creative, embodied lens — let’s explore.