Putting the Creative into the Creative Café

I was at a conference yesterday and we talked a little about what is being creative. One suggestion is that it is about using what is there, reordering it and bringing forth something different and perhaps surprising. Finding solutions to problems is as much a creative act as writing a poem, painting a picture or composing a piece of music.  Baking glorious cakes, providing an appropriate atmosphere for creative practitioner networking, and offering a comfortable space where audiences can enjoy the arts are perhaps surprising – and delightful  - solutions  to some of the problems that the arts are currently facing: the Arts Council can award fewer  grants, the universities are having to cut back on humanities provision and as we go into austerity measures, fewer can afford to support the arts directly by going to the theatre and to concerts or by buying books and music.

Somehow, though, we still manage to eat and drink and occasionally that might be in a café.  Can we reorder that and make it an opportunity also for enjoying the arts?

We’ve reordered thus so far by creating in cafés:

Writers in residence

Book launches

Gallery spaces

Literary salons

Book swaps

Open mic

Jazz evenings

Poetry readings

CaféLit  

Reading groups

Writers’ critique groups

What else could we do? Can you help us to reorder yet again?