This is why we came up with Creativity+, which sees each member of staff given a budget, consisting of two working days of time and £200, every year to pursue something creative beyond their day-to-day role.
It might be writing, photography, a lecture or cultural visit, or anything else with a broadly creative nature. These projects are then shared across our in-house social network. Here, people can start projects, invite others to join, conduct polls or share and comment on contributions.
We wanted to share with you a few examples of how some of our employees have used their budgets.
Stained glass windows
Gary Matthews from our Nottingham office attended a traditional stained glass, two-day course at Claire Williamson’s Glass Workshop, just north of Loughborough, as this was something he had been interested in doing for a while.
The course started with basic glass cutting and lead techniques before working on a design of his own.
Gary’s design was orientated around the maber plectrum logo – in order to create this, he had to sketch the design onto a large sheet of paper to use as a template. Each individual piece of glass was then cut. He used an array of different colours and textures of glass to create his window piece.
Day two focused on how to lead between each individual piece of glass. Once Gary was happy with the glass and lead arrangement, it was time to solder each lead junction to keep everything together.
Gary said the hands-on course was fantastic and he would certainly recommend it to anyone. The finished stained glass window is now proudly on display at our office in Nottingham.
See our other Creativity+ posts for more examples of our staff creativity.