5 Amazing Courses to Spark Your Creativity

According to the dictionary, creativity is "the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work." We also know that "creativity" is more than just an artistic expression but also, a way to recognize ideas that can help in solving problems.

Can creativity be taught? For sure! Even if you think you are the most creative person, creativity can be taught and be extremely useful not only for your work but, for your personal life.

To help you out, we have selected 5 online courses to spark your creativity this year. Here are them:

1. Find Your Style: Five Exercises to Unlock Your Creative Identity by Skill Share

“You don’t find your style, your style finds you.” Discouraged by the words of his art professor, Andy J. Pizza spent years following trends and feeling inauthentic in his art, waiting for his style to show up. Spoiler: it never did. So Andy set out to find it himself, a journey that led to experiments, breakthroughs, success as an illustrator, podcaster, and speaker, and ultimately this class.

Check it out here

2. Spark your Creativity & Imagination & prevent getting stuck by Udemy

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to always have plenty of new ideas bubbling up on the inside of you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to never run out of creative gas? Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could be in charge of the flow of your creative juices?

Guess what – that actually is within your reach! You can train yourself to make that happen. You do not need to be a victim of creative blocks. You have the ability to break out of those. Or even better, you can prevent them from happening.

Check it out here

3. Ignite Your Everyday Creativity by Coursera

Creativity is an essential skill for the 21st Century that is innate in all people and can be nurtured. We constantly need new and better ideas for almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives. The goal of this course is to help you recognize, develop and act upon the creativity that you already possess. We will accomplish this using three methods: b aware, b inspired, and b creative.

Check it out here

4. Jumpstart: Ignite Your Creativity for Profit, Innovation and Reinvention by Maria Brito

You will learn to ignite and unleash the power of new ideas and your creative thinking to make more money, innovate in an industry, job or field, or reinvent yourself professionally into someone new.

Check it out here

5. Exploring Play: The Importance of Play in Everyday Life by Future Learn

This course from the School of Education at the University of Sheffield will encourage you to think differently about play.

We’ll discuss definitions of play and current debates about how the nature of play changes. Does play help us to learn? Can it prepare young people to be successful in the adult world? Are all forms of play good for us? You will learn to ignite and unleash the power of new ideas and your creative thinking to make more money, innovate in an industry, job or field, or reinvent yourself professionally into someone new.

Check it out here

Trends to Watch Out for in 2023

Trends. Year in and year out we see what companies and different industries are going to follow or set as trends that will impact the way we consume things and even, how we behave.

Trends are something pretty interesting. Trend, movement, or tendency, is according to the dictionary, a general direction in which something is developing or changing. Even if you think you want to go against the mainstream, the trends are everywhere and if you work in the creative industry, is important to know them.

To help you out, we selected some of the trend reports for 2023 for different industries. Have fun!

Instagram

"The 2023 Trend Report was produced alongside a sweeping study of Gen Z users across Instagram. Created in partnership with WGSN* during October 2022, Instagram measured the topics, issues, and trends that matter most to teens across the platform."

Check it out here

Vice

"Grab your most hole-ridden jumper, slap on some Viva Magenta eyeshadow and join us for this year’s cultural forecast."

Check it out here

Pinterest

"People use Pinterest to plan for the future. That means we know what’s next. In fact, for the last three years, 80% of our report predictions came true.¹ This isn’t another year-end trend report. This is a not-yet-trending report—a window into the future, from the place where people go to plan it. Let’s look forward to 2023. This is Pinterest Predicts."

Check it out here

Think with Google

"There’s no doubt that 2023 will be a year of sharpening our focus.

The challenges and disruptions brought on by the pandemic, geopolitical tensions, and economic uncertainty will make it a year like no other.

However, businesses cannot press pause on 2023 planning to wait and see how things will unfold. To continue to grow — and survive — business leaders need to put strategies in place now. And marketing has a major role to play.

To help your business find clarity amidst uncertainty and move forward with confidence, I asked Google leaders to share their top marketing trends and predictions for 2023. I hope their insights will help guide you as we head into the new year."

Check it out here

Eating Well

"We used traffic data and audience insights to help predict which food and wellness trends we think will be big in the coming year."

Check it out here

Smart Brief

"Social media marketing is an ongoing challenge requiring brands to react to shifting audience behaviors and proactively adapt to trends that are in constant motion. This year has been a transformative year in the world of social as we watched consumer trends fluctuate, new technology launches and emerging platforms grow. The rate of change across social media apps sees no sign of slowing, forcing marketers to brace for what’s in store in 2023."

Check it out here

Everything You Will Want to Learn About Rio's Carnival!

Due to the pandemic, one of the most famous parties in the World, Rio de Janeiro's Carnival, was postponed to start next week (April 20th to April 30th). The Samba Schools are rehearsing like crazy and everyone is so excited to see what will be paraded in the Sambodrome (the venue where everything carnival happens, the parades from samba schools and we get to see every detail really close), after a two-year gap!

We got excited about this too and since our founder Rita Avellar is vacationing in Rio, we thought it was a good idea to bring a little bit of this party's inspiration and curiosities to you! It is one of the most creative businesses in Brazil and it keeps growing each year. Get your samba dance lessons ready, because you will not resist!

Rita Avellar and her family on the last rehearsal of Viradouro Samba School in April 2022

Origins of Brazilian Carnival

Carnival is a festival of pagan origin, dating back to ancient times. In view of one of its main characteristics, the inversion of social roles during celebrations – such as slaves dressing up as masters, for example – the origin of Carnival can be found in Mesopotamia, Greece, or Rome.

In Brazil, historians date back to the Portuguese who possibly started the first celebrations of what we know today about the carnival. This happened around 1641 with the Entrudo, a party that could be very violent and consisted of throwing all kinds of liquids and a powder at others. Entrudo means entrance, marking the beginning of the period preceding the religious Christian tradion of Lent. In Brazil, it was practiced since the colonial period, mainly by slaves and the lower classes.

In 1841, the Entrudo was banned due to its violence and the people adapted the event in order to continue it. From 1855 to 1890 the early Brazilian carnival after almost being banned, was embraced by the elite (mostly because they wanted to censor the satires and criticism that came from the people and their costumes and messages) and started to be held in closed paid venues inspired by what was the Venetian Carnival, also with French inspiration. People in lower classes began bringing the party once again to the streets taking instruments and parading by foot, starting what we know today as Rio's street carnival, or Blocos. This way, as we can observe until today, Carnival plays an important social role and ooints out different layers of society while being ironic, satiric, and also celebrating the cultural inheritance such as African ancestry and religions who built the city's cultural background. In 1917 the first samba was created and in 1932 the first samba school contest took place. It was only in 1984 that the Sambódromo was made the main stage for the samba school parades.

After the war, in 1946, men dress up as women in street carnival (Photo: Archives/Agência O Globo)

Sambódromo

Until 1980, Carnival didn't have a fixed place to happen in Rio, and was distributed around the city's streets and sometimes in closed hotels with paid balls for the richest people. In 1980, with the disorganized growth of the Samba Schools, and with the need to improve the parades, Leonel Brizola, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro at the time, ordered the renowned architect Oscar Niemeyer a project including in it an enormous capacity of the public who could be able to watch the show, from every spot. The worldwide known Sambódromo was created and, until today, that's where the magic happens in Rio's biggest party and is televised to the whole world.

Photo: Google Images

Curiosities

• The term “carnival” comes from the Latin expression “carnem levare”, which means “to move away from the flesh”. The expression became popular because the celebration of the feast, as already said, precedes Lent, a period of 40 days before Easter, in which meat is not to be eaten.
  

• The Sambadrome where the parades take place in Rio de Janeiro has the official name of Avenida Marquês de Sapucaí. The place was designed by renowned architect Oscar Niemeyer and its structure holds up to more than 72,000 people.
  

• The Venice Carnival is one of the oldest in the world. The party was created in 1094 by Vitale Falier, a member of one of the most influential families in the city at the time, and had the objective, before Lent, to offer the population a period of play, games, and fun.
  

• At the end of the 1920s, some carnival blocks began to organize themselves, giving rise to the first samba schools.
  

• The first samba school parade organized in Rio de Janeiro took place in 1932. Each school could present up to three sambas and the champion was Mangueira.

Photo: Google

• Mestre Sala and Porta Bandeira couple (photo above). The couple always has to dance together. The man can never turn his back on his mate, but must always be twirling around her, in the role of protector. Costumes must be impeccable, always wearing white closed shoes or another color that matches the entire theme. She can't let the flag curl up. They need to always be smiling, and emitting pride as they have a duty to show the love they feel for their Samba School.
  

• The Drum Queen (Rainha de Bateria) has the role of introducing the drums and motivating the percussionists, who continue to play behind her. The Queen does not have an item evaluated by the commission, only her costume is evaluated. As drum queens are usually national celebrities, they are an important marketing element for schools. With their black heeled sandals, they command the party and enliven the revelers.
  

• The first "marchinha" was created by a woman. The first carnival march was created by the pianist Chiquinha Gonzaga. In 1889, she created “Abre Alas” for the carnival group Rosas de Ouro, and this march is, to this day, one of the most popular and recognized in Brazilian culture.
  

Street Carnival in Rio in 1960 footage:

If you plan on spending next year's carnival in Rio, make sure to start planning ahead, because hotels get full very quickly! Have fun!