We’ve got a whole bunch of yummy breakfast treats lined up for you at this Friday’s CreativeMornings with Anna Jackson, all thanks to our fantastic partners, so bring your appetites! 

The Collective crew will be sampling their newly launched, delicious ‘Just Greek’ yoghurt, and have teamed up with their buds at BLUE FROG Breakfast to create some scrumptious combinations. 

And our wonderful hosts, Auckland University of Technology are putting on a sweet spread of mini bagels and croissants to chow down on too.

Yum. Yum. YUM! YUMMMMM. 

CreativeMornings with Anna Jackson
Friday 27 May, 8.00am-9.30am
Conference Room, WA Building, AUT University

Last month CreativeMornings was all about risk — and the circumstances and perspectives that exist in order for us to take one. This month, we’re delving deeper into those circumstances and defining our realities. Reality, on the surface, feels so tangible; so concrete. But, in reality, it isn’t quite so simple. Our existence is made of several truths, always shifting under our feet.

Our speaker for this month, Anna Jackson, explores these apparent truths, helping their visibility in some cases, manipulating them in others to suggest alternate realities. A wearer of many hats, Anna is a professional collaborator, researcher, teacher and learner. Her curiosity and tendency to say yes has led to an involvement in a very diverse range of creative endeavours, such as co-founding documentary initiative Loading Docs, co-directing Transmedia NZ, blogging for The Big Idea, creating transmedia content and strategy for the theatrical production Pure and Deep and working with the Arts Foundation’s crowdfunding platform, Boosted.

Anna is now a lecturer at Colab, the ‘collaboratory’ for Design and Creative Technologies at AUT. Her current work explores the future of public media in New Zealand in a post-broadcast, multiplatform environment. She is also keenly interested in expanded documentary and interactive and immersive storytelling.

Join us on Friday 27 May as Anna talks about capturing reality and warping it. 

Registration opens here at 11am, Monday 23 May.

For April’s CreativeMornings we gathered at Studio One Toi Tū, where we got to talk about taking Risks with comedian Urzila Carlson.Massive thanks to our awesome speaker, our generous venue host, our supporting partners Curative & 3rdeye Recruitment, our breakfast partners Coffee Supreme, Antipodes Water Company, Forage + Bloom and The Collective and our dedicated team of volunteers!And thanks to Jess Holdaway and Juanita Madden for capturing the day.

Check out the full set here

May is Reality

Last month was all about risk — and the circumstances and perspectives that exist in order for us to take one. This month, we’re delving deeper into those circumstances and defining our realities. Reality, on the surface, feels so tangible; so concrete. But (to, perhaps cheaply, use a turn of phrase), in reality, it isn’t quite so simple. Our existence is made of several truths, always shifting under our feet.

The theme was chosen by our Belo Horizonte chapter, illustrated by Craig Ward, and presented in partnership with Shutterstock. This month, 141 cities are tackling the elusiveness of reality (or maybe just giving us a good, old-fashioned reality check) at breakfast events with speakers including:

• Melizarani T.Selva, a spoken word poet and storyteller curious in cultural taboos and identity (Kuala Lumpur, their first event!)
• Dr. Susan Cernyak-Spatz, a Holocaust survivor of Birkenau, a woman’s camp in Auschwitz (Charlotte)
• Angad Bhalla, an interactive storyteller who uses film to call attention to voices we rarely hear (New York City)
• Shachi Kurl, a public policy analyst working to encourage a better understanding of how trends and issues affect our lives (Vancouver)

With more than 80 million photos, vectors, illustrations, videos and music clips—and thousands more added daily, Shutterstock provides the building blocks for great creative work. Together with CreativeMornings, Shutterstock supports conversation, community, and professional development for creative people worldwide. Shutterstock also offers 20% off standard accountsto the entire CreativeMornings community. They also have some thoughts on alternative realities, so be sure to check out their own blogpost about the theme.

Are You a Master Freelancer?

Freelance life can be lonely. And it can be tough to get the recognition you deserve. That’s why CreativeMornings and FreshBooks are launching the Master Freelancer Awards.

It’s time to show us your best piece of freelance work — the website you designed that bends the rules, the photo you took that made it on that billboard, the copy you wrote for the poster that went viral — and tell us why you rock the freelance lifestyle. It’s absolutely free to enter, just like every CreativeMornings event.

The process is simple: fill out this entry form and you’re in the running. Oh, and for the duration of the campaign, we’ll send you words (okay, maybe some gifs!) of encouragement, because we know that as a freelancer, you sometimes don’t get enough of ‘em. Don’t worry, you got this! (Not a freelancer but still want some motivation? Sign-up for the newsletter anyway!)

We’re accepting submissions through June 1st, 2016. Winners will be announced at the end of June. They will receive a trophy AND a free FreshBooks subscription for one year. With all the work you’re getting, you’ll be able to invoice like a boss!

You can read the full press release here.

CreativeMornings with Urzila Carlson
Friday 29 April, 8.00-9.30am
Studio One Toi Tū

As a community of creatives, entrepreneurs, community organizers, and out-of-the-box thinkers, we’re no strangers to taking risks. We tend to be comfortable with (or simply inspired by) taking chances in the face of uncertainty.

But what drives these decisions and what’s at stake? What are we gambling with when we take these blind, scary, unpredictable leaps? How do we, as individuals and as communities, tackle the insecurity and instability that come with risk?

South African born comic Urzila Carlson has a few answers. Urzila risked it all, throwing in her day job to chase a career in comedy. After taking to the stage for the first time in 2008, she has since racked up an impressive array of awards for her stand up including ‘Best Female Comedian’ at the 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014 NZ Comedy Guild Awards and the coveted TV3 PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD at the 2013 and 2014 New Zealand International Comedy Festival.

She has made numerous TV appearances in New Zealand on TV shows such as A Night at the Classic, The Comedy Christmas Cracker with Rhys Darby, AotearoHA!, Jono and Ben at Ten and of course as a regular panelist for TV3’s hit show 7 Days.

She has had 6 sold out solo seasons (2010 - 2015) at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. She was invited to Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2013, 2014 & 2015 by international comedy promotional giants Live Nation where she had hugely successful sell out seasons and appeared on the televised Oxfam Comedy Gala and Comedy Up Late. She also toured through New South Wales and South East Asia with the Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow 2015.

Join us on Friday the 29th April at Studio One Toi Tū to hear about Urzila’s journey from South Africa to New Zealand, day job to dream job. Registrations open Tuesday 26th April at 11am.

April is Risk

As a community of creatives, entrepreneurs, community organizers, and out-of-the-box thinkers, we’re no strangers to taking risks. We tend to be comfortable with (or simply inspired by) taking chances in the face of uncertainty. But what drives these decisions and what’s at stake? What are we gambling with when we take these blind, scary, unpredictable leaps? How do we, as individuals and as communities, tackle the insecurity and instability that come with risk?

The theme of RISK was chosen by our Munich chapter, illustrated by Andreas Preis, and presented in partnership with FreshBooks. In April, 138+ chapters around the world are grappling with these complicated and open-ended questions at breakfast events with speakers including:

• Kevin Cavenaugh, a designer and urban planner seeking to change his city 3,000 square feet at a time (Portland)
• Claudia Dalchow, an actress, voice artist, author, and coach who speaks four languages fluently & is currently performing in three of them (Cologne)
• Matthew Abess, a curator at The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, whose mission is to illustrate the persuasive power of art & design (Miami)
• Michal Eitan, the head of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design’s Master Program in Industrial Design (Jerusalem, their very first event!)

Find an event near you!

Chapters continue adding events on this page throughout the month, so we recommend you sign up for your city’s local newsletter or follow them on Twitter for event updates and ticket announcements. And be sure to follow the conversation on Twitter and Instagram with #CMrisk and @creativemorning!

Help us celebrate risk-takers! FreshBooks can help freelancers and small business owners mitigate risks by providing business and accounting solutions. And this month, they’re helping us empower and honor risk-taking freelancers with the brand new CreativeMornings & FreshBooks Master Freelancer Award!

This month we were SO excited to be holding CreativeMornings in The Idea Collective!

The Idea Collective is a multi-dimensional installation space and environment that stimulates, challenges, and encourages visitors to engage with innovation. When we say innovation, we mean innovation in all its forms: social, technological, environmental, digital, and the intersection between art, design and creative technologies. 

This is not a conventional museum exhibition, but rather a dynamic, evolving, collaborative project that sees MOTAT moving out in a bold new direction. Celebrating New Zealand’s vibrant innovation culture, the Idea Collective brings together a diverse set of innovators, artists, designers, and technologists, to create exciting and creative displays and experiences.

There’s so much going on in the space, so we highly recommend heading in to check out the interactive art installations. 

Another reason to head in is to enter the Photo competition the team are running at the moment! Just take a selfie in their brand new space, upload it on their Facebook competition page by March 30th and get your friends to vote! The winner will be get a brand new TomTom Bandit action camera worth $649 RRP! 

CreativeMornings with Leonie Hayden
March 11, 8.00-9.30am
The Idea Collective - MOTAT

The world around us is always in flux. We’re in a constant state of evolution, as we learn and grow each day. Luckily change is something that we’ve learned to be comfortable with. Change challenges our thinking, and helps us see new possibilities and opportunities. Einstein says it best: “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

We, whether as individuals or as communities, have the power to affect how, why, when and where we push for change. As creatives and entrepreneurs, makers and doers, we have the opportunity to reshape and redefine the world around us. Our speaker for the month of March 2016 is using her creative talents to do just that.

Leonie Hayden is the editor of Mana magazine—a current affairs, culture and lifestyle magazine for Māori.

Leonie clung to the craggy rockface of New Zealand’s music industry for many years, flogging records in a shop, on the radio, at a record label and as the editor of two music magazines, before moving on to more meaningful contributions at Mana. She is also the co-editor of The Cry of a Morepork, a collection of her grandmother’s writing. Leonie is passionate about creating platforms for conversation about what it means to be a bicultural nation, and using media to build bridges between Māori and non-Māori audiences, culture and art forms.

At CreativeMornings, Leonie will be talking about the distinctions between Māori and mainstream media, why it’s important for creative industries to understand both and what the two can learn from each other.

Registrations open here on Monday 7 March at 11am. Join us for a stimulating conversation around how we can all work to create positive change.

CreativeMornings w/ Toby Morris
Friday 19 February, 8.00-9.30am
Studio One Toi Tū

We navigate the muddy waters of ethics every day. They’re present in everything from the values we define for our identities to how we interact with clients to the principals of engaging with other creative work on the internet. How have ethics, particularly in the creative world, evolved since their philosophical conception? Why do we create these codes of ethics in the first place? When should we examine what dictates our conscience? And what really makes up a solid, moral value system, anyway?

Diving into this very complex topic is the incredibly talented Toby Morris, a cartoonist, designer and illustrator who currently draws the social issues comic series The Pencilsword forthewireless.co.nz and a weekly current affairs column in collaboration with Toby Manhire for Radio New Zealand.

Over the years his career has jumped between music, magazine design and art direction for advertising, while at the same time, often on the side, he has produced comics, gig posters, commercial illustration and books including ‘Don’t Puke On Your Dad: A Year in the Life of a New Father’. These days though Toby has left the comfort of the advertising day job to make the drawing projects into the main gig.

Join us on Friday 19th February for CreativeMornings, where Toby will speak about balancing career paths and personal values, and where ethics insects both. As someone who has worked on both large scale corporate creative jobs and highly personal and political works, Toby has a unique insight into the eternal question: “Am I being a dick?”

Tickets will be released here on Monday 15 Feb at 11am