February’s theme is Curiosity

Curiosity is many things—a trait, a mindset, and a skill. To wonder about the things you don’t know and to actively fill those gaps with knowledge is to consciously enrich your life.

It’s also the secret sauce for creativity. Curiosity silences ego and encourages us to ask why. By constantly asking why we keep the channel open, allowing inspiration, perspectives, and ideas to mold our work and ourselves.

The more you practice being curious the more opportunities abound. Sometimes all it takes is tilting your head up and just marveling at this thing called life.

This month’s global exploration of Curiosity was chosen by our Malmö chapter and illustrated by Oelwein.

Big thanks to our global partners—MailChimp, Adobe, and WordPress.com—for their ongoing support of CreativeMornings.

CreativeMornings Toronto is seeking partners who wish to get involved in our current and upcoming events.

Learn more by downloading our Partnership Package today!

It’s our mission to ensure that CreativeMornings enables creatives Toronto-wide to share, collaborate and build community.

CreativeMornings is a free event for attendees. Through your generous sponsorship we can continue to offer monthly creative events to inspire, shape and grow our city’s creative community.

Imagine for a second that you have to write an email that goes out to 200,000 people. You spend all week on it, making sure there are no typos or broken links. You schedule the email.

You walk into the office and the first thing you hear is, “The most important link is broken.” It’s too late, the email is registered by the servers; it’s now a beam of light carrying information through fiber glass under our oceans.

Imagine that feeling of failure—sweaty palms, concerned looks by colleagues, heart rate thumping.

Or better yet, what if you stopped imagining?

Anxiety is a story that we tell ourselves; it’s a magnification of possible failures paired with self-talk that undermines our chances of success. Anxiety is created from within, not outside. Self-sabotage may always be part of the creative process and the sooner we can accept that the clearer we can be in the decision we need to make to move forward.

This month’s global exploration of Anxiety was chosen by our Bucharest chapter and illustrated by Evelin Bundur. Thank you to our global partners — MailChimp, Adobe, and WordPress.com — for their generous support.

We want to hear from you!

First and foremost, thank you for being part of the CreativeMornings community. Thank you for coming out to events, watching talks online, interacting over our social media channels, and just being you!

As you’re winding down your year, we’d be thrilled if you took a few minutes to reflect on your experiences with CreativeMornings Toronto throughout 2017.

https://cmto.typeform.com/to/QQOSFX

We’ve put together a short survey to gather your feedback. The high fives and hiccups identified in these responses act as our guiding light when planning for the year ahead. Be honest, and feel free to get creative with your suggestions!

Thanks for participating!

Imagine your typical morning coffee or tea, how it tastes and the way it makes you feel. Now imagine being on a remote island, sun rising, with your drink in hand. That sip is unlike anything you’ve ever tasted—that’s context.

When we feel something is out of context, it’s because there’s a mismatch in the intention, behaviour, and environment. Looking at the Mona Lisa in a dark basement versus The Louvre surrounded by people taking photos creates two different memories.

This month’s global exploration of Context was chosen by our Minneapolis chapter and illustrated by David Schwen. Thank you to our global partners — Adobe, MailChimp, WordPress.com, and Shutterstock — for their support.

View photos from November’s talk with Rayna Slobodian here!

Thanks to our incredible event photographer Luis Durazo.

As if November wasn’t dark enough, this month’s theme is death – a truth that has inspired humanity since time immemorial, influencing ideologies and storytelling to our understanding of life and how we live it.

To our ancient ancestors, the fear of death was a palpable and daily motivator. Although our world is infinitely safer than it was centuries ago, we are still driven by the fear of death and we expertly attribute it to even the smallest events: traffic, deadlines, a mistake, public speaking, your boss’s name on your caller ID on a Saturday.

What we have done well as a species is leverage the fear of death to inspire achievements that seemed impossible, to create work that needed to be made, and to discover insights that help us live well.

This month’s global exploration of Death was chosen by our Miami chapter and illustrated by 2016 Adobe Creative Resident Syd Weiler.

Thank you to our global partners — Adobe, MailChimp, WordPress.com and Shutterstock — for their support.

#CMdeath #creativemornings #cmto

Pioneers shatter expectations, widen boundaries, and reveal new possibilities in life.

Whether the work was inspired from being on a ship or inside of a studio, pioneers act on their internal, immutable desires to create work that matters.

You might be on the edge of pioneering something new; only time and your relentless drive to create against all odds will determine that. We look towards pioneers to bring us to new discoveries, domains, and knowledge about ourselves.

We’re looking at you.

This month’s global exploration of Pioneer is presented by MailChimp. The theme was chosen by our Denver chapter and illustrated by John Vogl.

See you at the end of October for our next talk!

Become a CMTO Partner!

CreativeMornings Toronto is seeking partners who wish to get involved in our current and upcoming events.

Learn more by downloading our Partnership Package today!

It’s our mission to ensure that CreativeMornings enables creatives Toronto-wide to share, collaborate and build community.

CreativeMornings is a free event for attendees. Through your generous sponsorship we can continue to offer monthly creative events to inspire, shape and grow our city’s creative community.

September is compassion.

Beautifully rendered by Finnish illustrator Sami Viljanto, this month’s theme compassion was chosen by our Helsinki sister chapter.

We’re thankful to this month’s global presenting sponsor Shutterstock for making CreativeMornings happen in a city near you.