Empower Your Creative Journey with our toolkit

Mapping Your Creative Growth

Mapping Your
Creative Growth

Mapping Your Creative Growth

Mapping tools to explore the value of your creative work.

What is MYCG?

MYCG provides visual tools for exploring the value of your creative practice, projects or enterprise in relation to the network of people and things that define your opportunities for growth✨.

MYCG is based on the research of Dr Michael Pierre Johnson at the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Innovation and Technology, who developed a Creative Growth Model that frames creative work within the network of relationships of culture and practice.

This has been developed and applied with enterprise accelerators (Elevator, SHIFT), cultural development networks (CHARTS Argyll and Isles) and Universities supporting creative development (RCS Innovation Studio, ZHdK Z-Kubator) as an effective way of supporting and evaluating creative and cultural entrepreneurship and innovation.

Why use MYCG?

Whether you're starting a new project, setting up a creative enterprise, developing your career or creative practice, MYCG offers a rigorous and holistic approach to better understand the value you want to create by mapping the network of relationships you need to develop to thrive.

The tools can be used individually, or in teams, to help with strategic planning, new applications, sharing progress, reflection and evaluation. The key aim for using MYCG is to build confidence in what development and growth means for you.

Whether you're starting a new project, setting up a creative enterprise, developing your career or creative practice, MYCG offers a rigorous and holistic approach to better understand the value you want to create by mapping the network of relationships you need to develop to thrive.

The tools can be used individually, or in teams, to help with strategic planning, new applications, sharing progress, reflection and evaluation. The key aim for using MYCG is to build confidence in what development and growth means for you.

Prompt cards with hints and examples to guide your responses

How it works?

The MYCG toolkit offers a series of cards with insightful questions to be answered, which are positioned across a canvas to reveal how such factors relate to your goals for creative and strategic growth. You are taken through three stages:

01.

Profiling

Firstly, profiling questions break down what constitutes you and your work in culture and in practice.

02.

Growth

Secondly, growth questions open out what development means for your work socially (who and what you are working with) and economically (who and what you are working for).

03.

Action

Thirdly, action questions prompt you to produce a plan that links your goals to actionable next steps, based on the insights and opportunities you identify from mapping your profile and growth potential.

Toolkits

Three Levels of Engagement

You can work with MYCG at different stages of your creative journey:

01.

Curiosity Level

Here you can use an entry-level canvas that asks the essential questions to explore a new project or creative venture, and what development could mean for you, to inform initial actions.

02.

Professional Level

Here you work with a suite of tools that allow you to go into the detail of the cultural profile of your work and an in-depth network of people, things and systems you need to engage with to develop a strategic action plan.

03.

Ecosystem Level

Here you are responsible for a whole creative and cultural community (e.g. regionally, disciplinary) and are aiming to learn how to apply the tools to support their creative and strategic development as a network. This may include using the tools to facilitate peer support and co-evaluation on shared challenges or areas of interest.