“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.” – CreativeMornings Community
In this opportunity, CreativeMornings community entitled “Curiosity” as its main theme. The provisional understanding about “Curiosity” theme is everything about an impulse to fill the void that exists in the creative process in general, by always asking about anything.
In the morning of February 23th, CreativeMorning Bandung was held in the faculty building room of National Institute of Technology campus (ITENAS). Although being held in the morning, the participants’ enthusiasm seemed adequately high. This can be seen by the presence of many students and other academics such as ITENAS lecturers and staff. After filling out the initial registration form at the front desk, CreativeMornings participants sporadically filled the seat.
Shortly thereafter, similar to the previous series of events, the first session was opened by one of the assigned volunteer of CreativeMornings explaining about the CreativeMornings community in general worldwide. This community is a non-profit organization that has a main vision to be sharing a talk that is inspiring and motivating, usually around the creativity issue. Consistently, the event is held in the form of a morning chat that can be enjoyed by everyone. Although the event is designed to be in a form of casual talk, the main session is taken over by the speakers who have strong background and competency.
CreativeMornings had its first event in New York, United States. At the moment, CreativeMornings community is expanding their activities into various cities around the world. Currently, Bandung is the 144th city where CreativeMornings is held regularly every month.
That morning on February 23th, the CreativeMorning community invited Harry Mawardi from Amygdala Bamboo. Responding to the theme of “Curiosity”, in this CreativeMorning session, Harry Mawardi will share his experience about how he developed his curiosity in bamboo material processing activities, combined with his knowledge of industrial design.
Amygdala Bamboo is a creation of Harry Mawardi, which have a main mission in empowering bamboo material in Indonesia. It also provides its own aesthetic in each of their bamboo products. The initial idea of establishing Amygdala Bamboo was due to his curiosity over the real implementation of bamboo materials, which had been the object of his research for his university final assignment. In present day, Harry Mawardi’s daily activities involving teaching at several universities in Bandung and managing his business in bamboo industry.
Regarding the curiosity, in which he believes is the main force in taking most of the initial creative concept, Harry suggests that everyone should keep this habit as one of the initial moves in creative work. For Harry personally, he always makes sure to preserve his curiosity in making every research, in order to keep his business running. Starting from the curiosity about the implementation of bamboo he has got theoretically during university, he wanted to create an impact and its influence to local bamboo craftsmen. Carrying the ‘social enterprise’ business model, Harry expanded his bamboo handicraft business by optimizing the bamboo production among local craftsmen by building relationships among them.
According to him, going over many years in interacting with local craftsmen, it is interesting to know the fact that in their production hub, usually located in one village/district, these craftsmen do not put their mind into deadlines, but always hold on to what they do. In other word, they do not work under pressure, but the quality is always conserved, in addition to meeting the deadline.
From his experience, Harry believes that life is a constant battle. Nothing will be created from looking down upon others. We must continue to nurture the curiosity traits in every one of us in order to generate brilliant new ideas.
(Hubton Indonesia).