Creating New Ideas through Bricolage
(The story of how a person who learns life lessons from squirrels and the Kardashians came up with a new, FREE SciComm curriculum add-on for science courses)
One of the things that feels super weird about being a freelancer is the constant need to be able to synthesize all of my random skill sets that I learned in different experiences to often do things that feel impossible — usually, to create new marketing content — but not always.
I know I am not the only person who finds really meaningful advertising and marketing lessons in billboards and TV ads I see randomly, but I also derive a lot of insight from the most random things in life, like my penchant for squirrel-watching. Remember the time I wrote a blog post on freelancing life lessons I have learned from squirrels? I’ve also learned science communication lessons from Taylor Swift.
It goes both ways, too, between my personal and professional life. For example, I am sure I can apply my strategic communications and marketing strategy knowledge to throw the best surprise birthday party ever, or use my digital marketing knowledge to critique the latest viral social media content or come up with cool catchphrases, memes, and inside jokes for friend night.
I am totally the type of person that would give serious examples from the WallStreetBets subreddit in a discussion of investment and finance PR, or talk about copywriting lessons learned from the Kardashians. It always feels very bizarre to me when ideas come together like that, but I guess that’s just the way my brain works. Part of me is always like, where did you come up with that?
It helps that I love to solve problems, so although my solutions are unconventional (like applying what I know from watching hours and hours of makeup YouTube to come up with a showstopping content strategy for a biotech client), they work — and that’s what counts, right?
I didn’t know this process of coming up with new things from existing ones had a name until recently. It’s called “bricolage,” which can be described as decoupage for ideas.
What is “bricolage”?
According to the website 12manage:
Bricolage is a French word which refers to the skill of using whatever is at hand and recombining all that to create something new. For example in creative bricolage, a bricoleur (tinkerer) may take spare parts of an old automobile to construct a new one.
Decoupage, or the art of making collages, is an example of bricolage I’ve really enjoyed my whole life. It’s cool to rearrange things and get a totally different vibe or insight from them, and I do that all the time in my creative work, too.
In my work life, I tend to get really into the nexus of one or two of my skill sets (science, writing, policy, education, SciComm are just a few). This helps me come up with really innovative ideas with new perspectives. Lately, I have been really into figuring out how to teach science communication in science courses. This comes from my experience as a teacher and science writer, as well as my experience helping my alma mater, MIT, develop a communications requirement for scientists and engineers when I was a college student.
An example of bricolage: Coming up with an add-on SciComm curriculum for high school, college, and graduate science courses
The other day, while driving, an idea popped into my head: We’re all talking about science communication and the fact that it’s never taught in schools, so why don’t I just come up with my own add-on curriculum that can be used for any science course at high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels?
I was shocked by my own brilliant idea and brushed it off at first. I thought that it doesn’t make sense for someone who has never taught science communication in an actual classroom to come up with a curriculum.
Then I thought about it more, as I was running errands, and decided it was a good idea. I’d never heard of such a thing, probably because many people in science writing do it because they don’t want to be a scientist…but I feel like I will always be a scientist at heart, and I also love teaching, so I decided I was up to the challenge.
I penciled it into my calendar, thinking it could be an interesting exercise. Is it even possible to create an add-on science communication curriculum? I wondered.
Then, when the fateful day arrived on which I had scheduled myself to come up with a science communication curriculum/lesson plan, I actually came up with the whole thing in a couple of hours. I guess I had the skills to develop SciComm educational content but just didn’t realize it.
What did I learn from this experience? Firstly, never throw away potentially good ideas just because you think they are stupid. They are probably not stupid. I recently tutored a science writing student whose source of writer’s block when writing about science was the negative feedback she had received at lab meetings. She was afraid that every word she wrote would be subject to immense scrutiny. As an editor and former scientist, I could totally relate to her worries, but I was shocked at the way gatekeeping turned up in the science writing process. We talk a lot about sexism in science and the social structures of science at Fancy Comma: check out this blog titled “Better Science through Sociology,” for example.
Another thing I learned is that a lot of good ideas come from bricolage – the merging of two or more concepts or fields. We’re not taught to do bricolage in school, really, but as scientists we are synthesizing information all the time. Maybe information synthesis is something that scientists learn that is useful for solving problems in the real world. Which makes me wonder…what if learning the scientific framework and process actually makes you a better creative?!
Don’t miss our FREE add-on SciComm curriculum!
If you want to see what I came up with for the add-on science communication curriculum / lesson plan for science courses, stay tuned. Subscribe to the Fancy Comma blog, where it will be published in October 2023.
Now, some questions for you, dear reader:
Do you think being a scientist makes you more creative?
Would you read a book about the intersection of science and marketing?
Have you ever engaged in the art of bricolage?
Do you have any ideas about teaching science communication as an add-on to science courses?
Chime in below in the comments, reply to this email, or chat with us @fancycomma on Twitter and Instagram!
What we’re reading (and writing):
On the Fancy Comma blog, we’ve been talking about books that can help you be a better writer in STEM fields, unethical communication in science, and frequently asked questions in unethical communication.
Have you heard of a “fractional content marking officer” or fractional CMO? I saw it on LinkedIn, but didn’t know what it was until I read Angela Tague’s post. TL; DR: Apparently “fractional” just means “freelance.”
I found useful Andy Strote’s article about building trust with new clients.
The Open Notebook recently published an interesting article about reporting on sexual harassment in the sciences. Reading it, my brain diverged into two perspectives: a scientist running a lab and a person seeking to work in a lab (or interested in the culture of science). I think it’s a highly instructive article for both vantage points.
I’m a HUGE stan of this Nature article that talks about the ways that scientists learning about science policy will make science better.
That’s it for this week! If you are a student, hope you’re having a happy (enough) beginning of the Fall semester!
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