Wake up early and get ready to boost your morning creativity

It’s Friday morning. I wake up earlier than usual and I get off the metro in Porta Garibaldi. It’s not hard to find Frog, the design studio in Milan where CreativeMornings takes place once a month – as soon as I reach via Ugo Bassi I meet a bunch of people in their late twenties, mostly speaking English. I can immediately smell creative zeal, excitement and high expectations in the air.

CreativeMornings is a breakfast lecture series for the creative community around the world. It started in 2008 out of a desire of Tina Roth Eisenberg for an ongoing, inspiring morning event for New Yorkers. It all began with a simple idea: early breakfast and a short talk one Friday morning a month. Every event would be free of charge and open to anyone.

Today, CreativeMornings are organized in 89 cities around the world by talented volunteers and their teams. At the heart of each month is a global conversation, crossing the continents to talk about the intersection of creativity and the month’s topic, suggested by the local teams.

Starting from a theme, each city organizes its own event. Speakers range from design legends to local emerging talents – it’s totally up to the organizers. We talked about it with Laura Licari, Milan host:

“There are many chances to meet popular designers during conferences and classes here in Milan. We’d rather give voice to all those new creative talents that live in our city and that you would barely hear anywhere else otherwise. Sometimes this can be a risk for us, because some guests have really never spoken in public before, but it has always turned out to be successful so far, probably because there are no barriers between speakers and attendees. Our events are very informal, anyone can intervene and we want everyone to feel comfortable and at ease. People who attend our talks – students, designers, architects and so on – say they do it because it helps them start the day with a different mood and they feel part of something bigger than what they do every day”.

Even if every event is developed locally, you will always feel as part of a global event: talks usually take place at the same time in many cities around the world and you can follow and interact online in real time with all the conversations with the dedicated hashtags. You will also see on screens all the social interactions that are going on during the talks.

At the end of the lecture I’m ready to go to work, with a positive mood and a different attitude.