Brainstorming Exercise

For our second assignment we were asked to brainstorm following our previous assignment to explore one of our ideas more deeply. We gathered our seminar group together to decide on a topic that we could work on, and agreed that TV Education would be our chosen subject. I had been working on the idea of crime, so changing was a little tricky at first.

We met for a discussion in the studio and littered the walls with post-its to show our thoughts. The spontaneity of the exercise was good fun!

I hadn't taken part in a brainstorming exercise for such a lengthy period of time and in such depth but it proved very effective in expanding our thoughts on TV Education. Throwing all and any ideas we had onto our post-it wall was so much easier with everyone's input.

After our discussions, I decided to look closer at the effects of children's TV shows on personal development. I wanted to find out to what extent TV warps children's views on reality, and explore the idea of true image. From my own experience, I can remember watching programs like The animals of Farthing wood (hehe) and at the age of 7 or 8 decided I wanted to be a horse when I grew up. Surely by 8 I should have known that I would probably find it pretty tricky to grow up into a big strong Clydesdale...

I was also obsessed with the little plastic animals you used to get from the Early Learning Centre, and probably held onto them until an age that wasn't too healthy. Had I been brainwashed by TV and Merchandise? Hopefully, otherwise I was a really weird kid.

Anyway, I started thinking about how programs like Malcolm Gladwell's examples of "Sesame Street" and "Blues Clues" and the shows I used to watch, had the ability to "brainwash" children, and whether or not this could be useful. My research stemmed from The Tipping Point, but I quickly moved away from the book to explore different ideas.

As my A2 poster developed, I went from exploring the effect of children's TV shows on their personal growth, to the psychology and effects of colours on peoples emotions, to the idea of beneficial brainwashing.

I found the different effects of colours on human emotions really interesting and I'm keen to look into the experiments behind the results a little closer. Looking back at the assignment, I wish I'd spent more time exploring the idea of beneficial brainwashing, but I can always come back to it at a later date. I started off with a simple spider diagram and then moved on to block descriptions and different definitions in different categories.