Subject Guides: Digital Creativity: a Practical Guide: How to be digitally creative

Getting started with digital creativity

Whether you've been doing things you'd class as "creative" for years or feel like you're taking your first steps into creativity, you might not know how to get started with digital creativity, or how to start applying it to your work.

Here's a few quick suggestions to get you thinking about how you might start using the concepts and tools we'll explore on this guide:

Take a look at the digital creativity examples at York and various creative output examples to get inspiration or to see if there's anything you're already doing that might be similar.
Think about what you want to communicate or engage the public with - do you have any material or data that would be good to get out there? Do you have anything coming up that could benefit from some creative sparks?
Try out some creative prompts or ideas generation to see what ideas you might already have or invent some new ones!
Pick a digital tool you'd like to learn and see what you can do with it.

That's not everything! There's many ways you might get involved. You might also want to come along to some digital creativity related training to find your starting point or just have a go!

How can I be digitally creative?

There are many ways you can be digitally creative within a project or piece of work. This guide takes you through each step - starting with a background to digital creativity at York, before moving to generating ideas, how to collaborate using digital tools, new approaches to working with data and finally, creative ways to share your research.

Want to see what people at York are doing?

Let us inspire you with Digital creativity at York from Digital Creativity Week and training opportunities to research at York and the Library labs.

Need to generate some ideas?

We'll explore ideas generation and exploration, thinking about how digital tools can assist your ability to be creative and exploring prompts and exercises for working on your ideas.

Looking for advice on project planning and collaboration?

Digital creativity isn't just about being creative, but also about planning and collaborating using digital tools and approaches to help you get things done.

Not sure how to find material or work with data?

Find out how you can be digitally creative when it comes to gathering, sourcing, and working with data.

Interested in dissemination and public engagement?

There's different ways to share your research or projects - we'll take a look at examples from York and beyond and consider how digital tools can help you disseminate your work in creative ways.

Want to make physical things?

Sometimes digital creativity is only part of the process - turning digital into physical can open up new opportunities for creativity and engagement.