A BRAINSTORMING event on innovation will be held in Dublin this weekend involving participants from Ireland and other EU states.

Creativity Rising is a gathering of the promoters of 11 innovative projects, who will share ideas on how their work can be progressed.

The event is being held as part of European Year of Creativity and Innovation and is organised by creative consultancy group Multi-Talent Ireland.

The 11 promoters will make presentations on the work in progress of their projects, which will then be reviewed by the others. Practical suggestions will be made on how the projects could be improved and useful contacts will be shared.

“It’s a challenging discipline for the promoters but our idea is that this cross-cultural ‘hot-housing’ will provide a stimulating environment where existing ideas or works in progress will be strengthened and new ideas born,” said event moderator Alec Taylor of Multi-Talent Ireland.

Apart from helping participants with their projects, Mr Taylor said another aim was to issue 10 recommendations for improving creativity and innovation in Ireland at the end of the gathering.

One participant is Humberto Matas, a Spanish-based innovation consultant who plans to establish an institute for human-centred innovation called h2i in Madrid.

“When people talk about innovation they tend to think only in terms of technology-driven research,” he said. “We want to focus on creativity, understanding people and developing solutions to human needs.”

Among the Irish projects designers Jean Byrne and Jim Dunne will discuss their pilot project, Designing Dublin – Learning to Learn, which involves a team of local Government staff, architects, engineers, graphic designers and people from other disciplines rethinking a community in Dublin and all its facilities.

Another participant is PR consultant Eoin Kennedy of Slattery Communications, who is working on an internal “creativity bible” for his team of 15 colleagues aimed at sparking new thinking and greater use of each person’s creative talents.

The conference will be opened by inventor and NUI Maynooth lecturer Damini Kumar, who will also make a presentation on Imaginate, her project to stimulate creativity among schoolchildren.

The event is by invitation only but a Twitter feed (twitter.com/ Multi_Talent) will allow those interested to follow the event and participate in real time.