Best Practice | Urban Sketchers have a closer look on our cities. They are attentive and become aware of the facts and influences of the urban environment. While sketching and focusing their attention to the surrounding, they find details, they thought didn’t exist. First, all Urban Sketchers are reporters and then, they move on to Urban Citizens, men and women that bring in their point of view, their arguments and their ideas.

Sketching makes one happy, like so many creative hobbies do.

And this is the further challenge: Urban Sketcher give the sketches another dimension. Very often their sketches are enriched with their ideas for the better. This is the first reason why: they sit there and sketch for a while, they see new things because they take their time to look closer. And second: Sketching slows down.

Sketching is relaxing and this lower speed brings back creativity.

And the third thing is: From many researches we know, that problem solving works best, when you do not try to find a solution, but while doing things that relate to the problem you suddenly find a thing, that matches to your actual problem. Creativity makes it possible, that you detect a pattern or solution, that matches to another, maybe bigger problem from another field of your life. And the brain is in a mood, that makes it possible to switch the solution from one problem to the solution of another problem. This is why Archimedes cried „Heureka!“ in his bath tube, because he discovered buoyancy while he took a bath.

So all the three things work together in the perception of the Urban Sketcher: the new perception, the slower pace, the inspiering environment, the creative activity and the fact, having the right tool in his hand to catch the idea and bring it to paper. This is why many urban sketcher have plenty of good ideas while sketching.

That’s why, Urban Sketchers have so many good ideas to improve the world.