Stone Soup

In class the other week, my professor explained the story of Stone Soup, a folktale which depicts the cooperative process of crafting something out of many seemingly unrelated things.  Last Tuesday, our Design 001 team created our own “Stone Soup”.

The process began with bringing all the random art-project things we collected separately from home and pulling it all together in one big pile.  However, what faced us was not only a pile of objects and doodads, but a pile of thoughts too.  I’m pretty sure its safe to say that initially, all of us experienced so-called “brain farts”.  For me, it was first, “What the heck can we make of all this stuff?” and second, “How are we supposed to do this together?”

Over the years, I had become comfortable with doing my own solo projects.  And in group settings of the past, it wasn’t unusual for me to undertake the creative part of the project.  But this team was made of ALL creative people - people who were similar in the sense that we could all want to follow our individual creative agendas.  I actually became a little nervous because while we were looking at a pile of potentials for a masterpiece, each of us were also looking at a pile of potential head collisions.

I hate tension.  My biggest fear was, in cooking up our “Stone Soup,” we could have a “too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen” moment.  However, to my surprise, what took place was quite the opposite.  Every member of our team listened to each other’s ideas or made positive suggestions.  In the process of making our “soup,” we all helped each other in various ways; whether it was “Hey, I’ll help you paint all these paper plates” or “That isn’t sticking well?  Let me find some tape for you” or “That looks great!”  Some contributed their own little creations to the pot and others looked for ingredients here and there to enhance the visual aesthetic of our “Stone Soup.”

Overall, I can say that our project wasn’t my favorite out of the whole class.  There were soups that expanded their dimensions up into the trees or took on a personality.  These blew me away.  However, I learned a valuable lesson:  Cooperation is possible.  When each of us took a humble approach and kept our minds open, we were all able to communicate ideas and build off one another's creative energy – something that I think is extremely beneficial in the process of design.  If I had to do it all by myself, I wouldn’t have had as such a large spectrum of ingredients or ideas.  I know for sure I wouldn’t have been able to complete the soup within the amount of time.

I might be stating the obvious, but I really think the story of Stone Soup is one of cooperation.  It's a story of not only bringing things together and creating something together, but also sharing something together.