Possibility, Serendipity, Creativity and Insight
Investigating how we come up with new ideas
Dr Wendy Ross, London Metropolitan University, w.ross@londonmet.ac.uk
CREATIVITY
How does creativity unfold in the world? PSCI Lab investigates creativity not as something contained within the individual artist or thinker, but as distributed across objects, materials, tools, and spaces. Through ethnographic observation and experimental investigation, we trace the emotional and material entanglements that constitute creative practice—revealing how thinking, feeling, and making emerge through our relationships with the things around us
POSSIBILITY
What makes something feel possible—or impossible? This research explores possibility not as abstract potential but as something that emerges through the interplay of imagination and reality, past and future, individual minds and material worlds. Drawing on insights from Possibility Studies, we investigate how possibilities are generated, constrained, and transformed through our interactions with objects, environments, and each other. We examine the emotional dimensions of engaging with the possible—from hope and curiosity to despair and constraint—and how these experiences shape what futures we can envision and enact. Our work challenges dualistic thinking, revealing possibility as fundamentally relational, distributed, and grounded in difference.
SERENDIPITY
How do accidents become discoveries? Out research investigates serendipity—those moments when chance encounters yield creative breakthroughs. Moving beyond notions of pure luck, we explore serendipity as requiring both accident and sagacity: the fortuitous event and the skill to recognize and exploit it. We examine how serendipitous moments emerge from the interaction between people and their material environments, tracing the cognitive and emotional processes—from surprise to curiosity—that transform unexpected events into creative insight. Our work reveals serendipity as a distributed phenomenon, shaped by individual dispositions, environmental affordances, and the dynamic interplay between planned intentions and unanticipated disruptions.
INSIGHT
What happens when we encounter a problem that defies solution? This research investigates insight moments—those sudden shifts when seemingly intractable challenges become solvable. Rather than treating insight as a private cognitive event, we examine how breakthroughs are scaffolded by our material surroundings. Using qualitative and experimental approaches, we study the role of objects, tools, and physical environments in generating new perspectives, alongside the emotional experiences—from frustration and impasse to surprise and illumination—that mark the journey toward insight. Our work demonstrates that the path from stuck to solved often runs through the things we manipulate, arrange, and transform in the world beyond our heads.