IE Creativity Day engages the community and is an opportunity to touch on inner values, exhibiting a different theme, and spirit, every year.
This year’s theme, Crack your chaos, explored various interpretations of the combination of chaos and creativity. The 2021 edition maintained sanitary protocols while offering online and face-to-face content. With participation from the city, faculty, external workshops, student clubs, the hybrid program, and various IE University departments, the event was a great success. IE University student and IEU Photo Club president, Teresa Olombrada Rodríguez, shared how her team cracked their chaos on IE Creativity Day.
My name is Teresa and I am a third-year Dual Degree in Laws + International Relations student at IE University’s Segovia campus. When I arrived at IE University, I immediately joined the IEU Photo Club, which was practically inactive. Today, I’m the president of the club and have taken initiative to revive it to be what I would have wanted it to be when I joined—full of curiosity and novel expectations.
Reviving the IEU Photo Club is a way for me to contribute to the University. It’s important to me to put a bit of extra energy back into the IE University Community that has given me so much during my time as a student. I also see leading a club as a way to tap into my creative potential, and to stay motivated when academics become rigid or dull. I would recommend the experience of leading a club to anyone interested in both a challenge and a way to be more engaged with student life.
I view IE Creativity Day as IE University’s defining event. The biggest distinguishing factor of IE University is our chance to bring creative ideas to reality, and IE Creativity Day celebrates just that. For me personally, it’s a day full of joy. Because the event is open to students, faculty and the public, it generates community spirit. It allows us to take a break from our day-to-day to truly dive into our individual creativity.
Since creativity is inherent to photography, the IEU Photo Club’s participation in the event may have been taken for granted. Truth be told, it was not an obvious decision for us as the strict restrictions in Segovia had the club’s morale quite low, and finding motivation and energy was a challenge in and of itself.
In this sense, teamwork for the event was key. I believe this day was mainly possible thanks to the momentum of the Campus Life team behind the event. Once you ride the wave with them, it all becomes smoother. There was a lot of support from their side, so in the end, we were able to rally the team and celebrate what turned out to be a great day.
The theme of the 2021 edition of IE Creativity Day was Crack your chaos—as creativity and chaos are one and the same. The way the IEU Photo Club cracked our chaos was by taking famous images and adding a COVID-19 element to the aesthetic. Thus, we parodied Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring with the addition of a double mask, and in the famous Jack and Rose scene in the movie Titanic, we ensured that social distancing protocols were strictly practiced. Students and staff served as models for the project. Beyond the jokes, we were able to participate in an amazing workshop where photographer Diego de Miguel trained us on the use of flash and portrait photography.
IE Creativity Day is an event that I’ll never get tired of promoting to friends, classmates, and incoming students. It’s nearly impossible for me to create a shortlist of all the reasons to participate, so instead, I’ll just say, “Trust me—this is a holistic, transcendental experience that you do not want to miss.” You’ll never regret attending IE Creativity Day, especially because you’re instantly introduced to even more Campus Life events. Part of the charm of IE University is the IEU Experience, and if you miss things like this, you’re missing what encompasses being a student at IE University.