Diverge/Converge: An in-person evening exploring creative problem solving
As AI reshapes how we work, having a creative practice matters more, not less. So does the ability to hold two unrelated ideas side by side and notice what they teach each other. That's where original thinking comes from, and it's something no model can do for you.
This is the first in a series we're planning. The format is simple: each speaker takes four slides, covering who they are, their side quest, what it's taught them about their work or life, and where it's leading them next. Ten minutes each, then we open it up.
This edition: Reading the Signs
Nail art, tarot and astrology. Three ways of making meaning from symbols, and what they reveal about creativity, intuition and the future.
The evening
7:00pm — Arrival, drinks and snacks
7:20pm — Welcome
7:25pm — Sarah Willett: What nail art taught me about creativity, identity and the mechanics of AI
7:35pm — Afreen Saulat: What astrology and finance taught me about certainty, belief and how we predict the future
7:45pm — Fru Bekefi: Unpacking my tarot library: how archetypal play sharpens intuition, agency, and strategic thinking
7:55pm — Questions and discussion with all three speakers
8:15pm onwards — More drinks, snacks and mingling
Speakers
Sarah Willett is an Innovation Designer at IBM, where she helps enterprise teams design trustworthy AI experiences. In her spare time, she blends her creative background, obsession with beauty products and emerging technologies to explore how technology could empower human creativity rather than replace it. Her current design enquiry, HiGloss Energy, asks whether AI can help us better understand our own tastes, build creative confidence and ultimately encourage more real-world experiences and human connection.
Afreen Saulat is a service designer and digital anthropologist, and the founder of 100kicks, a creative research consultancy. She has worked across mining, public health, government and the private sector, bringing an interdisciplinary approach to each. Outside of work, she dances, reads birth charts and follows curiosity wherever it leads, convinced that the best ideas come from the collision of worlds that aren't supposed to meet.
Fru Bekefi is a futures and semiotics specialist with a soft spot for phenomena that sound weird today but steer towards preferable outcomes. She helps organisations connect the dots between emerging needs, behavioural shifts, evolving mythologies, and their strategic implications.
Come curious. Leave with ideas you didn't arrive with.
Hosted by 100kicks, a creative research consultancy.