My hope for this New Year is that we find the inspiration, insight and wisdom we need to guide us in finding optimal solutions to the challenges we face. Answers don’t just come from logic and analysis. We also need imagination. One of the ways we can be inspired is through the arts.
I’m happy to see that universities and governments world-wide — and especially in North America recognize the value of investing in arts and culture including arts-based learning, to support what I hope will be a new and improved economy.
Harvard University recently published a task force report on a New Vision for the Arts. The report says while the arts may be everywhere on campus, they are also conspicuously marginal.
The vitality of artistic activity on campus is rendered nearly invisible to the Harvard and local community by the lack of a centralized listing of readings, performances, screenings, and exhibitions. It is a typical and frequent experience for anyone vitally interested in the arts here to learn a day or a week after the event that something remarkable has occurred and is now over. And, more deeply we have, in relation to the arts, failed to foster a sense of urgency. What is missing—what the university has yet sufficiently to recognize and to broadcast—is a sense that the arts matter, and not just for one’s private pleasure, but for one’s public person and career.
The university wants to take the arts out of the sidelines and make it more central to education.
To allow innovation and imagination to thrive on our campus, to educate and empower creative minds across all disciplines, to help shape the twenty-first century, Harvard must make the arts an integral part of the cognitive life of the university: for along with the sciences and the humanities, the arts—as they are both experienced and practiced—are irreplaceable instruments of knowledge.
Yes, the arts matter in business, society and culture and I’m glad Harvard sees the light.
Read the full report here: http://www.news.harvard.edu/press/pressdoc/supplements/081210_ArtsTaskForceReport.pdf
Arts-based learning
I’ll be delivering public workshops focused on arts-based learning at three universities in February:
Day of Play at Syracuse University, Feb 11, 2009
The Artful Leader, Royal Roads University, Feb 19, 2009
The Artful Leader, Arizona State University, Feb 27, 2009
“Day of PLAY!” explores play in design, business and society
Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts
Feb 11, 2009
From the press release: The event will feature Scott Eberle, Vice President for Interpretation at the Strong National Museum of Play, Neil Stevenson, the leader of internationally-acclaimed design firm IDEO’s Kid + Play domain, Linda Naiman, founder of Creativity at Work, and Dr. Stuart Brown, founder, National Institute for Play.
“Day of Play!” will explore how the creative process is serious business. Collectively, Eberle, Stevenson, Naiman and Brown will share how their understanding and application of play has fueled design, business, and the advancement of society. They will also offer highlights from their respective perspectives on how applying the principle of “play” to every aspect of our lives – including our work — can propel more successful results.
The event is free and open to the public.
Details here:
http://www.creativityatwork.com/blog/2009/01/29/syracuse-play-in-design-business-and-society/
For more on play see the December Newsletter
http://www.creativityatwork.com/blog/2008/12/19/creativity-at-work-newsletter-2/
The Artful Leader,
Royal Roads University,
Victoria BC,
Feb 19, 2009
Artists and business leaders have many parallels. Both involve having a guiding vision, a potent point of view, formulating an ideal, navigating chaos and the unknown, and finally producing a new creation.
The arts take us on adventures in creative expression that help us safely explore unknown territory, overcome fear, and take risks. We can transfer these learning experiences to the workplace. Art-making has an alchemical effect on the imagination taking people out of the realm of analytical thinking and into the realm of silence, reverie, and heightened awareness. This workshop explores the arts as a metadisciplinary catalyst for transformation in culture, creativity, identity, and your own personal development as a leader. No artistic experience required!
Cost: $ 285 +GST
Please Register By: Thursday, February 5, 2009
http://www.royalroads.ca/continuing-studies/PABL1583-Y08.htm
The Artful Leader,
Arizona State University
Feb 27, 2009
I will be conducting a special 3 hour presentation of the Artful Leader, hosted by the School of Public Affairs, Bob Ramsey Executive Education Program. There is no charge for this event and if you would like to join use, please RSVP by February 17, 2009 to Linda.Hess@asu.edu or call (602) 496-1305.
Related Articles:
Culture of success: European schools introduce arts subjects to management curriculum
Highlights:
“Our mission is to be a service for companies [and] the companies say that now they need people with general culture and general knowledge,” says Jean-François Fiorina, director of the Grande-Ecole section at Grenoble.
“The companies don’t want super-technicians. They are going to face complex situations and for that they need students who have the theory to think and propose some solutions for the financial crisis.”
This sentiment is reflected across Europe and indicates a drive for more rounded business graduates. Last year Madrid’s IE Business School introduced humanities to the core curriculum on the MBA. Students do a two-week “launch” module at the start of their course which includes an introduction to moral philosophy, eastern and western civilisations and modern art. Copenhagen Business School offers a two-year Masters in business, language and culture, as well as an MSc in social science that focuses on the creative business process. It runs a similar programme in partnership with SDA Bocconi, the Italian business school.
Ken Starkey, professor of management and organisational learning at Nottingham university Business School, believes that business schools need to think about how management education has contributed to the philosophy behind the excesses of the last two decades. He has written a paper on the need for change with the French school, Ecole des Mines de Paris.
Continued here: http://www.independent.co.uk/student/postgraduate/postgraduate-study/culture-of-success-european-schools-introduce-arts-subjects-to-management-curriculum-1479582.html
Uplifting Ideas about the New Economy
Van Jones on the “The Green Collar Economy”
Green-collar jobs are not fictional or far-off. The Center for American Progress and PERI just put out a “Green Recovery” report. It showed that a $100 billion federal investment would create two million new, green-collar jobs — in just TWO years. That’s just helping America deploy our existing, off-the-shelf technologies and proven solutions. No technological breakthroughs needed. And some of that pays for itself, in energy savings.
Well, for too long, we powered the U.S. economy with consumption, not production … massive debt, not smart savings … and environmental destruction, not restoration. Those days are over. To green the economy, we stop borrowing and start building. We stop relying on credit from overseas; we start relying on creativity here at home. And we generate jobs by protecting America’s beauty, not destroying it. We can turn this breakdown into a breakthrough – if we make clean energy the cornerstone of the new economy, not credit cards.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/van-jones-qa-about-his-ne_n_135928.html
Buy Van Jones’ “The Green Collar Economy” at Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Green-Collar-Economy-Solution-Problems/dp/0061650757/cawblg-20
Hazel Henderson on Reforming Global Finance:
We find large constituencies in many countries who see opportunities to:
• reform global finance to serve people-centered sustainable development
• restore real productivity in homegrown, local, living economies
• reform monetary policies
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restore ecosystems
• accelerate the growth of the green economy and create new jobs
Read Henderson’s keynote presented to the Green Economy Initiative Conference, UNEP, Geneva, Dec. 1, 2008 http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/?p=1119
Transforming your world
If you would like to benefit from the transformative experience of art to improve leadership and team performance, or if you would like to talk about workplace challenges with a confidential thinking partner please contact me.
Are you on Facebook?
Become a fan of Creativity at Work. and The Creative Economy in Canada (This group was started during the 2008 Canadian election, and now that it is over, I invite you to add your news items about the creative economy world-wide. After all, we are all interconnected.)
Happy creating,
Linda Naiman
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Creativity at Work is a consulting, coaching and training alliance at the forefront of creating transformational change in organizations. Our focus is on leadership and team development, creativity, collaboration, and cultivating environments that foster innovation. We use artistic processes in concert with dialogue, weaving right-brain imagination with left-brain logic and analysis to help you uncover breakthrough solutions.
About The Creativity at Work Newsletter
The Creativity at Work Newsletter provides overviews of new research in creativity and innovation, ‘best practices’ of leading organizations, links to new or relevant websites and an array ideas and techniques from innovation experts. Please forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues.
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