Louisiana Gets Creative Economies

[25 March 2008 - From New York - Applied Imagination - By Steven Dahlberg] Louisiana Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu came to New York this week to share Louisiana's efforts to put culture and creativity at the heart of economic and community development. He was joined at Jazz at Lincoln Center by his colleagues from the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development and the Cultural Economy Foundation, along with New Orleans native and Emmy Award-winning actress Patricia Clarkson and New Orleans native and pianist Jonathan Batiste.

Landrieu described the Louisiana Cultural Economy Initiative and announced one of its key components -- the World Cultural Economic Forum (WCEF) to be held in New Orleans from October 29 to 31, 2008. This event will bring together policy-makers, artists, practitioners, cultural workers, educators, economic development leaders, business people and others from around the world. The International Centre for Creativity and Imagination is pleased to be assisting the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development with this event.

One of the challenges of linking culture and economy, Landrieu said, is how people can do what they love and make a living at it -- in the community in which they live. That is, how do you keep the creative talent in your community -- and the economic impact they produce -- rather than exporting it to other communities.

Landrieu raised some important questions that Louisiana is exploring on an on-going basis and that will be explored at the WCEF:

• How do we grow culture from the ground up to capture the inherent authenticity and richness of a community?
• How do we engage the creative endeavors of both the 'front-of-house" artists and the "back-of-house" staff?
• How do we add value to intellectual capital?
• How do we capture the creative things that are native to a community and share them with the world?
• What is the relationship between poverty and culture?
• How can culture re-create neighborhoods and make them safe? ("This is the ultimate goal of sharing New Orleans' and Louisiana's cultural economic success," he said.)
• Is democracy more important than culture? Can you have both? Is the best way to spread democracy by spreading culture?

Landrieu is asking pretty big and important questions. Let's hope these questions rise to a national discussion in the coming election cycle.

It's important to teach creativity and arts if you are going to grow a community's economy through culture, Landrieu said. This is one reason that Louisiana has mandated arts education for all students from kindergarten through 12th grade. "Art and culture have a residual effect on all," he said.

Louisiana wants to be the focal point for a global discussion about culture, which is why New Orleans is hosting the WCEF. The intersecting issues of culture, race and poverty are not unique to New Orleans, but issues facing communities all over the world. The WCEF seeks to provide a space where people can talk and design and then go back to their own communities and tap into the authenticity and richness of culture there.

In introducing actress Patricia Clarkson, Landrieu commented on the network of his Louisiana creative peers -- which include Clarkson, Wynton Marsalis (artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center) and Harry Connick, Jr. -- "when you work with creative people who believe that anything is possible, you find out that it is."

"We are the products of Louisiana," Clarkson responded. "My state made me the actress I am today -- what I was surrounded by. Sometimes I return home to get a charge, a jolt."

Watch for more information about the World Cultural Economic Forum coming soon.

[Pictured above are musician Jonathan Batiste, actress Patricia Clarkson and Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu]

Advice for Young Educators

[26 March 2008 - Edutopia News] Jonathon Kozol talks about building relationships, fostering creativity, and standing up for students. More

Education Experts Critique Candidates' Policies

[8 March 2008 - Kansas City infoZine] Beyond the ABC song, presidential candidates are offering suggestions to modify classrooms and tackle issues plaguing schools. "While the president can't solve education problems, the president has the ability to influence public debate," said Marc Lampkin, executive director of Strong American Schools ED in '08, which encourages education debate among presidential candidates. ... Clinton and Huckabee also advocate strengthening the arts in schools. Clinton said schools have eliminated art, music and drama programs because of No Child Left Behind's focus on math and reading. "Our children are getting good at filling in those little bubbles. But how much creativity is being left behind? How much passion for learning is being left behind?" Clinton said on Yahoo! News. Wilkins said art and music education was shrinking before No Child Left Behind. Huckabee has dubbed art and music as "weapons of mass instruction." He said these skills will teach children to develop creative ideas fundamental to enriching the U.S. economy. "It leads to a more fulfilled life, and it also reaches kids in other ways," said George Wood, director of the Forum for Education and Democracy. More

Your Brain on Creativity

[29 February 2008 - WebMD ] To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing, Your Inner Critic Must Hush -- For creativity to have a chance, the brain needs to get out of its own way and go with the flow. That's the bottom line from a new study on creativity. The study included six full-time professional jazz musicians. They got their brains scanned while playing a scale or a memorized jazz piece exactly as written and again when they were free to improvise, riffing off the assigned music. When they improvised, the brain's dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions were far less active -- and another brain area, the medial prefrontal cortex, was more active. The brain regions that were quiet during improvisation are involved in consciously monitoring, evaluating, and correcting behaviors, write the researchers. In contrast, the medial prefrontal cortex allows self-expression, in this case in the form of jazz improvisation, according to the study. But creativity isn't just about self-expression. The brain's sensory regions were more active during improvisation. More

Creativity and Aging White Paper Released by Americans for the Arts; Authored by Steven Dahlberg

[6 March 2008 - Americans for the Arts] Americans for the Arts has just released a white paper on creativity and aging, "Think and Be Heard: Creativity, Aging and Community Engagement" (PDF). Steven Dahlberg, head of the International Centre for Creativity and Imagination, wrote this report as a follow up to the 2007 National Arts Forum Series, which is supported by the MetLife Foundation. "Arts and aging is neither just about art, nor just about aging. Rather, it is about creativity and positive engagement -- that is, creativity as both a goal and a process for shaping the self and society. ... It is through such creative thinking and self-expression that people connect with others and shape the world. Such a work of art is a lifelong process," writes Dahlberg who is also a partner in Elder Care Expos, LLC. Please distribute and share this white paper -- and share your comments following this post.

Celebrating the Mind of Invention - Alexander Graham Bell

Sometimes it's the simple reminders for why we need to be more deliberate about teaching for creative thinking in schools and developing creativity and innovation skills in the workplace and communities ...

[3 March 2008 - The Writer's Almanac - American Public Media] It's the birthday of the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1847). The telephone's invention was actually an accident that came about when Bell was trying to perfect the telegraph. Alexander Graham Bell said, "When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." More

Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control

[28 February 2008 - National Public Radio] Researchers say unstructured play helps children learn to control their own emotions and behavior -- abilities that are a better predictor of a child's academic success than IQ. The regulated play many modern children experience doesn't foster such skills because the control has shifted to adults, which is something several researchers suspect may be behind the rising number of ADHD diagnoses. "I think a lot of kids get diagnosed with ADHD now, not all but many just because they never learned how to exercise ... the executive functions early," neuroscientist Adele Diamond says. More (hat tip: ASCD SmartBrief)

An MBA for Kids: The Minnesota Business Academy

[7 January 2003 - Edutopia] At this school, curriculum revolves around the workplace's demands for knowledge and critical-thinking skills. ... Teachers who care and assignments that have real-world applications are attracting students to the Minnesota Business Academy, one of the state's most unusual public charter schools. Opened in 2000 in the renovated former Science Museum of Minnesota, in downtown St. Paul, the high school known as MBA boasts a technology-oriented, project-based curriculum that incorporates a business element in everything from art to English. "Every school should make the curriculum more practical," says Bob Kaitz, president and chief executive officer of BestPrep, the philanthropic state business group that helped MBA become a reality. "A lot of kids don't do well in school because they don't see a connection between what they're studying and what they're going to do." More

Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

[21 February 2008 - NPR - Morning Edition] On October 3, 1955, the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on television. As we all now know, the show quickly became a cultural icon, one of those phenomena that helped define an era. What is less remembered but equally, if not more, important, is that another transformative cultural event happened that day: The Mattel toy company began advertising a gun called the "Thunder Burp." I know — who's ever heard of the Thunder Burp? Well, no one. The reason the advertisement is significant is because it marked the first time that any toy company had attempted to peddle merchandise on television outside of the Christmas season. Until 1955, ad budgets at toy companies were minuscule, so the only time they could afford to hawk their wares on TV was during Christmas. But then came Mattel and the Thunder Burp, which, according to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, was a kind of historical watershed. Almost overnight, children's play became focused, as never before, on things — the toys themselves. "It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys," says Chudacoff. "Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object." More

Dahlberg Brings People Together Through Creativity

[26 January 2008 - The Chronicle - Willimantic, Connecticut] A Willimantic man was recognized for submitting one of the Top 100 breakthrough ideas for the Make It Your Own Awards -- awards that encourage community development. Steven Dahlberg, along with others in a group that have met since last summer, submitted their application to the Make It Your Own Awards, a new grants program that aims to increase and strengthen citizen involvement and looks for a more inclusive and innovative approach to grant making. Dahlberg -- a self-employed consultant for the International Centre for Creativity and Imagination -- is looking to open up the creative minds of those in town, as his project is titled "Weaving a New Willimantic." More

It's a Beautiful Day in the (Creative) Neighborhood

Hi boys and girls .... Today, is the 40th anniversary of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. How was your creativity inspired in the last 40 years by Fred Rogers?

Creatively Bridging Differences: No More Taking Sides

[14 February 2008 - Speaking of Faith - American Public Media] Robi Damelin lost her son David to a Palestinian sniper. Ali Abu Awwad lost his older brother Yousef to an Israeli soldier. But, instead of clinging to traditional ideologies and turning their pain into more violence, they've decided to understand the other side — Israeli and Palestinian — by sharing their pain and their humanity. They tell of a gathering network of survivors who share their grief, their stories of loved ones, and their ideas for lasting peace. They don't want to be right; they want to be honest. More

Creativity Networking Series Launches in Connecticut

WindhamARTS Collaborative Launches Monthly Creativity Networking Series ... Provides forum for exploring the many facets of creativity and for discovering other people interested in creativity

The WindhamARTS Collaborative, in partnership with the International Centre for Creativity and Imagination, will host a Creativity Networking series from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month from March to June. The series will be held at WindhamARTS, 866 Main Street, Willimantic, Conn.

Steven Dahlberg of the International Centre for Creativity and Imagination will lead the first session, "Creativity, What is It?" on Wednesday, March 5. Participants will explore what creativity is, who has it, and how one can tap into more of it.

This series is open to all. A $5 donation and RSVP (860-450-1794) is requested. Following the session, receive 10 percent off dinner across the street at Willimantic Brewing Co / Main Street Cafe (967 Main Street, Willimantic)!

"The creative force is present in all humans to some degree. Pressures to conform within education and society often silence creative expression for many students and citizens. The potential for its development remains, however," says author and educator Berenice Bleedorn. "The right of an individual to create new ideas and to expect a respectful, supportive climate for their expression is a human right too often ignored. The human right to think and be heard at higher, more complex and mutualistic levels is a necessary added freedom."

Creativity matters in all aspects of society. If you want to reconnect with your inherent creativity and explore new ways of expressing it, don't miss this series. It will cover topics about creativity in all forms (including, but not limited to, arts), creative thinking, creative communities, creativity and education, creativity in organizations, creative persons, the creative process, creative aging and more.

ABOUT THE SERIES:
The series includes opportunities to learn with others, to think in new ways, and to generate new ideas. The format of the monthly Creativity Networking sessions will be informal and will usually include about 30 minutes of a presentation or experiential workshop (from a different facilitator each month), 30 minutes of dialogue about the topic, and 30 minutes of networking with other participants. Come and be inspired to apply your imagination and invent new possibilities for yourself and your community.

In addition, watch for Creativity Networking coming to the New Britain Museum of American Art on July 31 and August 28! The Creativity Networking series is part of a larger initiative to widely promote a more "Creative Connecticut." More details about this statewide project coming soon!

Creativity Networking is sponsored by the WindhamARTS Collaborative ... in partnership with the International Centre for Creativity and Imagination

ABOUT WINDHAM ARTS:
The WindhamARTS Collaborative is comprised of member arts organizations and individuals who came together in 2001 to foster and promote the arts and cultural life of the Windham region. Its goal is to maintain a multicultural, multidisciplinary, and multifaceted arts center where artists and artisans can interact with the public by sharing their creative endeavors. http://www.windhamarts.org/

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR:
Steven Dahlberg heads the International Centre for Creativity and Imagination, which is dedicated to applying creativity to improve the well-being of individuals, organizations and communities. He manages creative community projects for various institutions, serves as an adviser to the Guggenheim Museum’s “The Art of Problem Solving” research project, and serves as a juror to select public art for a new science education building. He collaborates with artists, scientists, business people, educators and others to help people develop their creativity. He has worked with UNESCO, Americans for the Arts, Heinz, the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, General Mills, and Yahoo! Research Berkeley, among other organizations. He’s led workshops and keynotes on creative engagement and participation at the international Creativity & Cognition Conference, the University of Connecticut's Confratute (summer institute on enrichment learning and teaching) and the State of Connecticut's Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Schools Summer Institute. Steven has more than 16 years of experience promoting and teaching creative thinking in the United States, South Africa, Europe and Asia. He was head an international creativity foundation, director of an annual creativity conference, program director of the Institute for Creative Studies in Minneapolis, and helped two long-time toy inventors launch a creativity consulting business. He has designed and taught three graduate-level creativity courses at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, as well as guest lectured at several universities. Dahlberg authored the foreword to the book, "Education is Everybody’s Business: A Wake-Up Call to Advocates of Educational Change," and edits the "Applied Imagination" blog. http://www.appliedimagination.org/

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SUMMARY ...

• DATES: Come to any or all of the first-Wednesday-of-the-month sessions: March 5, April 2, May 7 & June 4, 2008
• TIME: 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. -- Followed by dinner at Main Street Cafe, 967 Main Street
• PLACE: WindhamARTS Collaborative, 866 Main Street, Willimantic, CT 06226 (860-450-1794 - www.windhamarts.org)
• REGISTRATION AND INFORMATION: $5 donation; RSVP requested by phoning 860-450-1794 or emailing news@appliedimagination.org
• FACILITATOR: Steven Dahlberg, International Centre for Creativity and Imagination, www.appliedimagination.org

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Imagination and Scholarly Presidents

[11 February 2008 - OpEdNews.com - By Mark C. Eades] Thomas Jefferson, Barack Obama, and the Case for Putting a Scholar in the White House ... In a time of such sweeping global change as today we would be well served by a president as willing and able as Jefferson to think outside the box of conventional wisdom and politics as usual. As important as kitchen-table issues are, the compelling importance also of the larger questions of the day and the need for new ideas on how we might seek to address them constitutes much of what has drawn so many in the academic community and beyond to the Obama campaign. A true scholar possesses not just knowledge but also - even more importantly as Albert Einstein suggests - imagination. While I have no doubts as to Hillary Clinton's extensive knowledge and capability, I believe it is Barack Obama who truly possesses the intellectual depth and imaginative vision to lead America and the world into a new era. More

More Brain Research Suggests 'Use It Or Lose It'

[12 February 2008 - ScienceDaily] Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) scientists have found another important clue to why nerve cells die in neurodegenerative diseases, based on studies of the developing brain. Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland have just published findings, which add more weight to the "use it or lose it" model for brain function. QBI's Dr Elizabeth Coulson said a baby's brain generates roughly double the number of nerve cells it needs to function; with those cells that receive both chemical and electrical stimuli surviving, and the remaining cells dying. In research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Dr Coulson and her colleagues have identified a crucial step in the cell-death process. More

Art with heart ... Community banner project to brighten downtown Rock Hill

From my creative community work during the last week-and-a-half in Rock Hill, South Carolina ...

[7 February 2008 - The Herald - Rock Hill, South Carolina] A splash of color will liven up the winter blahs in downtown Rock Hill, part of a community arts program sponsored by the Arts Council of York County and the Rock Hill school district. ... The public arts project was brought to Rock Hill by the school district and arts center as a way to get children and community members involved in public art, said Kristin Sessions, resource development coordinator for the center. ... The community art project, titled Creativity: The Heart of the Community, is led by artists in residence Steven Dahlberg and JoAnn Moran, both from Connecticut. The project is a way for people to express themselves and participate in creating their own community through art, Dahlberg said. "It is a way to engage people in creating their community and bring people together that wouldn't normally work together, like youth and adults." Dahlberg said. ... Dahlberg said the project is collaborative, so everyone can add something. More

Bush Proposes an Elimination of Arts in Education Programs

The business community continues to call for improved skills in creative thinking, problem solving and innovation from new graduates. More and more studies demonstrate the positive impact of arts education and creativity on general academics. Yet President Bush proposes decreasing funding in 2009 for the U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education programs from $35 million to $0. Let's hope the next president, from either party, appreciates the national and global impact of ignoring the development of creativity skills in citizens of all ages.

[4 February 2008 - Americans for the Arts - Arts Action Alert] ... For the eighth consecutive year, the President’s budget has eliminated funding for the Department of Education’s Arts in Education programs, which include funding for model arts programs and collaborations with schools, teacher professional development, and arts programs for at-risk youth. Arts literacy is as central to an educated citizenry as are reading, math, and science. The Administration needs to understand the role of arts education in developing an innovative and creative society. More

US scientists fear brain drain

[3 February 2008 - Times of India] Scientists are chafing at the US government's unfulfilled pledge to boost funding for basic scientific research, the source of innovations ranging from the World Wide Web to high-tech cancer treatments. The estimated $500 million sliced out of the fiscal 2008 federal budget for research projects seeking answers to fundamental questions such as the nature of the universe could trigger a brain drain, scientists and others warn. "Scientists are not going to wait around to be brought back. There will definitely be a brain drain," said Republican US Representative Judy Biggert of Illinois, a key player in securing funding for Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago. "It was very troublesome to me, because we have had such a focus on basic research and how important it is to American competitiveness and our long-term economic growth," Biggert said. "We're worried about the 2009 budget now." More

This Is Your Brain on Optimism

[24 October 2007 - Newsweek] New research reveals the biological roots of positive thinking. How a rosy outlook can affect your health. ... We humans tend to be an optimistic bunch. In fact, it's long been established by psychologists that most people tend to be irrationally positive. The optimism bias, as it's called, accounts for the fact that we expect to live longer and be more successful than the average and we tend to underestimate the likelihood of getting a serious disease or a divorce. This tendency is adaptive—many researchers have claimed that a positive outlook motivates us to plan for our future and may even have an effect on our long-term physical health. Optimism may be so necessary to our survival that it's hardwired in our brains. A new study published in the journal Nature further confirms the idea that having a rosy outlook is a personality trait with deep, neurological roots. Researchers found that the brains of optimistic people actually light up differently on a scan than those who tend to be more pessimistic when they think about future events. More

Aging: Growing Older Is Found to Hurt Decision Making

[29 January 2008 - New York Times] For the especially unscrupulous con artist, the elderly are a tempting target. Now researchers have confirmed in the lab what frauds already knew instinctively: as they grow older, even people who seem perfectly on top of things may have trouble making good decisions. The researchers based their findings on a series of tests given to two groups of healthy people, one ages 26 to 55, the other 56 to 85. The goal was to see how well the older volunteers used the skills often demanded of them when making decisions in real life about activities like investments, insurance and estate planning. “Such decisions would be a challenge even for young adults,” the researchers note in the current Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. But when age is taken into account, they said, along with the abundance of shady marketing schemes, the challenge becomes even greater. More

Toni Morrison Praises Obama's Creative Imagination, Brilliance and Wisdom

[28 January 2008 - New York Times] Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of author Toni Morrison, who once labeled Bill Clinton as the ''first black president.'' Morrison said she has has admired Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton for years because of her knowledge and mastery of politics, but cited Obama's ''creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.'' Morrison said her endorsement had little to do with Obama's race -- he is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas -- but rather his personal gifts. Writing with the touch of a poet in a letter to the Illinois senator, Morrison explained why she chose Obama over Clinton for her first public presidential endorsement. ''In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates,'' Morrison wrote. ''That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it." More

It's the New Economy, Stupid

Sunday's New York Times Magazine had a great piece asking why the presidential candidates continue to spend time and rhetoric in old-economy settings, such as factories.

[27 January 2008 - New York Times - Sunday Magazine] Why do presidential candidates touting their concern for the economy pose with factory workers rather than with ballet troupes? After all, the U.S. now has more choreographers (16,340) than metal-casters (14,880), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. More people make their livings shuffling and dealing cards in casinos (82,960) than running lathes (65,840), and there are almost three times as many security guards (1,004,130) as machinists (385,690). Whereas 30 percent of Americans worked in manufacturing in 1950, fewer than 15 percent do now. The economy as politicians present it is a folkloric thing. ... Today’s economic anxiety is not the same anxiety that simmered between 1980 and 2000. Back then, recessions and slowdowns were understood as the pangs of a new economy struggling to be born. But the recession we now seem to be entering is to the information age what the recession of, say, 1957-1958 was to the industrial age — a “normal” recession in the midst of an economy with stable bases, an economy that (to use a current cliché) “is what it is.” The “jobs of the future” that were promised 20 years ago are here. Choreographers, blackjack dealers and security guards have replaced factory workers as the economy’s backbone, if not yet its symbol. New economies have always required a kind of initiation fee of those who would participate fully in them. As the historian Richard Hofstadter showed in “The Age of Reform,” the aftermath of the Civil War was marked by paeans to the prosperity that would arise from technological change. The 19th-century farmer went to great lengths to join it. “His demand for expensive machinery,” Hofstadter wrote, “his expectation of higher standards of living and his tendency to go into debt to acquire extensive acreage created an urgent need for cash and tempted the farmer into capitalizing more and more on his greatest single asset: the unearned appreciation in the value of his land.” These problems will be familiar to many a 21st-century security guard or Wal-Mart cashier. They are the problems not of someone “left behind” in the old economy but of someone struggling in the new. More

This is not to say that the job changes and job losses in factory and mill communities are not important. Rather, that today's - and tomorrow's - economy is pretty far removed from what those jobs historically meant. Focusing on new kinds of support for today's workers, support that looks different than it did in a manufacturing and industrial era, should be emphasized by at least some of the candidates. Yet these ideas don't seem prevalent in any of the campaigns.

Where is the candidate who acknowledges that creativity - in all its many and varied forms - is at the heart of community and economic development?

My Eastern Connecticut community is a former thread mill town. Two fantastic mill buildings have been renovated. One has become ArtSpace housing, while the other is partially open for something new. Clearly, these buildings will never again house major manufacturing. The challenge that our community, along with many others, faces is how creativity becomes the new threads for weaving our community's future. These threads of creativity are not just about the arts, but about every aspect of community development:

• Social threads ... including diversity, new ideas, new businesses, new music, openness, welcoming
• Economic threads ... including local inventiveness, innovation, entrepreneurship, preservation
• Education threads ... including children, universities, talents, knowledge, research, lifelong learning, collaborations
• Political threads ... including openness, collaboration, independence and interdependence, common interests
• Sustainable threads ... including green community, natural amenities, regional trails and parks, locally owned farms
• Creative threads ... imagination, creative thinking, new ideas, arts, culture

This is the focus of a proposal submitted by our town to the Case Foundation's "Make It Your Own" Awards, which recognize citizen-centered approaches to civic engagement. The idea for "Weaving a New Willimantic" with the threads of creativity was selected as one of the Case Foundation's Top 100 Finalist ideas from nearly 5000 proposals, and is currently under consideration as a Top 20 idea.

Creativity is a core human drive. People seek opportunities to develop and express this part of themselves in the community, whether in business, arts, learning, politics, volunteerism or any number of other areas. The new economy requires policies that develop and support the skills of creative thinking and innovation, facilitate environments where such creativity can be expressed and channeled, and candidates and politicians who at least acknowledge that we are in a different economic epoch.

New perspectives on Chinese innovation

[28 January 2008 - DEMOS - UK] China has big plans to boost its capacity for homegrown innovation. It is rising fast up the global league tables for investment, publications and patents, and a recent review by the OECD concludes that China 'is now a major R&D player'. But further progress will depend on the playing out of a complicated set of tensions: between the planned economy and the market; between national priorities and global networks; between the hardware of research infrastructure and the software of culture, skills and creativity.This half day workshop aims to provide a series of fresh perspectives on Chinese innovation, whilst also encouraging networking and an exchange of ideas between the many UK-based projects now working on aspects of Chinese innovation. Speakers include:

• Gang Zhang, Principal Administrator, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry
• Richard Halkett, Executive Director of Policy and Research, NESTA
• Simon Collinson, Professor of International Business and Innovation, Warwick Business School
• Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology & Director, BIOS Centre, London School of Economics
• Rushanara Ali, Associate Director, The Young Foundation
• David Tyfield, Research Associate, Lancaster University & Demos

More Information

Survey: Schools fail to teach innovation

[22 January 2008 - eSchool News] U.S. teens say they aren't being prepared well for technology, engineering careers. ... It's widely believed our ability to innovate and prepare students for careers in science and technology will be key factors in keeping the U.S. competitive in the global economy. Yet, nearly three out of five American teens (59 percent) do not believe their high school is preparing them adequately for a career in technology or engineering, according to the 2008 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, an annual survey that gauges Americans' attitudes toward invention and innovation. The disparity is more pronounced among some groups historically underrepresented in these fields. Roughly two-thirds of African-American teens (64 percent) and teen girls (67 percent) believe they are not being prepared well in school for these careers. The survey's news is not all bad: It reveals enormous optimism among America's youth--provided educators are savvy enough to change the way their schools teach. More

Some worry arts classes being left behind

[25 January 2008 - The Oklahoman] Americans want schoolchildren to learn the arts along with basic subjects, according to a new poll that gives ammunition to those pushing for more creativity in education. The poll was released at a news conference here Thursday that featured representatives of various educational and other organizations, including the Oklahoma Creativity Project, that are trying to encourage imagination and innovation. Some said they were worried music and art classes were becoming victims of the increasing focus in schools on standardized testing. John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, said teachers feel like they're wearing an "instructional straightjacket” because of the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind act and by states. More

The Moral Imagination of Entrepreneurs

[January 2008 - Inc. Magazine] ... The spirit of entrepreneurship includes imagination, inventiveness and openness to the new. This spirit of creative response aligns with the capacity to exercise moral imagination and to see ethical problems in a new light. To be sure, our most fundamental ethical values -- values such as honesty, avoiding doing harm, keeping commitments -- are grounded in timeless traditions and are not likely to be soon abandoned. But it is in the application of these ethical values to emerging, unique situations, where moral imagination and the entrepreneurial spirit can make a decisive difference. More

Being Creative ...

From one of the jottings in British Novelist Anthony Powell's "A Writer's Notebook" (published posthumously in 2001): "You can't be a creative artist if you are in any restrictive sense an intellectual snob." [Quoted in "Come dancing" in The Guardian, 26 January 2008)

What makes you happy? These seniors know

[24 January 2008 - Wicked Local - Cambridge] The seniors at Cadbury Commons now have a new skill to master: laughing out loud for one minute a day — every day. Even if there’s nothing at all to laugh about. Last week, retired psychology professor Freda Rebelsky stopped by the independent and assisted-living facility to educate the residents about how to be happier. The pursuit of happiness is not a new concept, considering it’s written into the Declaration of Independence. But positive psychology is a relatively new field that looks at what makes people happy, instead of what ails them. More

Gates Calls For Kinder - Creative - Capitalism

[24 January 2008 - Wall Street Journal] Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a "creative capitalism" that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum, according to a copy of the speech seen by The Wall Street Journal. ... Mr. Gates sees a role for himself spurring companies into action, he said in the interview. "The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy -- even beyond the market opportunities -- that's something that appropriately ought to be done," he said. More

Top Job

[22 January 2008 - HOW Blog] Fast Company just published it lists of the best jobs to have now and in the future. On that list: Interaction Designer. Interaction designers don't just design. They work with executives to define goals for the products and systems they help develop. And they mix reporting, psychology, and anthropology to see how people actually use what they design. More

NYT: The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It?

[20 January 2008 - New York Times] ... Whether humans will embrace or resist an innovation is the billion-dollar question facing designers of novel products and services. Why do people adapt to some new technologies and not to others? Fortunes are made and lost on the answer. Great innovations have foundered over human stubbornness. Consider the Picturephone, trumpeted by AT&T at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 as a major technological advance. Engineers reasoned that if hearing someone’s voice over the phone was terrific, wouldn’t seeing a face be even better?
Consumers didn’t think so. AT&T’s Picturephone, which would have added around $90 to a person’s monthly phone bill in 1974, a huge amount for the time, “was superfluous, adding little information to voice alone, especially considering its high price,” said Kenneth Lipartito, a professor of history at Florida International University. Even today, when adding video to a phone is a trivial cost, consumers may rebel. Video-conferencing often remains an activity forced on people by their employers. Resistance to technology is an omnipresent risk for every innovator. Even a device as fabulously freeing as the personal computer struck some people as an abomination. In 1990, the poet Wendell Berry famously declared his perpetual allegiance to the typewriter in his essay, “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” More

335 Inventors to Test Their Brainpower at Creativity Show

[20 January 2008 - Arab News]  Over 335 inventors, men and women alike, are set to showcase their brainpower at the Kingdom’s first national exhibition to highlight creativity, scheduled for March. The exhibition, organized by the King Abdul Aziz and His Companions Foundation for the Gifted (KAHCFG) and Saudi Aramco, is set to be the first of its kind in the country. More

Knowledge Vital for Progress: Khaled

[13 January 2008 - Arab News ]Makkah Governor Prince Khaled Al-Faisal inaugurated the first Arab knowledge economy conference here yesterday and hoped that its deliberations would boost ongoing efforts to promote knowledge-based economies in the Arab and Islamic world. “If economics is the ruling factor in our modern world, knowledge economy is the fuel required for economic development... Knowledge has become even more important than weapons,” the prince told experts from different countries attending the conference. More

Politics of unshackling creativity

[31 December 2007 - Economic Times - India] We need a new, holistic vision of reform as something that emancipates, unleashing every individual’s creative potential and nourishing it in a framework that is both global and positively enabling at the same time. In the beginning was the word and the word was Reform. Ever since PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh commenced the dismantling of dirigisme in July 1991, the word has resounded across the length and breadth of the country, in seminar halls as well as at election rallies, eliciting fear and loathing in some quarters and hope and joy in some others, galvanising protest and criticism, on the one hand, and releasing, on the other, productive energies hitherto undetected. ...  We need an integral vision of reform that inspires not just entrepreneurs who set up new factories but also peasants who give up land to build those factories. It’s time politicians stopped pushing reform bit by bit and only as a covert operation. Reform must be hailed as the practical path to emancipation. More

Making talent a strategic priority

[January 2008 - The McKinsey Quarterly] Finding and retaining talented employees is at least as challenging today as it was ten years ago. Demographic trends, globalization, and the growth of knowledge work have intensified the external pressures on companies—but many of them compound the problem by failing to make talent management a strategic priority. Executives can act on their rhetoric about the importance of employees in creating competitive advantage and embed a robust talent strategy in the overall business strategy if they focus on all workforce segments and not just on the top performers, create different value propositions for employees with different characteristics, and increase the role and capabilities of the human-resources (HR) function. More

Imagination is Real

[2008 - Edge Foundation] In response to the Edge 2008 World Question: "WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?"
Imagination is Real
By Alison Gopnik, Psychologist, UC-Berkeley; Coauthor, The Scientist In the Crib
Recently, I've had to change my mind about the very nature of knowledge because of an obvious, but extremely weird fact about children - they pretend all the time. Walk into any preschool and you'll be surrounded by small princesses and superheroes in overalls - three-year-olds literally spend more waking hours in imaginary worlds than in the real one. Why? Learning about the real world has obvious evolutionary advantages and kids do it better than anyone else. But why spend so much time thinking about wildly, flagrantly unreal worlds? The mystery about pretend play is connected to a mystery about adult humans - especially vivid for an English professor's daughter like me. Why do we love obviously false plays and novels and movies? ... For human beings the really important evolutionary advantage is our ability to create new worlds. More

Innovation in platforms

[15 January 2008 - DEMOS - UK] In our Public Value of Science and Atlas of Ideas reports, we explored the role of science-based innovation in addressing big global challenges. Looking at science globally, we are faced with the question of what sort of innovation applies to what scale of problem. It seems that the bigger the challenge, the more innovative the solution needs to be. It's something that the new Technology Strategy Board are looking at. They are interested in how to get business and the government working together on big sociotechnical questions. They call them "Innovation Platforms" They've started with work on Intelligent Transport Systems and Network Security - nodding towards policies on road-pricing and big social IT systems - NHS connecting for health, ID cards etc. Next, they're looking at low carbon vehicles, assisted living and sustainable buildings. Their aim is to crowbar innovation systems into doing things differently - being more innovative about innovation. As a new agency, with sparkly new offices down in Swindon - as sparkly as Swindon gets, at any rate - they have an opportunity to change things. Good luck to them. More

Aggression as rewarding as sex, food and drugs

[14 January 2008 - EurekAlert! / Vanderbilt University] New research from Vanderbilt University shows for the first time that the brain processes aggression as a reward - much like sex, food and drugs - offering insights into our propensity to fight and our fascination with violent sports like boxing and football. The research will be published online the week of Jan. 14 by the journal Psychopharmacology. “Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates, territory and food,” Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics, said. “We have found that the ‘reward pathway’ in the brain becomes engaged in response to an aggressive event and that dopamine is involved.” “It is well known that dopamine is produced in response to rewarding stimuli such as food, sex and drugs of abuse,” Maria Couppis, who conducted the study as her doctoral thesis at Vanderbilt, said. “What we have now found is that it also serves as positive reinforcement for aggression.” More

Don't just stand there, think

[13 January 2008 - Boston Globe] New research suggests that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies ... When you read something confusing, or work a crossword puzzle, or try to remember where you put your keys, what do you do with your body? Do you sit? Do you stand? Do you pace? Do you do anything with your hands? Do you move your eyes in a particular pattern? How you answer questions like these, it turns out, may determine how long it will take for you to decipher what you're reading, solve your puzzle, or get your keys back. The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on - that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies. A series of studies, the latest published in November, has shown that children can solve math problems better if they are told to use their hands while thinking. Another recent study suggested that stage actors remember their lines better when they are moving. And in one study published last year, subjects asked to move their eyes in a specific pattern while puzzling through a brainteaser were twice as likely to solve it. The term most often used to describe this new model of mind is "embodied cognition," and its champions believe it will open up entire new avenues for understanding - and enhancing - the abilities of the human mind. Some educators see in it a new paradigm for teaching children, one that privileges movement and simulation over reading, writing, and reciting. Specialists in rehabilitative medicine could potentially use the emerging findings to help patients recover lost skills after a stroke or other brain injury. The greatest impact, however, has been in the field of neuroscience itself, where embodied cognition threatens age-old distinctions - not only between brain and body, but between perceiving and thinking, thinking and acting, even between reason and instinct - on which the traditional idea of the mind has been built. More

People listen to world differently

[14 January 2008 - Channel 4 News / PA News] No two people listen to the world in the same way, new research suggests. Every individual's brain is tuned differently to the sound environment, scientists believe. "If you could borrow someone else's ears you would have real difficulty in locating the source of the sounds, at least until your brain had relearned to do it," said study leader Dr Jan Schnupp, from the University of Oxford. More

Two Views of Innovation, Colliding in Washington

[13 January 2008 - New York Times] As the Senate prepares to tinker with the nation’s patent laws this spring, it’s worth recalling the law of unintended consequences. From the vantage point of a half-century, for example, it’s clear that the formation of Silicon Valley involved serendipity more than intentional design. The co-inventor of the transistor and the founder of the valley’s first chip company, William Shockley, moved to Palo Alto, Calif., because his mother lived there. Moreover, although the transistor was invented at Bell Labs in New Jersey, an antitrust lawsuit during the 1950s forced the AT&T phone behemoth to license the technology openly at a nominal charge. And, the venture capital industry, an important part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, was given a big boost by Congress in the late 1970s when legislation loosened pension fund regulations — touching off an early wave of high-profile initial public offerings. Now, three decades later, Congress is likely to write legislation that could again reshape the contours of innovation and entrepreneurship for perhaps decades to come, in ways that are hard to predict. More

Culture Influences Brain Function, Study Shows

[11 January 2008 - ScienceDaily] People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the first brain imaging study of its kind. Psychological research has established that American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even perception. But are they reflected in brain activity patterns? More

RISD's New President - Mr. Creative?

[December 2007 - Rhode Island School of Design] The Board of Trustees of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) announced on December 21, 2007 that John Maeda, Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab, has accepted the offer to become the 16th president of RISD.

RISD Board Chair Merrill Sherman said, “We are delighted to name John Maeda as successor to Roger Mandle. RISD has a special obligation to play a leadership role in the world of art and design, nationally and internationally. Creativity and innovation are more important than ever. We believe John will be a bold, innovative and exciting president and will enhance RISD’s role in helping to shape and inform art and design in this century.”

John Maeda has a distinguished career in humanizing technology for creative endeavors. He has been a professor at MIT since 1996 where he is currently the Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab, responsible for managing research relationships with 70+ industrial organizations. He has also been a practicing designer since 1990 and has developed advanced projects for an array of major corporations including Cartier, Google, Philips, Reebok, Samsung, among others. His early work in digital media design is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2001, Maeda’s works of contemporary art have been exhibited in one-man shows in London, New York, and Paris to wide acclaim. His highly regarded fourth book, The Laws of Simplicity has been published in fourteen languages and has become the reference work for discussions on the highly elusive theme of “simplicity” in the complex digital world. Maeda has lectured at numerous conferences, universities, museums, and to corporate audiences throughout the world on his philosophy of “humanizing technology.”

Maeda said, “It is my deepest honor to be selected by the RISD Presidential Search Committee which was comprised of an extremely committed group of students, staff, faculty, and trustees — bringing all their unique perspectives to the table. Furthermore, to receive the unanimous approval of the Board of Trustees is a gratifying vote of confidence that instills in me a real determination to advance all aspects of RISD as an institution representative of the highest standards of learning. I look forward to working with the incredibly inspiring and creative community of RISD to realize the possibilities for the world’s first truly 21st century university of art and design.”

Maeda will assume his responsibilities as president of RISD in June 2008.

Stepping down from the RISD presidency will be President Roger Mandle, the longest-serving president since the early 20th century. During Mandle’s fifteen-year tenure, the size of the RISD faculty increased by 50%, the RISD endowment has grown by a factor of five and RISD’s first capital campaign exceeded its $85 million goal by over $20 million, and the RISD campus has expanded significantly, among other major accomplishments. Mandle said, “John Maeda is a commanding presence in both the fine arts and corporate design worlds. But just as important, he is a humanist. He is a genius — and he gets things done. He is just what RISD needs.” More (including a short video introduction to John Maeda, in his own words)

The Perils of Innovation Overdrive

[26 December 2007 - Harvard Business Online - Bill Taylor] I believe the big "innovation story" of 2008 won’t involve a cool product, a specific company, or a new creative hotspot. Rather, it will involve a general sense of anxiety about a phenomenon that I call Innovation Overdrive. And since 2008 is a presidential-election year, this general anxiety may influence the political conversation in the country. (If, that is, we can persuade the candidates to stop talking exclusively about religion and immigration, but that’s a topic for a different forum.) What is Innovation Overdrive? First, the gnawing sense that even though breakthrough advances in computing, communications, and consumer electronics are wonderful, anything in excess is a poison -- and it feels like we’re all chugging from a poisoned chalice. ... I fear that this same tension -- between creativity and responsibility -- is being resolved in the same irresponsible way in many other sectors of the economy, and that in 2008 we’ll see more fallout from an unalloyed infatuation with the new. More

Qlogging with Albert Einstein

A great summary and reminder of Einstein's views about the value of creativity and life ...

[3 January 2008 - Kevin Bartoy blog] ... If we truly recognize Einstein as a genius and truly believe that his intelligence provided a special understanding of the world, then we must not stop our exploration of his wisdom at E=mc2. His ideas and opinions concerning education, religion, politics, and pacifism are just as important as his scientific contributions concerning relativistic cosmology, capillary action, and critical opalescence. He provided us all with the gift of his intellect. It is now up to us to repay this wisdom. In Einstein's own words, "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."

Einstein quotes include:

• "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
• "Never memorize what you can look up in books."
• "The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing."

More

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike

[30 December 2007 - New York Times] It's a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience. Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, "When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin'." In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you've built around yourself. More

Toyota and "Brain Age" Inventor Team To Make Cars More Senior-Citizen-Friendly

[23 December 2007 - Edmunds Inside Line - TOKYO] As drivers age, they may find it increasingly difficult to stay alert and react quickly while driving. Now a video game expert is heading a research effort with Toyota that aims to make cars that are better adapted to the needs of senior-citizen drivers. The inventor of the popular Nintendo "Brain Age" series, Professor Ryuta Kawashima of Japan's Tohoku University is hoping to get the results of the R&D into cars by 2020 or sooner. More

PBS Special Shows How to Sharpen Brain With Workouts

[5 December 2007 - Bloomberg] Did you sleep well last night -- or can't you remember? A pair of PBS shows offers hope for those suffering from restless nights and/or dimming brains. Contrary to popular belief, dull thinking is not a preordained part of old age, according to "The Brain Fitness Program,'" which airs Dec. 7 at 10 p.m. New York time. However, you do have to work hard to keep your gray matter from taking on the consistency of that oatmeal you've been eating for a healthy heart. Host Peter Coyote says the brain has a wonderful ability to stay sharp and even "rewire'' itself after suffering catastrophic damage, including strokes. A panel of experts, including Dr. Michael Merzenich from the University of California, San Francisco, promises that unlike the proverbial old dog, the brain can learn new tricks right up until the very end. More

Ken Robinson introduces creativity and innovation in Oklahoma state-wide project

[28 November 2007 - NewsOK.com - Oklahoma] Sir Ken Robinson borrowed a line from an old Apple Computer advertising campaign Tuesday for a Downtown Rotary Club audience. "Think different.” OK, Robinson cleaned up the grammar and used the more proper "think differently” when he launched into a 30-minute monologue on the importance that creativity plays in our lives. Or should play in a world of changes wrought by the digital revolution. "If we are to embrace (the changes) and prosper in these times, we have to think differently about our talents and abilities,” Robinson said. "And that really begins in education. We have to think very differently about the way we educate our children. `

Applied Creativity: Creativity buoys outlook for hydrogen economy

[29 November 2007 - Christian Science Monitor] Hydrogen from bacteria, from coal – and how about a hydrogen generator small enough to power your lawn mower? ... Engineers who want to produce hydrogen for fuel have to think outside the box. Standard processes are too costly and inefficient. A sample of research reported this year illustrates the unexpected possibilities such creative thinking opens up. How about a portable hydrogen generator so compact it could power a lawn mower? Or how about coaxing bacteria to produce hydrogen from plant material with unprecedented efficiency? It also pays to look at traditional processes in new ways. L.S. Fan at Ohio State University met that challenge with the process that makes hydrogen by using carbon monoxide released by gasified coal. The gas reacts with water to make carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The trick to making this work as a viable fuel source is to find a cheap way to get rid of the CO2. "We needed a new way of thinking," Dr. Fan says. More