Einstein:   “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

Professor Bruce Sheridan,  the Chair of Cinema Art + Science at Columbia College, Chicago, and North American regional Chair of CILECT, the world organisation of film and media schools, discusses the recent research into creativity. Bringing together evidence from neuroscience and cognitive psychology to make the case for reintegrating art and science in education.

Listen to his Radio NZ National discussion, aired 14th March 2015.

“We need to acknowledge the mutual value between science and technology, and art.”

* Collaboration between art and science.

Bruce questions whether we are creating a different culture? Breaking down generalisations. e.g. gender roles.

* Creativity as the only thing that separates us from artificial intelligence.

Creativity teaches children how to be: persistent, risk-taking, committed, open to new experiences, resilient, collaborative, independent judgemental, identification. [Craft, Anna. (2002). Creativity and early years education: A life wide foundation. A & C Black.]

Creativity: Teaching children about failing, for example, Steve Jobs and Apple. Work out why you failed and strip out work is not important for moving forward.

“All education can build in safe ways to fail.”

Fred Mandell, Can art save us?,  suggests that:

“Everybody should incorporate art and creativity into their daily lives and their education because the arts help us gain a better understanding of the world and often new ways to approach challenging and complex problems more effectively.”

• The Arts stimulate our ability to see things differently. They teach us to uncover what is hidden or not obvious. The arts offer a new way of thinking in an uncertain and complex world.
• The Arts open up new pathways to action and solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
• The Arts give us the opportunity to slow down and reflect more deeply about what really matters.
• The Arts promote courage, resilience and inventiveness by forcing us to step into the unknown with confidence.
• The Arts disturb us and do not allow us to settle for the ordinary.
• The Arts expand our sense of humanity by introducing us to beauty.
• The Arts give us the capacity to re-imagine our world. Again and again and again.
• The Arts equip us to ride the waves of change.
• The Arts give us the tools to shape our future and to make better, more humane decisions.

David Burkus highlights the mistaken ideas, the myths of creativity, that hold us back and shows us how anyone can embrace a practical approach, grounded in reality, to finding the best new ideas, projects, processes, and programs.