The Art of Changemaking

Today, February 1, is the beginning of National Arts Month.:)

To pay homage to all our artists and creative souls out there, and to do justice to the art of changemaking, we feature excerpts of a TED and Reddit interview with creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson [emphasis mine]:

“… Creativity isn’t a specific activity; it’s a quality of things we do. You can be creative in anything–in math, science, engineering, philosophy–as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance. And you can certainly be involved in the arts in ways that are especially creative. And so it’s important to emphasize that it’s not about creating some small space in schools where people can be creative, and particularly not if that means just tacking on some art programs on a Friday afternoon. It’s about the way we do things.”

Sir Ken Robinson (Image courtesy of TED.com)

“Creativity is putting your imagination to work and it’s produced the most extraordinary results in human culture. I mean, it is really the foundation of human culture, I believe. And it’s generated multiple ways of looking at the world, multiple ways of seeing it, multiple ways of thinking about it.”

“…There are skills of creative thinking that can be taught. I think of this as general creativity. You can help [people] think productively, generate ideas effectively, help them to think of alternative approaches to issues and questions. So there are very specific skills that can be taught, and in a metaphorical sense, it’s kind of like a grammar of creativity. It’s a series of processes, not an event. And helping people understand how that works is an important part of being creative. You wouldn’t expect people to become literate just by hoping it’d happen.”

“I did a big report for the British government called All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. It’s available online. The British government put together a national strategy to promote creativity in education. I also published a book a few years ago, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. The idea is you have to make the idea of creativity clear and operational. Like we have done with literacy. And when you’ve done that, then the practical tasks become clearer.”

And here, below, is one of the top TED talks, favorited by some of our very own TEDsters and TEDxers here in Manila:

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

__

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Read his full TED profile HERE.

Visit Sir Ken Robinson’s official website HERE.