Congrats Linda Naiman for finding this great Harvard report on the value of developing more creativity and imagination across college campuses. My heart jumps for joy with every article like this I read because the world is awakening to the possibilities of what artistic training can provide, finally, before our very eyes. I truly thought this day would never come. Keep up the great work Linda!
John Cimino and I just returned from a day we spent with faculty fellows at Millikin University. It was not only a special day because we were off campus at the zoo, but in the middle of the afternoon the wolves howled. It was like they were singing Millikin’s praises for promoting the development of entrepreneurial imagination.
Take notice dear reader. The state of the world is offering up a new world of possibilities. Perhaps for the first time ever the arts will draw the kind of attention they deserve. There really is profound economic value from learning how to become more creative- and what’s even better it comes from the world inside of you that simply needs to come encouraged and reminded how to come out into the sunshine and play.
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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:
5 Comments
I have been contemplating the prominence that athletic programs and events have taken in our culture, and am curious about the difference in the approach to the arts overall. Why are sports so attractive, and so publicly supported, but the arts are forever floundering?
Would love to have a conversation about these things… starting here. I welcome any responses.
Donna, While I agree with you that athletic programs are given more of the general publics attention, ironically the athletes themselves suffer from the same lack of creativity and imagination training when it comes to what to do with their careers. Like the arts few actually make it. 1 in 16,000 to be exact become professional athletes.
So while our society may pay significantly more attention to sports, ironically those they cheer, in rising but non professional levels, actually often have no future in sports because they too have not been taught how to use their imaginations to create new professions.
Athletes suffer from the same issues of if I cannot “play” as a professional and don’t want to teach, then what? My husbands daughter, Jennifer, is a sports management major about to graduate and is facing this very issue. She was an accomplished dedicated high school gymnast, is a straight A student, AP’d out of almost her entire freshman year, but has not been taught how to connect her intellectual capacity to her imagination. This is also why I was interested in writing a book with Jason Selk, a sports psychologist, because he faced these very issues and works with many others who do too.
Thanks, Lisa, for your reply. You always make my mind stretch to consider a new dimension! Thank you for all the creative nourishment you are providing on your blog… it’s such a wonderful resource for my imagination.
The link to the report didn’t work…would love to see it… Adam
Hi! It is working again now!! Enjoy.