 Welcome to the Creative Life Show brought to you by Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Bles and President of the American Creativity Association's Austin Chapter. We are here today to answer the question of whether kids are afraid to be creative or merely unwilling. Joining me to answer this question is a panel of leaders in four organizations that are keeping creativity alive in the world today and safe for our children. Coming to us from the group hosting the annual World Creativity and Innovation Week is their Deputy Steward, Bethany Schwann. Aloha, Bethany. Aloha, thank you for having me. You're so welcome. Going around the room in a little north of where I'm sitting today in Austin, Texas, from the Canadian Network for Imagination and Creativity are Michael Wilson and Peter Gamwell. Aloha, Michael. Aloha, my pleasure. And to you, Peter, Aloha. Aloha. Phyllis, it really is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting us. Oh, you are so welcome. We're looking forward to hearing from your team. And moving around the world to really right now to a little bit of north of Texas and in Oklahoma, we've got the National Creativity Network represented by Susan Nakalman and George Zucros. Aloha, Susan. Aloha, Phyllis. Thank you again so much for inviting me to be part of this. You're welcome. And Aloha, George, and you're in Minnesota, right? Oh, no. Never say that to us. We're in Wisconsin. Aloha, Phyllis. I'm just wondering if you were saying— From the Badger State, it's all good. All right. So moving around the room, well, I've checked you all in, I think. I'm Phyllis Bleece calling in on behalf of the American Creativity Association. Now to get started, I want to share with you the opening questions raised by Sir Ken Robinson in a profoundly moving TEDx, which is to this day the most watched TEDx show ever. And it was produced in 2006, I think. He made the case, a very moving case for creating an education system that nurtures, rather than undermines, creativity in the world for our children. But it's called our school's killing creativity. Sir Ken asserts that creativity is as important in education as literacy, and it should be treated with the same status. And he goes on to say that schools beat out of children their courage to take a chance or to make a mistake, be wrong about something, and that if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never be creative. And by the time these children get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity, the capacity to be prepared to be wrong. And then they become frightened to be wrong. And we now have companies around the world that are just like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we are now running a national education system in most countries of the world, maybe all, where mistakes are the worst things that you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. So Sir Ken believes passionately that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we are educated out of it. And this panel today is going to be addressing these questions. And I ask you, panel. Do you agree? And why is this that we're educating creativity out of our kids? And to just double up a little bit on these questions, I had a viewer just before the show who knew the show was coming on, call and ask me about what has happened to the generation of kids who were just starting school in 2006 and who are now in their mid-twenties. They're all in the workforce right now. So opening up the panel, would someone like to speak to this? I would be delighted to speak to it and state unequivocally from the very beginning that kids are neither afraid nor are they unwilling to be creative. The critical fact there is that when you come across learning cultures, classrooms, schools, families, which determine to set in place the right balance of conditions, then the natural creativity, the natural potential that lies in every single child and every single adult will flourish. In 2001, I did a PhD study with a group of grade 8 students and the whole point of the study was to teach them their language and literature curriculum using the arts as a catalyst for six months. And boy, did they ever rise to that occasion. These were ordinary kids in an ordinary school and they'd never had that type of approach before. It took me two or three weeks to focus on trust building. That was a huge part of this. But once they got into it, and once they understood that what I was asking them to do was to interpret their learning in a way that made sense to them, that could be to art, drama, music. I didn't care. And it awakened that learning culture with those kids. And Peter, I want you to stop there just for a moment. I want to point out that in education, about 15 years ago, we had a budget crunch in the Austin Independent School District. And the first thing that they wanted to cut was the arts. And so this is so innovative. Using the arts as the medium within which to reach out to what I'm hearing, bringing the kids in, imagine cutting the arts and music. The two big things were art, music, and Spanish as a second language. All three were the first things cut. It's awful. Yeah. And I think you have something to show us today about the results of that. Is that true? We have a... Well, it's the next... What happened after that study? A remarkable opportunity came along for me. And I was appointed superintendent to the Ottawa Carton District School Board, which is a very large school district here in Ottawa. And my responsibilities were leadership for the entire district, and that morphed into leadership and creativity. So I led a creativity movement, which at the time was not welcomed by everybody because the focus of the ministry was we need to get the marks up in mathematics and literacy. And my focus was to say, you know, what we need to start with is embrace the idea that every kid has a seed of brilliance within them. And it is our foundational responsibility to set in place the conditions to find out what that is, to grow them from that in the context of a strength-based culture, because deficit thinking tends to take people down rabbit holes. And yet it is so common in organisations for a series of reasons. And by getting those... By embracing the concept of a seed of brilliance in everybody and embracing a strength-based approach, you foster a culture belonging, which for me is the most important thing. So, yeah, we led this... It was a 14-year initiative, seven or eight events each year. Each of them focused on two or three things. Number one was the celebration of the brilliance in everybody and the idea that you need to flatten the hierarchy. So it was... When you walked into one of the events, you didn't have to wonder what it was about because there were creative initiatives, hundreds of them, from schools, from the community, from the indigenous community, from the multicultural community. And it was just a wake with brilliance. And over a period of time, this had a deep impact on the culture and teachers started to take risks. And I think we have... There was one teacher, I'll just finish this briefly, one of the teachers, a lady called Rebecca Chambers, she'd been following this movement over the years. And she made a decision, she made a decision to fundamentally transform the way she shaped her high school social studies classroom. And so I followed her for a total, I still follow Rebecca, of six years. And I've got hundreds of videos of her kids. No exams, no quizzes. She took those kids on a journey. First of all, a journey of self-understanding, whom they were as learners. And she taught them that there are many different pathways to learning and to knowing. And that the more of those they explored, the more they would awaken themselves. And then she introduced the concept of the power of community. So all of them were encouraged to go out into the community and do things. How did this impact on kids? It was incredible to see what she did and how many lives she transformed and continues to. I was into one of her celebrations of the extraordinary because she didn't do exams. She had the kids present through metaphor in a setting, in a resource center, and you've got to glimpse into this. The kid you're about to see had never seen me before in his life, Saxon. But he had created a jail for himself. So I interviewed him for a jail. So, Saxon, I'm sorry we'll see you in this state. Tell me a little bit, what's going on, Saxon? I'm being restricted by school. How on earth did that happen? School is such an open place. Well, there's a lot of stuff that we're forced to do. There's a lot of stuff that we're forced to learn and we don't really have freedoms within learning those things. Okay, can you give me an example of that? Have you felt that right the way through school, Saxon? Through most of school, I mean, like this class is a little bit different, but I would say for most of my classes, I've been told how to learn, I've been told what to learn, and I've been told what to present. That's very interesting. So this class is a little different to that? In what way, Saxon? Well, you see we have inquiries, which basically we pick an issue and there's freedoms and restrictions within those, but we're given a lot more freedoms than any other class I've ever been in. What's that done for your thinking? I think it's opened up my mind a lot and I've learned to think different ways. I've learned to think way more creatively and I've been given that opportunity to think a lot creatively, a lot more creatively than any other class I've ever been in. Well, I have to say, the metaphor that you're using of the jail and the handcuffs, it's very powerful. Thank you. I think, I mean, obviously having the autonomy, would you have ever done this in another class, Saxon? Never. What made you think of this? Well, I think this semester hasn't really been a great semester for me in terms of grades, but I've been kind of frustrated because I've been thinking that in a lot of these projects, if I was given the freedom to do what I really wanted and to show what I really wanted and how I wanted to, I think I could have done a lot better and I think I would have learned a lot more too. Do you mean in your other subjects? Yes. Very interesting. If you had the power to do it, well, let me rephrase it. If you could give advice to the public school system, thinking of the young people coming behind you and how you want their experiences to be, what would that advice be, Saxon? I would say that I think we need to treat everybody as an individual and not have them as cookie cutter people. Everybody's different and I think that everybody learns differently and if we could figure out a way to have everybody learn the way that they learn best and the way that they want to learn, I think that everybody will be way smarter and will advance as a race. You have a remarkable mind, young man. Oh, thank you. Don't ever forget it. Thank you so much. Hey, no problem. If everybody could be allowed to learn in the way they learn best, it would make the world out of his, out of the words, out of his mouth. And he had no idea I was gonna ask him that question. He'd never seen me before and I loved the way he ended it. If it could be personalized, I'm not using his words, but if it could be personalized, I think we'd have a better race. What a beautiful way to put it. Anyway, I've got hundreds of those videos with these kids, not just from this classroom but from others. It's just a matter of embracing the idea that all of those kids and all of the adults as well have got seeds of brilliance and providing the autonomy to set in place the culture which cultivates that. So, Bethany, you were nodding when the student first started talking and you were smiling and nodding and I know that you are now the deputy director for the World Creativity and Innovation Week. And I wonder if you could share with us what he might have to look forward to being part of once he gets out of school. Does he step away from any possibility of being understood as a creative, imagine an innovative young man or what's happening on this global stage, world stage? Yes, great question. It's interesting. Saxton brought up quite a few amazing points in his interview. The thing that struck me the most about him was his mention of compliance. We are not allowed to do things in classrooms. We're not allowed to step out of bounds and creativity by definition is thinking differently, approaching problems differently, divergent thinking. And so it's interesting to see him really understand that from the courses that he was already taking and how different that course was that he was in. Globally, we are trying to strengthen and promote divergent thinking and just approaching everything that you do in a potentially different way, whether that is traveling to work via a new route or celebrating with your friends and asking different questions, remaining curious as you grow and as you experience life, making connections all over the place. And it's been fun to see how much growth we are actually receiving at World Creativity and Innovation Weekend Day. We have grown quite a bit over the past two and a half years that we have had it. We have, I believe 160 countries now celebrating with us, everything from education to government to private organizations and individual people. So it is quite amazing. And just before you go too much further, we have two slides giving the audience sort of a gestalt of these 160 countries. And when the show, you see the show, you'll be able to freeze the screen and take a look. This is the first set of countries and the next slide, Michael, continues the count. And I would say there's something for all, in 160 countries, there's pretty much something for everybody to be doing what? Like during this week? Yes. Day. So you talk about a week and a day and that sounded confusing. And what are you talking about? Absolutely. So the week is April 15th through the 21st every year and it is celebrating everyday creativity. So it is celebrating with your friend, trying something new, attending an event or a seminar or speaker. It is, and then the day is promoting the world and making the world better, using creativity and innovation to promote and further the United Nations, 17 sustainable development goals. So not only increasing your own creativity in the everyday creativity, but also promoting the UN's SDGs. Okay, so now, so that's what we do every day. And I think we have another slide showing some of the celebrations going on in the world. Is that from last year? It is. So that's a 1,797 total celebrations equals four celebrations per person? With the little people are representative of four celebrations. Okay. So that's how that chart was built. But yes, we've had 1,700, close to 1,800 individual celebrations with world creativity and innovation week and day. And it has been a little bit of everything from education to the weist of children, kindergartners and preschoolers up through Fortune 500 companies, using creativity and understanding the importance of creativity and innovation in their everyday work. So there's a little bit for everyone and you can find great examples of celebrations and places to get connected on our website. Okay. Well, and to talk to one of those celebrations, coming up in April, I'm not sure if it overlaps. I'm sorry, I lost track of that. But Michael Wilson from Canada, from Ottawa, could you tell us what the Canadian network for imagination and creativity has in store for the folks, is it in Ottawa? The light on that? Yes, I'd be pleased to. First of all, everything that scenic does, that's the Canadian network for imagination, creativity. We call it scenic because Canada is a very large country with very few people. So there's a lot of scenery there. So scenic, you know? Anyway, and scenic was formed, oh, for recent, we're the new kid on the block because I noticed when I was invited to speak at a conference at the University of New Brunswick in 2017, I thought it was just another arts conference. And I found out that the person running the conference was Dr. Mary Blatherwick, who heads up an organization called the Atlantic Center for Creativity. I organized a conference in which creativity was used as a motivation guide for all sectors of society. She had members from everywhere at this conference, from architecture, to law, to the medical network, to government officials, to educators, to everything. And I said to her, Mary, you have to go national with this. We have to make this national. And she said, okay, and so we did. And we invited people from across the country to join us in the steering committee. And we've got people from Vancouver and the Maritimes and Ottawa, quite a few people from Ottawa. And of course, with us today is my distinguished associate, Peter Gainwell, who's a member of, not only a member of Scenic, but a driving force behind everything they do, as you might imagine from his talk to you, which actually it's a little while ago. Also, everything Bethany mentioned is also embedded in what we're trying to do on a national basis. And we have a number of unique characteristics. One of the most interesting to me is something called our monthly idea jams, which is actually a word I stole from Peter. And it's a monthly relaxed conversation in front of a fireplace about a topic relating to creativity that's introduced by a presenter. And we spend an hour on Zoom, having a casual, relaxed discussion about it. And sometimes we have conversations sufficiently deep that people actually cry on the air because they fell a first opportunity to speak deeply about themselves without the fear of being judged. And aren't we talking about the fear of being judged, whether it's kids in school or adults in life. And so that's the general frame of what we do. And of course, we've got another one of these idea jams coming up on Thursday evening, the day after tomorrow, and we'd like to invite everybody here to join us for that session. And it begins at seven o'clock. Eastern Standard Time runs for an hour. And I know Bethany, you've been to one or two of these. And so we invite all of you to join us. It's completely harmless, but it allows us to have relaxed discussions about any sector of creativity that we're involved with without fear of judgment from anyone. We accept the opinions of all. And so as I'd like to tease people, we invite everybody and their colleagues, their friends, their enemies, their relatives, and we even accept pets. So I'm speaking on me. The link that is that on your card when we do the outro, will the link to the idea jam be there or do we need to leave it in the notes with the show after it posts? Either of those will get you to where you wanna go for Thursday night. Some of you are on my list, sir, for seeing if you get nasty annoying notes from me all the time. And you'll see directions about that. So people can self-subscribe to this mailing list and then get invitations. And then there's an honesty happening too. Yes, now I just wanna frame that. I'm gonna let Peter speak because once he starts, he won't be able to stop. So I've just talked about the macro of what we do. The wider implications of what we're trying to do. But we're trying a big experiment now in Ottawa, Canada of going to the micro of what we've been talking about. It's a bit like Peter, interviewing that student, his jail sentence as it were, and an indication through one person of what is wrong with the public school system, at least in Canada, I have no idea about how things are in the light in USA. And this is another example of going from the wider field to a specific example, right here in Ottawa, from a usage made from an old school and from an illumination of a school for social innovation at one of the smaller universities in Ottawa. And without talking about it any further, ladies and gentlemen, here he is once again, Peter, get him out, Peter. Oh dear, you only thought you were running this show, Phyllis. I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Okay, so yeah, Michael mentioned to me about seven or eight months ago about this idea of having a live idea jam. And I think I referenced earlier that we had done seven or eight of these events every year for that 16 years of the creativity movement with the school district. So it immediately got my juices flowing. And I immediately, I think we immediately knew what we wanted to do and it's grounded in this. The world is in a state. It's a mess. And there are all sorts of people out there who are feeling that deeply and they need some hope. So we were talking this through and one of our wonderful colleagues, Goran, who's up, well, you know, Goran very well, don't you, Anthony? He said, why don't you call it this? I've been listening to what you're saying. And so it's called creativity as a force of social transformation and odyssey. And as soon as we got that title in our heads, it was easy to organize. And the first thing we decided upon was there would be no keynote speaker. The thing was, well, there's actually gonna start up on the Friday night with just a sort of a get to know you. We're working with a broadcasting program located in a school. These amazing kids are gonna be there through the entire thing documenting it all. So yes, it'll be a sort of a meet and greet and but with some very intentional conversations on the Friday when they get there on the Saturday morning, they're gonna walk into a human library and the foyer of this amazing old school which has been transformed into a social center for the most underprivileged organizations in Ottawa. Indigenous groups, there are, there's food banks. I think there's women's shelters. It is remarkable what they've done with this building. So it speaks to the very topic that we're talking about. So we've got 10 or 12 organizations who are gonna be in that human library and we have one of them, just to give you an insight, is something called Orchidstra. Is that the Venezuelan thing, isn't it, Michael? Yeah, that's from the El Steema project in Venezuela where a famous conductor at that time was concerned about poverty in villages and towns throughout Venezuela and he had an idea of giving them all European instruments and giving them free music lessons and it began playing classical music in these villages all over Venezuela. That idea has been exported all over the world and Peter's talking about the example of that exists in Ottawa, which is enlightening itself and reason alone for all of you to come and join us at the event. The lady whose brainchild this was, Tina, she is a tour de force. So she's actually gonna be there right through the conference but in the background of this human library we'll have eight to 10 of these musicians playing to give us a wonderful ambiance. And then the rest of the day, so we're going to give everybody a passport. They're gonna go, they're just gonna free flow amongst the human library, have the juices sort of stimulated by what's going on and then the rest of the day is gonna be so what? So what are we gonna do now to, so all of us within our own sphere of influence can do something more. I'm sure people are already something more to make the extraordinary happen. So the final thing I'll say about this is that I reached out to the local school district and said, would you like to partner? And they instantly said yes. Now there are five, I think partners who are involved with us, including universities, school district and a couple of others. So I think this idea that boy we need this right now has really capitalized people's thinking. So thank you so much. Now, I know there are activities in the Innovation and Creativity Week, which is Innovation and Creativity Day has been put on the map by the United Nations. And then this week is built around it. I know Bethany was gonna speak to a couple, one in Australia, what they're doing. You'll have to excuse me in terms of the dates, but does this Odyssey overlap that week? Absolutely, April the 19th and April 20th. So the idea for the audience is to be thinking, well, we could do that too, or what could my school do? Or what could my company do? To put out a shingle the day of, on one of the days in Creativity Week. And really if you were to contact any one of us, especially our guests, George Sucrose and Susan McComment, who are aggregators of creativity actions around the world. And we'll talk about that, get your notice to Bethany, look up her card on this show or after this show. You can kick off something in your own city, your own school, your own company. And Bethany Wright, there's a new website going up for this and you wanna speak a little bit to that before we get around the room some more? Yes, absolutely, thank you. So our founder, Marcy Siegel, who many of you know, used to say that World Creativity Weekend Day could be like Mother's Day. Many people celebrate it, most people celebrate it, but you celebrate it in your own way. Some people buy their mom's flowers, some people give her a card, some people make her breakfast in bed, right? So that's kind of the entire goal here for creativity. However you want to celebrate it, however you want to do something differently, by all means we would support and help. We are run by a student organization out of Miami University in Ohio currently, and we are also here and set up to help support. We can do brainstorming sessions, we can offer past examples. There are many elements and resources that we have to help anyone consider how they could celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Weekend or Day. And this costs nothing, they can go right? Correct. 100%. W-C-I-W-C-I-W-O-R-G.org. Okay, .org. And then you'll give them support. You know, it would be very cool for teachers to call and get support to do something like what was happening in the school Peter showed us. And just scout troops, girl scout troops, boy scout troops, skateboard, skateboard groups, you know. And do we, now it is really, it's a question. We have some time left on the clock. Do we want you to, I wonder if we want you to introduce what's happening in India or did in India and Australia or George and Susan, we haven't heard from you yet today and I wondered if you know of anything that's happening or maybe we'll come back and look at some of those examples and you, Susan, you're the, just help me with the alphabets here. You're the direct, you're the co-director and George, you're the director of the National Creativity Network, right, NCN. And so maybe George, if you would talk a little bit about the resources that you are aggregating and how people can get on that list and be fed by it. So please say a little bit about NCN and your dreams for it and how we can support it and how you can support us. So thank you, Phyllis. You know, I think what we'll do is quickly do an origin story because every superhero has an origin story. And in this case, our superhero is Susan McCallmott and her work with Sir Ken Robinson. So we can touch on that because I think it goes back to your original question, are schools and everything else killing creativity? And it's not the schools because there are good teachers and there are good administrators and there are good, there's a lot of good people out there who wanna do the right thing and do a good thing. But it's the creation of that environment. We've been talking about it where people can fail, but failing isn't the only thing they can also succeed by choosing the things they wanna study and pursuing greatness in whatever those things are. But you know, we start this conversation because NCN flows from the Sir Ken Robinson tree. So we should start there, Susan. And then I'm happy to talk quickly about the NCN articles of interest and other things we're about. Go for it. And I just want to share that in an unlikely place like Oklahoma, back in 2006, I was leading a philanthropic organization at the time, but just sort of convening people from different sectors from education, commerce and culture. And as we started talking about, why was Oklahoma at the top of every bad lesson at the bottom of every good lesson nationally? What could we do about that? And encountered Ken Robinson at the time before he became Sir Ken Robinson, invited him to Oklahoma, started working with him actually as our advisor on creating something that we initially called the Oklahoma Creativity Project. His idea was to create a climate of possibilities. He often would say, we can't mandate creativity, but we can come together and you know, as we bump into one another and let our guard down and start sharing, we can create those environments, whether they be in schools, whether they be in courtrooms, if they're in our homes, that are not fear-based, but they're love-based because he, like John Mackie from the CEO of Whole Foods, said that one of our creativity conferences, you know, you really have a choice to create these climates and these environmental climates that are non-judgmental, that allow everyone to thrive. Or we all know what it's like when we walk into a classroom and everyone's afraid to raise their hand or to ask a question, or you walk into an office situation and no one is able to share their ideas about how to make the company better. So it was Sir Ken's idea that we could start this in Oklahoma and as we started in Oklahoma, our Lieutenant Governor at the time, he's a Lieutenant Governor in Wisconsin, we connected, we flew to Madison on a very snowy icy day and met with the creativity initiative that George was starting up. There were people in New Jersey and North Carolina and before long, as Sir Ken invited us to become part of this international districts of creativity network based in Belgium, there are 12 districts around the world that are connected, that are seeking creativity change, in societal change. Our very first creativity reform in Oklahoma, we had a pre-conference meeting, just inviting individuals from different states and from Canada, we, Peter was our lone Canadian I think at the time and maybe someone else in Alberta, but we started thinking about how we could form this North American creativity network, just connecting live minds on how we could in our own way, plant these seeds of creativity, encourage others and as Sir Ken said, have a thousand flowers bloom. So that is what we're still trying to do, we started back in 2010 with this national creativity network. Many of us, our lives have changed, we're in different places, but we've stayed connected and we've stayed connection, those connections have gone even further internationally so that we are sharing best practices, we're trying to, you know, from the macro to the micro in our communities, in our homes, in our places of worship, trying to effect change and allow people to come from that love-based environment and instead of the fear-based environment for their ideas to help change the world. And as Peter said, we so need it right now, but George has continued. One thing, National Creativity Network is doing and I'll toss this back to George, is to share all of the articles, ideas, documents through a weekly server. So George, would you like to share that it's amazing work and it goes far and wide to help encourage? I would love to and Phyllis, I think you made a slide out of the Articles of Interest. So back in the day, we started what we call the NCN or National Creativity Network Articles of Interest. It has quotes, it has videos, it has all kinds of news articles about imagination, creativity and innovation in all its forms. So it's not an arts-based idea, but the arts are definitely part of it, but it's science and engineering and technology and math and humanities and everything you can think of that inspires imagination, creativity and innovation. It's a free service that we put out every Friday. We're still trying to figure out the mail delivery as we got hijacked, but you can go to the National Creativity Network's website and there are at least four weeks of them archived there. We encourage you there, but I think it's also, as has been spoken about a couple of times today, it's about connection. And so it's a leveraged point because National Creativity Network is a network, Canadian network of imagination, creativity. It's not us being the thing, but us rather connecting to all the good people across the nation, across North America, and ultimately across the world who want to do this work and connecting them, their energy together, their inspiration together. And we're just happy to continue to be able to do it. So. And George, so what we saw a minute ago was the collection of very small snapshot of a collection of the articles and underneath on the left is the link to where people can go and find that. And then we have the next slide. This is just a screenshot of your website, which people can go to. So it's, what is it, www.ncn? It's actually the full, the full word. So it's www.nationalcreativitynetwork.org. That's right. And so people can see that there are downloadable articles of interest in groups by date. And there's just a plethora of information there. Yeah. There's always, there are no quizzes. Nobody has to read the whole thing. They might just like the quotes of the day, they might be inspired by a video. No quizzes, but there are a lot of resources there in all kinds of different ways, so. Well, and if I can just backpack on to an item George said, it is all about connections, celebrations and resources. It is amazing that the four organizations are here today and I am privileged to be a part of this, but we should be sharing this. And the more that we pass and promote and pass this on to everyone else, the better our world can indeed be. So thank you. I love, I love the missive that you guys send out. It's like my favorite thing to receive on Fridays. And my son's always like, what are you doing on Saturday morning? I'm like, I'm reading my missive. So. To that end, Southern Oregon University is in May is having a major creativity conference. And I think if you just go to SOU, look up SOU creativity conference, we can leave it in the notes to the show. That that's a significant, they make a significant annual commitment to a several day conference on creativity and. And for all of our listeners, if they come up with stuff like that and they want to send it to us, we will put it in the NCN articles of interest. And tomorrow I'll be looking at Southern Oregon, going, all right, how do we get this in here? Yeah. And we will display it on our website as well. Nice. Nice. So let me put an aura in the boat, take my aura out of the boat and put it in the water for a minute for the American Creativity Association. I offer that we are the grandmother and grandfathers of organizations. We've been around four decades since 1986, 87, and still are moving forward in this world of creativity and innovation. It was the brainchild of two interesting groups in America. That's Urgo, American Creativity Association, although we've been around the world and have, I was chapter development officer for about 10 years. And we, and I was supporting 60 chapters around the world in most countries, and then many cities of the United States. But the interesting origin story there is that leaders in gifted education, that's a term of art in the US for classes that are focusing on the creativity of the child, not on creativity, but the creativity within the child. So they were identified as gifted. I could go on for quite a long time about the beef I have with calling these children gifted and talented and how isolating, unfair, and as a lawyer, I almost, I could have got involved in starting the Austin chapter, the American Creativity Association, or I could have flown to Washington, DC and got the legislation renamed because as a lawyer, I can tell you when you use as a term of art, which means it's a specialized term, it means something very unique like landlord and tenant in a rental agreement. When you use those terms of art, you already know, you don't know who the landlord and tenants are. It does, it's a generic term. And those terms gifted and talented are not terms of art, they're generic terms. So if you label one child as gifted and talented, you take these people, everybody knows what those terms are and you identify only a few children in a school as gifted and talented, you create division, anger, shame, blame, envy. It has done more harm. So I'm a little bit on my hot seat here and I started the school for the gifted and talented children, which is still going, a private school in Austin, Texas and I really wrestled with this. So I say the words, because it's the truth, I also don't shy away from history and what's the truth. There's a lot of innocence that goes along with our evolving awareness and consciousness. And it takes courage both to use those terms and then to also be aware, self-aware of what we're doing. So to continue on my journey on behalf of the ACA, these teachers across the United States in the classroom and at the university level teaching teachers how to teach this special population, which is, it isn't that not everybody doesn't have different gifts and talents, but these children need fewer, I would call them the XPL children. Then you wouldn't assume you knew who they were and you would have to say, well, what does that mean? Well, that means that they think divergently, that they need three repetitions rather than 20, that they can be highly emotional, that with this population goes a high number of dysgraphia or ADD or ADHD, they're very sensitive. They don't, they can test well or poorly. And then you assemble like 25 characteristics so, oh, okay, that's the LXP kid and we can help them in the classroom and support them. So those, the teachers who taught teachers how to work with this population, along with guess what? The leaders of R&D departments like at Disney, like at DuPont, like at Alcoa, they somehow were having coffee or wine together somewhere, these two leadership groups and especially the leadership at DuPont, which came up with like the Post-it Notes and a lot of our cool things in the late, in the 60s, 70s and late 80s. They came together and said, let's create an organization to advance creativity in every domain, not just in the United States, but let's, they called ourselves, we called ourselves the American Creativity Association. And it's still going, held annual conferences, kept up a journal and mailed it out snail mail when that was required. And I can tell the audience that it also funneled into about nine special interest groups within the larger umbrella covering the arts and communication, but also business and technology, education and training, spirituality, the nonprofit NGO group, government and health and science. So it's applied art, thinking art, it's IQ, EQ, SQ, somatic Q, and that's the ACA. And I have a slide to share with you. We have one of our most recent things is this show. It's called The Creative Life. You can see here, we have over two and a half years of library, you could watch any one of these shows, I think, and just have a very inspirational takeaway. And we delve into many topics where the centerpiece is how do we release access and honor our creativity, innovation and imagination. And so I welcome you to this show and to the ones we have in the past and those going forward, give me a call or an email if you wanna be on the show or recommend a guest to be on the show. This is very inclusive. So with that said, we have together introduced our different organizations. We've given some ideas about SOU and other organizations and we are still left with the question my caller had about this topic of are we killing the creative spirit in our children? She wanted to know what the children who are now 24, 25, how are they being served that generation, but what about today's generation as well? And George, you've got a comment. I just wanted to look to Bethany because her colleague Jim brought forward the notion that the current students are approaching creativity in a way that surprised all of us. Not thinking, oh, how can I be more creative, but I don't need that. So Bethany, can you talk to that? Yeah, thank you. It's interesting. We recently just returned back from a trip to San Francisco and we were taking a senior capstone class out there to do creative consultant work. And as we were turned home, we started to hear some rumblings from the students. And it was interesting to hear the things that they were saying. They were basically saying I don't have to look around when I'm walking down the street because my phone tells me everything I need to know about the location that I'm at. And Jim and I got kind of debating about this. Is Google and our repetitious knows when our children are toddlers, are these things killing creativity? I have both a five-year-old and a 16-year-old, so I'm constantly in the, and no, don't drive off the cliff phase of parenting, but it was interesting to see the students and their reactions to connection and just being open-minded and whatnot as they kind of progressed through this course. And I'd love to hear your thoughts if compliance and the readily available answers that we are giving our children of today if this is hindering creativity. Well, I know I've been talking, and I'll make this really short, but it seems to me it isn't about what we do, it's about what we remove. And my point is if we remove, it's a very different conversation to talk about the stigma of making mistakes, of not being prepared to be wrong. So there is competition in the field for being creative in ways that we did in the past, kept track of time and schedules and finding information. And it's still in the room with us today, this question of whether it's okay. I mean, especially with Google and smartphones and instant access, we'll be having a chip in our brain, we'll be plugged in like borgs to the internet, we'll have all information, but will we be wise? Will we be creative? And will we be prepared to make mistakes and be wrong? Can you, does it even up the ante for being made a fool of? How do we keep alive a strong sense of it's okay to fail, it's okay to be wrong? And they're parallel tracks. I think it goes beyond that as well. I've created a library over the last 10 years, probably 300 videos with students, teachers, parents, business people as I'm trying to grapple with my understanding of how do we get it so wrong? So I don't think school could kill creative. Well, I do, but I think there were reasons for that. Society kills it because we are so committed to thinking in hierarchies which stifle creativity. I'll give you an example. I don't wanna give too many because I'm writing a book about this and nobody will buy it if I tell you all. It's the pathology of the hierarchy of leadership. So that when you think of leadership in a school, say, or an organization, very often that's done in a structured way and people are not made to feel comfortable to speak their mind and speak their truth. And so often that's the first impediment. The answer, flatten the hierarchy. Do not take yourself too seriously as a leader. Take the job seriously and get over your ego. You need to, I think the number one priority of a leader is to create the space so that the brilliant potential informal leadership comes out with everybody around them. The second pathology is the way we define intelligence in a hierarchical way. And that is so damning for so many kids. We tell them that they're not smart when they are absolutely brilliant with shining the light in the wrong place. So that's the second hierarchy. And the third hierarchy is creativity. We are bound and determined to say, these kids are creative, these kids are not. Arts kids, oh yeah, creative, very clever scientists. But we don't look at the mechanic and say, well, you've got some creative genius or the plumber who's working on the most horrendous conditions. So I think those three together need to be front and center in our thinking and need to help us in the re-imagining how we're gonna go forward to cultivate the seeds of brilliance that lies in every kid and every teacher and every adult. One of the things related to all of this is how can we create atmospheres, conditions, structures to encourage creativity? How do we, particularly, creativity is a process and not really individual. It's a collective enterprise. There's some debate about that, but I'm on the collective side myself. And one of the things that Scenic tries to point out is that if we have a group of people, whether they're students or football players, I have to get football in here somewhere. That... If you create for them a sense of groupness, a sense of that you are individually significant and you're significant because you're part of the group, both of those things, and if it gets them into the state where they can laugh at themselves and laugh at each other at the same time because of the same experience, you're beginning to build that level of trust, that level of nakedness that allows you, individually and as a group, to capture the creative potential which is there. I sort of look at this from the point of view how we shut down those opportunities. We're all inherently creative, but we don't all have the same opportunities to express it. And it seems to me it's breaking down barriers to some extent. You know, all societies want to be compliant because we want everybody to understand what the rules and regulations are about getting along with others in society. I get that. But there also needs to be the opportunities for us to individually and collectively to feel as if we can trust ourselves and each other in order to make mistakes, to make idiots of ourselves, as I've obviously had no trouble doing for years. And that we can promote that sense of collective and individual creativity and ultimately improve the significance and the kindness of humankind. Wow. We can't leave on a more thoughtful note, Michael. And so thank you. We will leave it right there to our audience. You have been watching the creative life from Think Tech Hawaii. We have been discussing the question of whether our kids are afraid to be creative or just unwilling or neither of the above with a panel of leaders in organizations that are now promoting creativity, innovation, and imagination. I'm your host, Phyllis Bleece, and the past president of the American Creativity Association and current president of the Austin chapter. Joining me today to answer the question and bring to our attention, ways to keep creativity alive have been our guests, George Zucros, board chair of the National Creativity Network, Susan McAlmet, board vice chair of the National Creativity Network, Susan, I'm sorry, Peter Gamwell, who's co-founder of our Canadian network for imagination and creativity. Bethany Schwann, who is deputy steward for the World Creativity Innovation Week and Day Support Organization, and Michael Wilson, another co-founder of the Canadian Network for Imagination and Creativity. Mahalo panel for joining us and Mahalo to our viewers for tuning in. We will be back in another edition of the Creative Life Aloha.