Creativity, as well as money, may reduce drop-out rate

Urban kids – both American and European – keep dropping out of school.

Most of us are familiar with the whys. The usual causes include poor home-life conditions, including lack of support for academic achievement; disintegrating school buildings and facilities; cultural pressures and social issues, from gang influence and teen pregnancy to sheer poverty; and teachers and curricula that fail to engage students’ imaginations and interest.

In the United States, communities and governments have been struggling for decades to find solutions – any solutions – to the problem, leaving us with a mess of voucher programs, sketchy charter schools,  unequal distribution of funding (including Ohio’s long-unconstitutional, property-tax-based school funding) and ever-more-desperate inner-city schools.  The few models of success, such as magnet schools focusing on arts  or science, aren’t being widely adapted fast enough to make a difference to the majority of students, especially those lacking obvious special talents.

The U.S. House of Representatives has embarked on a new effort to improve the drop-out rate: Two weeks ago, Democrats introduced the Graduation for All Act , which would offer competitive grants to community school districts to help with the cost of improving low-performing high schools and middle schools. Okay idea, but a wretchedly cumbersome process. The legislation would require each district to invent its own wheel by forming a task force, bringing in experts and devising a strategy - allowing communities to custom-design policies to fit their particular needs, but swamping everyone involved in the bureaucratic equivalent of cold molasses.

Europe has at least a more imaginative approach, if no less burdensome procedures to overcome. As part of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009, 100 students from 25 nations were invited to an innovation and creativity camp in Brussels last week to think up fresh products and services to engage schoolkids and keep them from dropping out.  

Their ideas? A Facebook-like service that would let classmates and teachers discuss schoolwork and share educational materials online. “Creative -thinking” classes. And most intriguingly, a student-mobility program that would give all European Union high-school-level students  the chance to study in another member state – a program that officials want in place by 2020. 

This would be a bear to set up, what with costs and the mind-melting details of information access, program enrollment, insurance, transportation, host families and curricula to cope with. It’s possible that existing student-exchange programs could be linked and expanded to form the organizational basis for a continent-wide system.

But at least the Europeans have had the sense and inventiveness to go to the students themselves for ideas and to commit to bringing some of those ideas about. 

What’s the difference between them and us/U.S.?  They say, “You’ve thought up a terrific concept. Let’s make it happen.” Our leaders are saying,  as usual, “Here’s some money.  Go figure out what to spend it on.”

Which approach do you think will result in a dynamic and effective solution to the problem?

Talking turkey on the arts – and don’t forget the survey

I wrote not long ago about the Ohio Arts Council ’s regular efforts to sound out constituents across the state on their community successes and problems and organizational and artistic needs, in order to better serve them.

Though the OAC has a great rep for being particularly conscientious about that sort of thing, it’s not alone. In spite of the widespread perception – pervasive since the American culture wars of the late 1980s and early ’90s – that civic and political officialdom is generally anti-arts, many private organizations and government agencies have made it their business in the last decade or so to find out what’s undermining our local and national arts-and-culture sectors and do something about it.

Leveraging Investment in Creativity (LINC) especially comes to mind. The mission of this 10-year-old New York City-based group is to make the work and lives of American artists easier by researching communities, finding out what resources are and are not available to artists and then offering support – grants, information and idea-sharing – to help those communities provide a better climate for artmaking.

Americans for the Arts does in advocacy what arts councils and groups such as LINC do in financial and infrastructure support. Americans for the Arts makes the case for art and arts education nationwide, spreading the word about their value, keeping arts issues in front of national and community leaders and working to improve support for the arts among the public and elected leaders. 

They can do their work a lot more effectively when they have input directly from members of the arts sector. So, leaders of arts organizations, you can help by filling out the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Network survey about current professional-development needs and trends. Both novice and experienced leaders are welcome to participate.

The only way the American public will ever develop a more widespread and lasting appreciation for arts and for creativity in general is if those of us who believe it’s important keep speaking up. We need to untiringly remind our fellow citizens that those two things are among the best of what humanity has going for it – they’re means to the changed and better world in which we all want to find ourselves. 

So on Thursday, I’ll wish a happy Thankgiving to all the people everywhere who are using their imaginations, their powers of expression and the skill of their hands to enrich, inform and improve our lives. 

People like you.

Successful education is all in our heads…

Did you know that dyslexia may not result from the mixing up of  images but from confusion about sounds? Or that learning music can affect  fine motor skills?

Or, as researchers Mariale Hardiman and Martha Bridge Denckla report on the Dana Foundation site, that “… [T]he brain constantly changes with experience, makes new brain cell connections (synapses), strengthens connections through repeated use and practice, and even produces new cells in certain regions” – meaning, for instance, that just because a child or young adult doesn’t seem to have good mathematical or verbal ability at the moment doesn’t mean he or she can’t develop it in time ?  

A new field of study is emerging at the place where  education and  science flow into the same stream. It’s called neuroeducation and it combines groundbreaking study of the brain with new research about how humans learn.  

Exciting? You bet. After decades of emphasizing the science of teaching, educators and cognitive scientists may be headed for an important change: figuring out the many and best ways that humans take in knowledge, make use of it and develop their brains in the process.

This is creative in every way, from the dissolving of barriers between two closely related specialties and the new ideas about brain function that are being explored to the indications that creative education – both inventive means of teaching and the effects of studying creative disciplines such as arts – can have positive, long-term benefits for learners of every age and ability. 

Because experiences change the brain, positive environment and atmosphere may be as important to creating effective schools as innovative curricula and teaching methods.

That means a great deal is going to have to change in schools systems everywhere. Read the Dana Foundation article here and tell me what you think.

Talking about new-media arts journalism on WCPN

With the shifting plates of the media industry opening chasms under traditional print publications and a lot of venerable news outlets crumbling into rubble as they slide, a lot of  individual news people are trying to reimagine and rebuild journalism in small but promising ways. From hyper-local neighborhood news sites and online statewide reporting co-ops to membership e-newsletters and specialty e-zines, inventive approaches to gathering and sharing information have begun popping up all over.

Like many other areas, Northeast Ohio is turning into a testing ground for these media prototypes and entrepreneurial ventures. Listeners here can find out what’s emerging on the regional media frontier by tuning in to public radio station WCPN/ 90.3 FM  at 12 Tuesday for “Around Noon. ” I’ll be there with host Dee Perry, Thomas Mulready of the weekly event and local-issue guide, CoolCleveland.com, and Sarah Sphar of Ohio Authority, a new online, statewide lifestyle and culture zine, to discuss the transformation of arts journalism and explain in what new directions each of us hopes to take the reading public.  

I hope you’ll join the conversation.

Pulling down another wall

I spent nearly all day Friday in meetings that the Ohio Arts Council held in Cleveland to find out what was on the local arts and culture community’s mind.

This is something the OAC does regularly in  towns of all sizes across the state – it meets not just with artists and arts organizations, but also with funders, local agency leaders and the general public whose tax money is put to work by the council to support beneficial  arts activities. For decades under the leadership of Wayne Lawson and currently under the executive direction of the capable Julie Henahan, the OAC has done what most businesses seldom make the effort to try: gone directly to the people who are or could be affected by its services and products and ask them for their thoughts and ideas.  

These meetings are not for carefully selected focus groups. They’re welcome-all events aimed at different sectors that the OAC believes it needs to hear from. Participants are asked broad questions about what’s right and wrong with their communities, what they need, and what else the council could be doing to serve them.

What impressed me the most, however, was not the fact that the OAC carried out three such meetings at different Cleveland locations, but that Henahan and her staff made honest efforts to dig below the usual topics and known approaches and get their constituents to think creatively about improving the community – the whole community, including education, business, infrastructure and government,  because cross-pollination of ideas makes promisng solutions likelier.  

This process is a rare and effective thing to do. Difficult, too. Inviting people to be creative means asking them to think hard and embrace change – two acts that many people shrink from. When appealed to for ideas and solutions, people generally get no farther than what they’ve already heard about,  because it can be scary and exhausting to delve further. Trying to get around widely held assumptions and break through old, deeply entrenched systems can be tougher than hammering through thick concrete . It’s even worse when everyone around you shares the same philosophies and methods. 

What all of us, even the OAC, need to do much more of is adding people from different industries and sectors to our creative efforts. There are patterns we don’t yet see, connections we have not yet made, visions we have not yet experienced that will come from having scientists consider art and artists consider corporate structure and business experts consider social issues and social workers consider technology.

We have to free ourselves from the traditional and dare to push aside the merely adequate, no matter how safe and sensible they may seem. We can do better for ourselves than we’re doing. All we have to do to find the courage to refuse the easy, familiar answers. 

And that will be less frightening the more help we enlist from people with talents and perspectives different from our own. As Peter Friedman notes today, having all the answers isn’t the key. The key is asking questions that lead to new possibilities.

Are we satisfied with the world and ourselves? Of course not. Then let’s pull down the walls between our particular disciplines and open our minds to the whole of human imagination.

Find change – and not just beneath the sofa cushions

Creativity happens on a lot of fronts and, these days, all of them are important. With another Election Day facing us in the U.S., all registered voters here have the opportunity and duty to make sure that needed change takes place in our different levels of government, local communities and larger society.

Everyone who is eligible should vote – it’s one of Americans’ most effective ways of helping new ideas and policies take shape.  Today in Seth Rosenberg’s blog, “Inexact Possibilities,”  you can find out about key races around the nation and the new directions to which they may lead. 

But infinite other paths to innovation exist, as well, and you can explore some of those right here. Read  Matt Charboneau’s blog, “Arts-Entrepreneur Resources,” to find out how social networking offers the fresh, creative means for artists to publicize and promote their work, and Will Limkemann’s “The Constant  Entrepreneur” to learn useful and imaginative tips on managing small business of all kinds.

Take a look at how scientists’, artists’ and your own personal work or business products can be affected by evolving fair-use law, which Peter Friedman examines in “Ruling Imagination“  with perspective on the lawsuit brought against the ’80s Australian rock group Men at Work for allegedly using the music from “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree” for their hit song  ”Down Under.” 

And keep an eye out for fresh posts from Terrence Spivey on the just-concluded National Theatre Conference in “Theater of Change“; Charlie Eby on a just-released electronic game in “Media Man“; and Len Steinbach on the latest connections between art and technology in “Culture-Tech Verite.”

You can change the world – it’s happening right now.