“Whether it’s the arts, engineering, science, education or medicine, what leaders across all disciplines are calling out for are creative thinkers.
So where are they and who’s nurturing the creative thinkers of the future?
Brent Hasty is Executive Director of MINDPOP based in Austin Texas, an organisation dedicated to equity of access to creative learning.
He joins Patricia Karvelas in The Drawing Room along with David Cropley, Associate Professor in Engineering Innovation at the University of South Australia.” RN Drive ABC Radio
Listen as Brent Hasty and David Cropley talk about the benefits of creative thinkers, which involves applying novel solutions to novel problems (but not, as Hasty points, “putting plane wings on upside down and launching it with a rubber band”).
The pair also advocate for creativity alongside the existing curriculum, with benefits such as improved scores and attendance witnessed in those students who also pursue a creative discipline.
As David Cropley says, “it’s more that there’s so much focus on things like the ‘three r’s’ that creativity kind of gets squeezed to the sidelines. I like to think of it as a situation where we’re really trying to establish a rebalancing and just to give creativity, and the things that support creativity, a little bit more time and space in the curriculum to make sure that that aspect of children’s learning gets sufficient attention so that it can be combined with the more traditional reading, writing and arithmetic, to ensure that kids come out of school as highly capable, creative problem solvers.
“We all have the capacity for novel thoughts and to apply that novelty to useful situations – I think we do it all the time,” says Hasty. ” So I think the question is not ‘does society take it out of us?’ but ‘are the context and the task that we’re asked to do in our school life or our work life really using those skills?’”
When asked how to encourage creativity in the home, both Hasty and Cropley agree it can be as simple as walking a different way home from school – a situation with minimal risk or consequences, and a fun way to subtly encourage divergent thinking.
This podcast is definitely worth listening to, so pop it on for your drive home and start having some mind pops!
Listen here: RN Drive Creative Thinkers
