Programs
Creativity Matters:
Forging a national conversation about the critical role of creativity in our everyday lives.
Vision
To bring creativity to the forefront of education and equip every student with the tools and confidence to impact their lives, their communities and the world.
Guiding Principle
Curiosity and wonder are the cornerstone of identity and empowerment.
To instantiate those values in our culture will transform learning and ready students with the agency and imagination to create.
Objectives
Convene networks of educators, students, community members and business leaders to reshape learning in and out of schools.
Facilitate cross-sector conversations to bring about systemic and sustainable cultural change.
Incubate ideas, programs and events to provide young peolple with access to multiple ways of thinking and learning.
Signature Programs
Driven by the conviction that creativity is inherent in every citizen, Creativity Matters is a multi-faceted campaign focused on building creative capacity in K-12 learning and understanding the relationship between creative practice and civic engagement.
My Creativity Matters
The early education program My Creativity Matters is a project-based curriculum built around “asking bigger than me questions”. The structure prompts an in-depth investigation of a topic, focused on asking questions and finding creative answers through exercises and group work. The program is guided by the principle of building on children’s current interests and abilities to validate their curiosity and sense of wonder.
Creatives in Residence
The Creatives-in-Residence program is a platform for discovery. Our specific goal is to establish opportunities for students to engage with creative professionals within the traditional school day. By placing groups of creative professionals in a school setting, we alter the context of learning and create opportunities to introduce the ways creative thinking and practice play a role across disciplines and career paths.
Youth Creativity Summit
Utilizing the lens of creativity as a tool for problem-solving, the Youth Creativity Summit will be a forum for youth to envision the role creativity plays in their futures and goals. Framed by a future-ready focus, this summit will provide teens with a support system and community of peers, as well as adults who will support their endeavors, while introducing them to the inherent creative practice in a multitude of career and education paths.
A Collaborative Approach
Dozens of workshops,
hundreds of contributors,
one goal
Our first efforts took form through a series of roundtable conversations in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Marshalling the expertise of a diverse group of educators, artists, researchers, and cultural institution leaders, we facilitated these dialogues around two key questions: “What does creativity look like?” and “How does creativity thrive?”
Like many ideas, these dialogues only generated more questions, connections and new pathways. This led us to a second series of roundtable events titled, Ideas From the Future. Designed to explicitly understand the transdisciplinary and inherently human nature of creativity, we took participants through multiple exercises considering the future of home, work, school and neighborhood, in relation to creative practice and expression.
With the information, networks and momentum created by the roundtable events and conversations, we’ve built a community of like-minded creative visionaries; people who are committed to the importance of Creativity in Learning and who are working to make a more creative and equitable future for all students.
Learn more about our other signature program: