Remembering Ray Bradbury with 11 Timeless Quotes on Joy, Failure, Writing, Creativity, and Purpose by Maria Popova The literary hero in his own words. What a tragic season it’s been for literary heroes who defined generations of readers and creators. On doing what you love, in this wonderful 2008 video interview from the National Endowment for the Arts: Love what you do and do what you love. On art, in Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You: We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth. UPDATE: Reader Dr. On reading as a prerequisite for democracy, from the same 2008 NEA interview: If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. On creativity and the myth of the muse, in Zen in the Art of Writing: That’s the great secret of creativity. On creative purpose and perseverance in the face of rejection, in Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life: [S]tarting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them!
Failure can be an option | James Dyson At school they might teach you it's the taking part not the winning that counts, but I doubt that is the mantra in the Olympic village. With the nation's hopes resting on Team GB's broad shoulders, most people really want an uncomplicated win, a resounding success at first attempt. Failure is disappointing, shameful, definitive. I disagree. Failure, coupled with perseverance, can be the springboard to better things. Success takes time, patience and perseverance – not just in track and field. In the digital age of "overnight" success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked. And yet, we try increasingly hard to avoid failure these days. My own experience with failure at college is part of the reason I now advocate design and technology in schools. The current emphasis on rote learning right answers over inventiveness and practical skills rewards regurgitation over intellect and instinct. The keen sting of failure should not be shunned.
John Cleese on the 5 Factors to Make Your Life More Creative by Maria Popova “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.” Much has been said about how creativity works, its secrets, its origins, and what we can do to optimize ourselves for it. In this excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John Cleese offers a recipe for creativity, delivered with his signature blend of cultural insight and comedic genius. Specifically, Cleese outlines “the 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative”: The lecture is worth a watch in its entirety, below, if only to get a full grasp of Cleese’s model for creativity as the interplay of two modes of operating — open, where we take a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem and allow the mind to ponder possible solutions, and closed, where we zoom in on implementing a specific solution with narrow precision. A few more quotable nuggets of insight excerpted below the video. Creativity is not a talent. We need to be in the open mode when pondering a problem — but! Thanks, Simon
Why Study English Austin Kleon on 10 Things Every Creator Should Remember But We Often Forget by Maria Popova What T.S. Eliot has to do with genetics and the optimal investment theory for your intellectual life. Much has been said about the secrets of creativity and where good ideas come from, but most of that wisdom can be lost on young minds just dipping their toes in the vast and tumultuous ocean of self-initiated creation. So widely did the talk resonate that Kleon decided to deepen and enrich its message in Steal Like an Artist — an intelligent and articulate manifesto for the era of combinatorial creativity and remix culture that’s part 344 Questions, part Everything is a Remix, part The Gift, at once borrowed and entirely original. (This piece of truth is available as a print from 20×200, one of the best places for affordable art.) The book opens with a timeless T.S. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” Kleon writes in the introduction: Donating = Loving
Judging a book by its cover. Ideas and thoughts on how learning is displayed in schools. When students, staff and visitors walk into your school, what is the first thing they see? What about your department area? What is the purpose of display in your school and what does it say about the curriculum in your school? How often and why are displays changed? If you asked a student from your school to close their eyes and talk about your classroom, what would they say? Is your school a lighthouse for learning or a sterile space full of clean corridors? If we imagine the curriculum is not just the subjects we teach, but the ‘glue’ that binds the school together, a major part of that is the indirect experience students have every day; where they spend their free time, what kind of welcome greets them as the trundle through the gates, how they feel about your classroom, what their school ‘says’ about their learning. It certainly doesn’t have to be like this. I have had some ideas about this. 1. 2. Once a year, the ‘greatest achievement’ had to be something outside of school too. 3. 4. 5.
Seven Habits of Highly Creative People | Creativity at Work Seven Habits of Highly Creative People is an homage to Stephen Covey (Oct 24, 1932 – July 16, 2012) Creativity is the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity involves two processes: thinking, and then producing. Innovation is the production or implementation of an idea. If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative. Make a habit of these seven practices, and you will be highly creative in your field: 1. “In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.” Creativity requires an absorbed mind, a relaxed state of focus and attention. 2. “We are what we think. We amplify what we think about most. 3. “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. It’s been said that at the age of 5, children ask 120 questions a day, at age 6 they ask only 60 questions a day, and at the age of 40, adults ask 4 questions a day. 4. Be curious and follow your nose. 5. 6. 7. Linda Naiman
Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity by Maria Popova Why creativity is like LEGO, or what Richard Dawkins has to do with Susan Sontag and Gandhi. In May, I had the pleasure of speaking at the wonderful Creative Mornings free lecture series masterminded by my studiomate Tina of Swiss Miss fame. These are pages from the most famous florilegium, completed by Thomas of Ireland in the 14th century. In talking about these medieval manuscripts, Adam Gopnik writes in The New Yorker: Our minds were altered less by books than by index slips.” Which is interesting, recognizing not only the absolute vale of content but also its relational value, the value not just of information itself but also of information architecture, not just of content but also of content curation. You may have heard this anecdote. Here’s the same sentiment from iconic designer Paula Scher on the creation of the famous Citi logo: Kind of LEGOs. And iconic novelist Vladimir Nabokov was a secret lepidopterist — he collected and studied butterflies religiously.
UnBoxed: online issue 6, fall 2010 The author shares findings from her action research, focusing on the question, “How can I use critique to improve the quality of student feedback, student work and create a culture of collaboration?” As I watched my class interact close to the year’s end, I felt un-needed. This is a good thing. We had completed three extensive cycles of critique and revision in which students created websites, United Nation style documents, and maps. Students generated their own criteria for quality work by analyzing exemplary models (exemplar critique); they self assessed their work using those criteria; and they gave each other advice (peer critique). More than any other time in over a decade of teaching, I watched students take ownership of their work and be willing to make draft after draft to achieve high quality results. By the end of the year, I saw students asking each other for ideas. Critique as a matter of culture, not simply an activity Lastly, students must learn to see mistakes as natural.
Why conviction drives innovation more than creativity By Doreen Lorenzo, president, frog FORTUNE -- In business circles, "creativity" has become a buzzword to describe a desired trait among employees. It's widely believed that having creative thinkers on staff will boost overall team levels of innovation. Yes, creativity can lead to a surplus of original ideas. But when it comes time to sell those concepts internally, and then later take those ideas to market, creativity is not enough. More important is conviction. Look at the most-admired business leaders today. Consider how Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos asked the graduating class at Princeton University during his 2010 commencement speech there, "Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?" But it's not just company founders and CEOs or Ivy League grads that can benefit from having a strong sense of conviction. Organizations of all sizes can encourage everyone, from C-level leaders to junior hires, to pursue their convictions.
On Scientific Taste by Maria Popova “Our taste derives from the summation of all that we have learnt from others, experienced and thought.” Cambridge University animal pathology professor W. Taste can perhaps best be described as a sense of beauty or aesthetic sensibility, and it may be reliable or not, depending on the individual. This last bit, speaking to the combinatorial nature of creativity, is something we’ve heard many times before — from artists, designers, and writers, or the loosely defined “creative world.” Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. Share on Tumblr
Importance of failure: why Olympians and A-level students all need to fail | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional We all want our children to succeed, don't we? What many of us overlook, however, is that allowing them to fail is an important part of any future success. London 2012 saw Team GB achieving remarkable success but among the medal winners were those who failed to live up to expectations (both theirs and ours). Athletes, however, are more able to handle failure than the schoolchildren studying for exams in the high-pressure environment of compulsory education. Note that I have no issue with the use of the oft-derided term fail, for without failure there would be no success, would there? Many of us (both pupils and those involved in education) remain relatively ignorant of the link between psychology and success, assuming that, for example, our intelligence is of fixed, innate and unchangeable quantity. Abilities are therefore flexible rather than fixed. Contrast this with the growth 'mindsetter'. So, let's hear it for failure.