Lesley University to explore critical role of imagination as key to future growth
Posted September 29, 2009
On Thursday, Oct. 1 Lesley University will host an Imagination Conversation, bringing together leaders from the arts, education, government, business, science, and non-profit communities to discuss ways they experience imagination in their work.
Panelists for the discussion are Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Professor of Early Childhood Education at Lesley; Tod Machover, MIT Professor of Music and Media; Tina Packer, Founder and Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company; Paul Reville, Massachusetts Secretary of Education; and Klare Shaw, Senior Advisor for Education, Arts and Culture at the Barr Foundation. Scott Noppe-Brandon, Executive Director of Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts in Education (LCI), and Richard Deasy, Founder of Arts Education Partnership, will moderate.
The 2 p.m.- 5 p.m. conversation at Lesley’s University Hall in Porter Square is held in affiliation with LCI. The goal of the Conversation is to present imagination as a key cognitive capacity, one that leads to creativity and innovation. The discussion will also help build awareness of imagination as a key skill in work and in life. The Lincoln Center Institute, along with numerous scientists, government leaders and educators, contends that imagination must be taught to children in our schools and nurtured in our communities.
Lesley’s Imagination Conversation will specifically address the critical role of arts in education.
“This conversation will develop themes and ideas for our state leaders to explore in the years to come,” said Lesley University Provost Martha McKenna. “We know that imagination, creativity and the arts are not expendable if our children are to succeed in school and compete in the 21st century marketplace.”
Imagination Conversations are currently planned to take place over two years in each of the 50 states. All of the conversations will be documented and final proposals for nationwide educational reform will be made at a national Imagination Summit in New York in 2011.
“Imagination can be described as having the ability to visualize new possibilities, the ability to ask ‘What if?’” said Noppe-Brandon. “If the United States is to maintain its position at the vanguard of innovation, it needs a workforce capable of finding fresh solutions to challenges and inventing groundbreaking products and services.”
As one of the nation’s largest providers of graduate professional education opportunities to K-12 educators, Lesley University - as well as its student, faculty and alumni - plays an important role in the promotion of imagination in American education. For over three decades, Lesley University’s Creative Arts in Learning programs have trained classroom teachers to integrate the arts across the curriculum to develop children’s creativity and imagination. Lesley is proud to partner with Hunt Alternatives Fund and LCI in bringing together leaders in the arts, education, sciences, and business.
The Lincoln Center Institute has established itself as a leader in the implementation of a method by which imagination is introduced into classrooms and used across the curriculum. Through the hands-on study of works of art, students develop their capacities to think imaginatively and critically, which serve them in all subject areas. LCI’s programs reach an estimated 390,000 students per year through its partnerships with schools across the U.S. and abroad.
Panelists for Thursday’s Imagination Conversation are:
Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of early childhood education at Lesley University, where she has taught teachers for more than 30 years. Since the mid-1980s, Carlsson-Page has written and spoken extensively about the impact of violence - especially in the media - on children’s lives and social development, and how children learn the skills for caring relationships and positive conflict resolution. Carlsson-Paige is the author or co-author of five books and has written numerous articles on media violence, conflict resolution, peaceable classrooms and global education. Her most recent book is Taking Back Childhood: A Proven Roadmap for Raising Confident, Creative, Compassionate Kids. Carlsson-Paige is an advocate for policies and practices that promote children’s well being and encourage skills and attitudes that further peace and non-violence.
Tod Machover, head of the MIT Media Lab’s Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group. An influential composer, Machover has been praised for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries. In 1995 he received a “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres,” one of France’s highest cultural honors. In 1998 he was awarded the first DigiGlobe Prize from the German government. He has composed five operas and is the inventor of Hyperinstruments, a technology that uses smart computers to augment virtuosity. Hyperinstruments have been used by performers such as Yo-Yo Ma, Prince and Peter Gabriel. Machover is also the creator of the Toy Symphony, an international music performance and education project. His research group is currently examining ways to use music in therapy for emotionally and physically challenged individuals.
Tina Packer, a British-born actress, director, and author who founded Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts in 1978 and serves as its artistic director. The company is central to cultural life in the Berkshires with a reputation for quality that extends far beyond Massachusetts. In Britain, Packer was an associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, performed in the West End, and acted with repertory companies in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leicester, and Coventry. Packer has worked for the BBC and ITV television companies and in film, and is the author of two books: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management, co-authored with Columbia Business School professor John O. Whitney, in which Shakespeare’s thought-provoking perspectives on leadership are related to successful business practices in today’s global economy; and an adaption for children of Shakespeare’s plays, Tales from Shakespeare.
Paul Reville, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education. Reville is the former president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, an independent policy organization dedicated to the improvement of PreK-12 public education. Reville is also the former Chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and has served, over the years, on numerous state task forces and committees. Additionally, Reville is the former executive director of the Pew Forum on Standards-Based Reform, a Harvard-based, national education policy think tank which convened the U.S.’s leading researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to set the national standards agenda.
Klare Shaw, the Senior Advisor for Education, Arts and Culture at the Barr Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to the quality of life in greater Boston. Formerly, Shaw was Executive Director of The Boston Globe Foundation, where she had been employed for almost a decade in several positions. She joined the Globe Foundation in 1990 after two years in charge of Boston contributions for the Bank of New England, NA. Prior to that, Shaw was head of community arts and education at the agency now known as the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Earlier nonprofit employment includes Action for Boston Community Development, the Children’s Museum of Boston, and the YWCA - Aswalos House.