• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

American Creativity at Risk Restoring creativity as a priority in public policy, cultural philanthropy, and education A narrative report on a symposium directed toward opinion leaders, policy makers, and creative thinkers in business, government, education, arts and culture, and the sciences November 8–10, 1996 BROWN UNIVERSITY and RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN Providence, Rhode Island The American Creativity At Risk Symposium was organized by the Alliance of Artists Communities and supported by grants from: Evelyn Stefansson Nef The Pew Charitable Trusts Thank you to the many people who made this The John D. and Catherine T. symposium possible, especially to the Symposium Project MacArthur Foundation Director and author of this report, Tricia Snell, Executive The National Endowment for the Arts Director of the Alliance of Artists Communities. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts The Alliance of Artists Communities also acknowledges and thanks the following people for joining a National The California Tamarack Foundation Task Force that advised us during the early months The Lubo Fund, Inc. of planning for the symposium: Judith Barber, Linda and an anonymous donor Blumberg, Ann Chamberlain, Jennifer Dowley, Mary Griffi n, Garrett Hongo, Sam Miller, Gina Murtagh, We are profoundly grateful to them, Craig Pleasants, Harriet Sanford, Fred Schroeder, Susan and to Brown University and the Rhode Schwartzenberg, Jim Sitter, William Smart, M. Camille Island School of Design for their support Thomas, Anthony Vasconcellos, and Lori Wood. and hospitality. For copies of this report and for transcripts, contact: Special Thanks to the Andy Warhol Alliance of Artists Communities Foundation for The Visual Arts and 255 South Main Street the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Providence, RI 02903 for funding the development and tel 401.351.4320 dissemination of this report and fax 401.351.4507 transcripts of the symposium speeches [email protected] and discussions. www.artistcommunities.org © Alliance of Artists Communities For their leadership in planning and organizing the symposium, thanks to symposium co-chairs Mary Carswell, Executive Director of The MacDowell Colony, and Peter Richards, Director of Arts Programs at the Exploratorium. We are also deeply grateful to their organizations for donating their staff’s time to the project. AMERICAN CREATIVITY AT RISK Symposium Mission Statement Creativity is at risk in America. While individual innovation, experimentation, and research have been essential ingredients in our society’s development, the resources and commitment to American creativity — in the arts, business, science, and other fi elds — have diminished. What are the consequences of a loss of creativity as America prepares to enter the next millennium, and where and how can creativity be supported for our common good? This symposium will explore the nature of human creativity and its signifi cance in a wide range of disciplines, taking artists’ communities as a model and metaphor for fostering pure research and innovation in all sectors of our society and culture. The symposium will result in a call to action addressing the challenges and opportunities of restoring creativity as a priority in public policy, cultural philanthropy, and education. 2 Years ago someone told me that buried deep in the basements of NYC schools were treasure troves of musical instruments — trumpets, fl utes, clarinets, violins, cellos, trombones, French horns — all left over from a golden era, when, as a matter of course, we used to give children in public schools fi rs-rate instruction in music… the image of all those instruments imprisoned beneath the crumbling ruins of our public schools, forgotten like some yet unexcavated dead civilization, seemed… a perfect metaphor for the theme of this symposium — “American Creativity at Risk,” and a reminder of what we stand to lose or gain, as the case may be, if as a nation we do not come to grips with this issue. Mary Schmidt Campbell REPORT ON “AMERICAN CREATIVITY AT RISK” SYMPOSIUM NOVEMBER 8-10, 1996 8-10, NOVEMBER SYMPOSIUM RISK” AT CREATIVITY “AMERICAN ON REPORT Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts Keynote Speaker at the “American Creativity at Risk” Symposium 3 CONTENTS 1 MISSION STATEMENT 4 PROLOGUE by Brendan Gill 6 INTRODUCTION by Tricia Snell 10 WHAT IS CREATIVITY, AND WHY IS IT AT RISK? REPORT ON “AMERICAN CREATIVITY AT RISK” SYMPOSIUM NOVEMBER 8-10, 1996 8-10, NOVEMBER SYMPOSIUM RISK” AT CREATIVITY “AMERICAN ON REPORT 14 CLOSEUP OF AN INDIVIDUAL CREATIVE PROCESS 16 HOTBEDS OF CREATIVITY 19 THE CREATIVE COMMONWEALTH 21 WORKING TOWARD A BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION 23 OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUPPORT OF CREATIVITY: A Policymaking Viewpoint 26 FIRST FOOTPRINT 27 A BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION 28 SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS, PANELISTS, ORGANIZERS, AND GENERAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 34 THE ALLIANCE OF ARTISTS COMMUNITIES 36 WORKS CITED 4 BRENDAN GILL PROLOGUE In November 1996, in the ancient and My fears turned to be groundless. proud port city of Providence, Rhode More by intuition than by defi nition, Island, and under the sheltering rooftrees participants in the symposium sensed of Brown University and the Rhode without debate what the word stood for Island School of Design, the Alliance of in the context of the occasion. Creativity Artists Communities held a three-day was transported down to earth and made symposium entitled “American Creativity an object of examination without any at Risk.” This is a bold name to affi x to loss of grandeur of scale. The old thrilling any gathering, and as a person who felt American capacity to bring into existence REPORT ON “AMERICAN CREATIVITY AT RISK” SYMPOSIUM NOVEMBER 8-10, 1996 8-10, NOVEMBER SYMPOSIUM RISK” AT CREATIVITY “AMERICAN ON REPORT honored to have been invited to participate by the force of our imaginations something in the event I felt also a sense of disquiet. I that had never existed before, whether have confi dence in the words “American” in the fi ne arts, pure and applied science, Let’s view this symposium and “Risk” — indeed, I am happy to statecraft, or in the very shaping of our as a celebration of the regard them as having proved in our daily lives as more or less anonymous creative spirit and an history to be almost synonyms — but any members of a given community — that examination of ways we mention of the word “creativity” prompts kind of creativity has long been practiced can help it survive. in me a shiver of alarm. Creativity is a by us as naturally as we have breathed. It Charles Amirkhanian word as light and wayward and almost is the creativity that in recent times — so as untetherable as milkweed down. On unnecessarily, so recklessly — has been America has an intellectual my way to Providence, I recalled and put at risk. And put at risk, moreover climate suitable for radical old Jewish joke to the effect that if you (an irony well worth bearing in mind), experimentation. We are, ask a question of two rabbits, you will at the very moment in the history of our as Gertrude Stein said, the oldest country of the get three answers. In something like the nation, and in the history of the world twentieth century. same fashion, I feared that if a hundred as a whole, when our ability to exceed John Cage people were asked to defi ne creativity, two past achievements is demonstrated from American composer, hundred defi nitions would be the result. one day to the next, if not from hour to as quoted by Mary Carswell 5 hour. Why have we allowed this ability to be placed in jeopardy, instead of being made to fl ourish? Who or what are the adversaries that aim not merely to hold us back but to bully us into impotence? A facility that fosters It was with the consciousness of our creativity… is a place that possessing a power worth fi ghting to allows people to discover, preserve that the symposium got under develop, and exploit their way and carried out its labors. From own natural intelligences. the start, the noted struck was one of a It’s a place where there are 1996 8-10, NOVEMBER SYMPOSIUM RISK” AT CREATIVITY “AMERICAN ON REPORT reasoned optimism. It was as if we sensed no stupid questions, and it is not a place where there something in that cold November air, is only one right answer. something in the setting of that nobly It’s a place that values rockbound marine city, that led us to feel irreverence, the lively, the a measure of exaltation in our task — an dynamic, the surprising, exaltation not unlike that felt by a certain the playful. And it is a heroic earlier voyager, whose purpose, so place that values, above all, curiosity and the ability Tennyson tells us, was “to strive, to seek, to make connections, to fi nd, and not to yield.” to make those cognitive leaps. Peter Richards We as creative people and supporters of the value of creativity should seize the debate and defi ne the issues for public discourse. We need to defi ne the threat to creativity as a matter of great urgency and great importance not just to us as artists or arts communities, but to American democracy. Mary Schmidt Campbell 6 TRICIA SNELL INTRODUCTION America is creative or it is nothing. Americans created a nation and have The Alliance of Artists Communities’ School of the Arts and former Cultural been recreating it ever “American Creativity at Risk” symposium Affairs Commissioner for New York City. since. brought together a group of brilliant She related this sobering fact: Robert MacNeil American leaders and thinkers from all Prisons, once at the bottom of state sectors of society — the arts, business, and local budgets, have in the past The very creation of the science, education, philanthropy, and ten to twenty years steadily risen United States was an government — to address what the towards the top of the budgetary act of the imagination, a Alliance saw as a national “crisis of priority list, so that in at least one bold act of self-invention confi dence” in the arts, creativity, state, California, spending for prisons and subversive rebellion REPORT ON “AMERICAN CREATIVITY AT RISK” SYMPOSIUM NOVEMBER 8-10, 1996 8-10, NOVEMBER SYMPOSIUM RISK” AT CREATIVITY “AMERICAN ON REPORT individual innovation, and research.

Load more

  39

Copy Link