Saturday, February 16, 2008

The Intersection of Creativity and Inspiration

Technology-in-education guru Will Richardson, a former middle-school principal turned author and national speaker, has a blog devoted to his thoughts. Yesterday, he did a post called "Playin' PVC" about a group of high school students who were inspired by the Blue Man Group to create their own musical instruments. Check out the post, and then follow the link to the group's MySpace site.

This is a good example of what happens when you allow students to follow their creativity. Instead of giving them a cookie-cutter "music experience," by allowing them to experiment (clearly, the music teacher has given them space in the music classroom, and the principal gave them time to perform at an assembly) they learned so much more about being an artist, and a showman. And if a science teacher is following up, they probably could also learn some concepts related to the physics of sound.

Would theatre education be better served by this model?

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Think Again: Funding and Budgets in the Arts

Every once in a while, I think I'll post a link or two to posts written earlier in the life of Theatre Ideas that seem worth revisiting ...