A home on the web for Montclair State University's Creative Campus initiative. An interdisciplinary project of Montclair State's Office of Arts & Cultural Programming and College of the Arts, in collaboration with faculty and staff from the arts, sciences, humanities, education, and business.
It’s time to register for Fall 2018 semester! In Creative Thinking, you will learn with students from diverse majors across all of Montclair State’s colleges and with faculty whose work finds focus in the humanities, sciences, and the performing arts. This fall, the lead instructors will integrate their own interdisciplinary work in a range of subjects including classics, theater, writing, activism, social work, and environmental studies in their classes.
Christopher Parker is an award-winning poet, playwright, scholar, whose career has also included stints as a marketing director for PricewaterhouseCoopers and HBO. In addition to Creative Thinking, Chris teaches mythology, general humanities, and writing at Montclair State.
Phoebe Farber is a psychotherapist and playwright. “Because of my dual interests in psychology and writing, the section of the Creative Thinking course I teach will include psychology-oriented themes…My hope is that students will come away from this class with a clear sense of the components of creative thinking, and a deeper curiosity about delving into their own creative minds.”
Doug Chapman is a musician, actor, and theater educator trained at the the Interlochen Arts Academy, Oberlin College, American Repertory Theatre Institute at Harvard, and the Moscow Art Theatre. He is also a LEED accredited professional with the US Green Building Council and a sustainable design consultant contributing to projects in Europe, North America and the Caribbean. He is a passionate supporter of interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly at the intersection of art and ecology.
Creative Thinking (CRTH-151) is a 3-credit interdisciplinary elective open to all undergraduates.
Interdisciplinary Teaching in CRTH-151: Spring 2018
It’s time to register for the Spring 2018 semester at Montclair State University! A valuable aspect of Creative Thinking at MSU over the years has been the academic diversity of the students – who represent majors in all colleges of the university – and the faculty, whose research backgrounds span the humanities, sciences, and the performing arts. This spring, Lead Instructors offer fresh perspectives to the course (CRTH-151) from their own interdisciplinary work integrating expertise in psychology, writing, and activism.
Shelagh Patterson is a poet, scholar, and activist who teaches First-Year Writing at Montclair State University. In Shelagh’s words:
“We will be developing our own creative practices in conversation with the practices of a diverse array of thinkers, writers, artists, and activists. Central to the class will be the question: how is our individual creativity shaped while also shaping our local (and global!) communities? I am particularly excited to be teaching a class open to all majors and students with a variety of interests as we explore how creativity is an essential part of developing our projects.”
Phoebe Farber is a psychotherapist and playwright and has taught Psychology courses in MSU’s Department of Health Sciences. Phoebe describes her section of the course:
“Because of my dual interests in psychology and writing, the Creative Thinking course will include psychology-oriented themes...My hope is that students will come away from this class with a clear sense of the components of creative thinking, and a deeper curiosity about delving into their own creative minds.
Creative Thinking (CRTH-151) is a 3-credit interdisciplinary elective open to all undergraduates. You can still register for Shelagh’s and Phoebe’s sections offered on the following days:
What does it take to be creative? A mind open to possibility, a willingness to take risks and embark on new paths . . . but also an understanding of what’s already been done, and the technical skill to turn abstract ideas into concrete results.
As the head of the creative writing program here at Montclair State, as well as the author of over a dozen books, I’m in the business of creativity—not just producing creative work, but also spurring others to create.
My approach to teaching the Creative Thinking course (CRTH-151) starts with an analysis of the creative process by Freud and other commentators. We focus on what distinguishes so-called creative types from others. In the process, we look at a gallery of people distinguished for their creative work, from painters and writers to mathematicians and scientists. One main angle is on creativity in writing, looking at essays by writers on the joys and frustrations of the writing process. We’ll examine beliefs about writing (like “write about what you know”) that are part truth, part myth. There’s even a section on intention: does it matter what the writer had in mind, or should audiences judge simply by what’s in front of them?
In between are prompts and responses to get you writing, a creative performance at Kasser to attend, and visits from practicing artists to shift you in unexpected ways. We even tackle some creativity tests—not graded—to show you how creativity is measured.
The course culminates in the students’ personal projects: developing a presentation on some creative aspect of your life that you can share with others.
It’s a fun, at times challenging, genuinely useful course. Students leave the class with heightened creativity and a greater appreciation of others’ creative work.
David Galef has published over a dozen books, including the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress, the short-story collections Laugh Track and My Date with Neanderthal Woman, two children’s books, The Little Red Bicycle and Tracks, and a co-edited anthology of fiction called 20 over 40. His latest volume is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook. He is a professor of English and the creative writing program director at Montclair State University.
MSU undergraduates can register for David Galef’s Fall 2017 section of Creative Thinking:
Dr. Christopher Parker wrote several posts to chronicle course progression during his first semester teaching Creative Thinking; this is his final post in the series. Dr. Parker will again teach Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, in Fall 2017.
An important way to collect material for/on creative contemplation is to ask questions of creative thinkers. In addition to speaking directly with visiting artists from HOWL, we returned to the “sacred space” of the Kasser Theater for a new sojourn— to see American choreographer Deborah Hay’s Figure a Sea performed by the remarkable Cullberg Ballet with a score composed by Laurie Anderson. In Figure a Sea, movement on the proscenium precipitated an imaginary body of water floating to the shores of new connections. We acquired contextual information about this abstract dance piece through a pre-show conversation between dance scholar Nancy Dalva and Deborah Hay. The conversation presented the opportunity to hear a dance writer interview an artist about her creative process. Similarly, subsequent pedagogy in Creative Thinking was designed to include a) student inquiry towards thinkers about their work and, b) methods of inquiry about art as modeled by professional critics.
Visiting Opera Critic Richard Sasanow demonstrated to us how to inquire directly with his sources by giving a live example of an interview in class. Mr. Sasanow’s example was followed up with students interviewing each other on their most meaningful creative thinking achievement so far. This workshop fully engaged the class.
In yet another class, we conducted a live internet conversation with Hollywood motion picture director Brad Parker on the concept of sound in film, particularly his own horror film, Chernobyl Diaries. Prior to our conversation, we listened to music by the film’s composer Diego Stocco: which students used to prepare questions for Mr. Parker. How does one move a question from “when did you start directing?” or “was it hard to make a film?” to a deeper question which may lead us to discoveries in the creative process. We worked in communities of inquiry to evolve some of our questionings. Here are a few examples:
In the movie [Chernobyl Diaries] I can easily find the cliché of the horror or thriller movie: characters go to a weird, forbidden, scary place with friends and getting stuck in there. Then something happens, and finally, the only one who survives is the main actor. Sometimes a cliché helps to get to creative thinking, but it may prevent us from reaching creative ideas. Why did you use it, and how to does this cliché make the movie special or different than others which have the same cliché?
Assuming that all artists face the challenge of getting stuck when creating ideas, what are some tools that you use to overcome any mental roadblocks you experienced when creating this film?
With the assumption that all artists put “themselves” into their own artwork, what specific experiences in your life made you want to make this film in the thriller/horror genre? For instance, much of the visual imagery of the frightening moments within the film is left to the audience’s imagination- what is it about this ambiguity or element of mystery that appeals to, or even frightens you?
Visiting Professor Marissa Silverman explored with us how we define music. Like Brad Parker, Prof. Silverman referenced the music of Diego Stocco. Mr. Stocco benefitted the class as a model for his unique composing techniques; he deconstructs traditional instruments and rebuilds the parts to create unusual instruments which create unique sounds. Professor Silverman also lead us through an interactive exercise using objects in the classroom to compose a musical/sonic piece inspired by a condition of weather, such as rain. And, perhaps facilitated by our practice with inquiry, students were clearly ready to question Silverman about the meaning of music and how it is conceived in the creative process.
Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University. A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools. A playwright, his work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.
Christopher Parker’s Fall 2017 section of Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, is open to all undergraduates at Montclair State University:
Dr. Christopher Parker wrote a series of posts to chronicle the Fall 2016 semester. Dr. Parker will again teach a section of Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, in Fall 2017.
I have included in my previous posts a sidebar that uses the metaphor of encountering the world from inside a used refrigerator box. We are always inside this metaphorical box. The expression “thinking outside the box” may mean that something you choose is not in the norm. We cannot really be “outside the box” because we wear this box wherever we go. The box includes archetypal concepts and images and stories that are part of a collective unconscious in all of us. The box also includes social paradigms that somehow found its way into our being.
But we can learn to work well being in this box. We can organize, categorize, imagine, and create within the box using “the stuff” acquired from outside its walls. The “stuff” acquired from outside includes experiences and perceptions that may be new to us or that we may look at in new ways. These experiences are “archived” inside our box, making it a “sacred place.” The archive then becomes our own “stuff,” and we can make something new and useful from it.
Concrete manifestations of “the box” metaphor, made by Creative Thinking students. A mini-fridge full of themes from the semester, and a guitar made from recycled materials.
The metaphor of the refrigerator box includes a young friend who journeys with you inside the box. That young friend is really a younger you, maybe when there was less inhibiting your creative thinking. You never leave your friend because he is a part of you. You may need to return to that part of yourself from time to time.
In the Creative Thinking class, one exercise involved recalling a time when students felt that they had done something creative. That creative moment could be as a very young child, or more recently. I asked students to review the narrative of that moment in their mind’s eye and then to actually manifest the physiology of that creative success. Students were then interviewed by their peers on this creative moment. This workshop generated a lot of positive energy in the class and engaged every single student and even the class guests.
To summarize the discoveries made through the refrigerator box metaphor:
Remember your creative thinking successes from youth.
Improve sensual perceptions by cutting holes in the cardboard interior and look, listen, smell, feel and taste things outside the box.
Increase and archive your percipience by having symbols, such as language, to name experiences.
Categorize your perceptual artifacts and symbols as you organize files or tools so that “the stuff” you need to create something new is accessible.
Learn from other creative thinkers and observe their creations to stimulate your own creative thinking.
Enrich creative thinking even further by employing direct inquiry with creative thinkers, to learn creative methods and techniques.
None of these techniques may be natural for many people. By listing them here, we may develop creative thinking practices by using these steps to walk our refrigerator box to a new place.
Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University. A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools. A playwright, his work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.
Dr. Parker’s section of Creative Thinking, CRTH-151-02, is open to all undergraduates at Montclair State University:
Instructor: Christopher Parker (Classics and General Humanities)
Exploring the Creative Mind: Summer Session Preview
By Phoebe Farber, lead instructor, Summer 17
As a writer, I think about the creative process all the time—what defines it, what enhances it, and how can we harness it? I often think that being creative is about risking being bad. Striving for perfection or brilliance gets in the way of taking a risk because everything matters—and that constant evaluation extinguishes the creative spark. If I sit down to write a piece of dialogue and think, “this better be great,” I’m frozen. The most powerful thing I can tell myself is, “It’s ok if this is terrible.”
I’m excited to be teaching the summer session of Creative Thinking for 2017. I am a psychotherapist by training (MSW 1993; Ph.D 2002) and have a private practice in Montclair where I specialize in working with adolescents and young adults. I teach a psychology class at Montclair State as an adjunct professor, in the department of Health Sciences. I am also a playwright. I have had plays read and produced in a number of theaters around New York and New Jersey, and just finished a fellowship with the Emerging Women Playwrights Group of Writer’s Theater of New Jersey.
Because of my dual interests in psychology and writing, the Creative Thinking course will include psychology-oriented themes, such as the unconscious. We will look at Freud’s concept of the unconscious and explore ways one can access the world that resides below our awareness. One aspect of our unconscious, according to Freud, is the life of dreams. Our dreams reflect our unconscious desires and fears. We will look at the information our dreams may give us, and learn tools for interpreting the meaning of our dreams.
The class will explore the world of creativity from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. We will use a textbook called Wired To Create (Kaufman & Gregoire, 2016) and explore the themes of Imaginative Play, mindfulness, and introspection. Students will be encouraged to delve into their own creative process, and each will be asked to identify a project they would like to work on for the class. A number of guest artists will come to share their work with the students. We will engage in classroom exercises that illustrate ideas about creativity. My hope is that students will come away from this class with a clear sense of the components of creative thinking, and a deeper curiosity about delving into their own creative minds.
Register for Creative Thinking Summer session:
May 15 – June 8, 2017
Monday – Thursday, 10:10 a.m. – 12:55 p.m.
CRTH 151-11, CRN# 30956
Non-matriculating students welcome! Visit montclair.edu/summer for guidelines and to register.
This is the fourth post by Dr. Christopher Parker in a series which chronicles the progress of the Creative Thinking course in the Fall 2016 semester.
You and your young friend are trotting along in your refrigerator box and reach an impasse. There is a crossing guard at the corner. You ask, “Where exactly are we now, and what can we expect if we turn right?” You make a few notes with the Sharpie on the interior. By obtaining some knowledge through inquiry, your box-blocked perception is improved.
The first performance we experienced as a group was The Forgotten/L’Oublié(e) at the Alexander Kasser Theater, our next “sacred space.” Prior to the show, students were given “curator” information to facilitate their percipience during the performance. Arts and Cultural Programming provided the class with contextual information on The Forgotten creator and cirque nouveau performing artist Raphaëlle Boitel. Boitel has been described as “one of the most remarkable performers on the European visual and physical theater scene.” She dives, glides, and flies throughout the production, employing an amazing athletic potency. She and her company of five performers generated an alternate universe of striking meaning and beauty within the stage’s proscenium.
While it may be challenging to describe the narrative portrayed in The Forgotten, there was no doubt a narrative. The students, while silent, were jaw-dropped, metaphorically suggesting there was something they wanted to say but could not. Some students did not know exactly how to “archive” their experience using their perception. So, in the next class, we explored symbolic metaphoric language to name the experiences of the senses. Furthermore, to discuss the ideas evoked by The Forgotten, we considered form, another tool common to creative projects in almost all genres.
To provide another experience in a “sacred space,” we visited the George Segal Gallery. The exhibit Between Here and Then: Photography from the Collections of Montclair State University, curated by Mimi Weinberg, features photographs from the University’s permanent collections. While this exhibit includes a few color Polaroids by Andy Warhol, the exhibit mostly displays black-and-white photographs sorted into four sections: Snapshots, which serve as visual diary entries; Sketches, photos displaying the process of creating something; Documents, featuring ritual practices and objects; and Pictures, pieces that highlight the subjects, considered by the curator as the final results of a creative process.
Photo: Part of the exhibit Between Here and Then: Photography from the Collections of Montclair State University at the George Segal Gallery.
The perceptual task here was to perceive the black-and-white photographs and to use language to make metaphorical connections that are not present in the two-dimensional images, but that may be suggested. Students learned to look more closely to find connections to sensory imagery such as movement, emotion, aroma, color, and, in keeping with our class theme, sound or music.
George Segal Gallery Education Coordinator Adam Swart worked with us to find new ways to garner multiple sensory experiences from black-and-white photographs and to express them in new written responses. Mr. Swart’s insight into the exhibit’s themes and variations in photographic media added to our percipience.
Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University. A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools. A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.
This is the third post by Dr. Christopher Parker in a series which chronicles the progress of the Creative Thinking course in the Fall 2016 semester.
As you walk around with your friend in the corrugated cardboard refrigerator box, you have a growing collection of artifacts from the sidewalk, as well as notes and drawings written in Sharpie on the inner walls The box, in this case, is becoming your own sacred space.
We continue to start each class with an exercise in Creative Thinking.
One example is inspired by a Pablo Picasso sculpture called Bull’s Head, assembled out of nothing more than the seat of an old bicycle and the handlebars. Students are shown drawings of various bicycle parts and then must reimagine or redesign something new. Students present the “sketches” of their new reassembled ideas to the class; these can be comedic, metaphoric, and/or aesthetic. It was clear in this exercise that some students were evolving in their abilities to make new and unexpected connections between parts of life’s “stuff.” Still, this exercise provided students with the “stuff”—i.e., bike parts—with clear instructions. The greater challenge for students is to collect, perceive, and archive sensory stimuli on their own. I wanted them to demonstrate finding “stuff” through their improved perception and make something new from those perceptions.
Photo: Wikipedia, Pablo Picasso's Bull’s Head, Musée Picasso, Paris.
Perceptions come to us through the senses; they may also include knowledge of an item or experience assembled with a little research, such as a curator card next to an artifact or artwork in a museum. What’s more, museums stimulate perception because they are often perceived as “sacred spaces”. The environment tends to put the perceiver in a different mind frame to think of things in a different way.
Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center was chosen as a challenge to perception, because it is not an art museum nor a museum of natural history but rather a venue hosting a particular theme. In addition to the artifacts and media that have a visual presence, Yogi Berra conveys cultural history through docents and curator cards, and the venue can be experienced as a “sacred space.” All this takes the five senses to conceive richly of the thematic concepts at Yogi Berra Museum. To further develop students’ skills of archiving their perceptions, we visited two more “sacred spaces” on campus, the Alexander Kasser Theater and the George Segal Gallery.
Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University. A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools. A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.
Dr. Christopher Parker will write a series of posts to chronicle the progress of the Creative Thinking course this semester. This is the second in the series; read his first post "Cutting a Window in “the Box.”
Picture if you will, you and your young friend in the corrugated refrigerator box. You have found a way to tear holes in the bottom of the box, so that you can “walk” the box along the sidewalk by putting your legs out through the holes and hoisting up the inside of the box with your arms. As you inch along the pathway, you find occasional artifacts of nature like a pine cone, an acorn, or golden and red autumn leaves. You put some of those items into your box to save.
In the second class we attended a live, work-in-progress rehearsal of QUIXOTE with composer and librettist Amy Beth Kirsten, director Mark DeChiazza, the HOWL ensemble, and the production staff of the Alexander Kasser Theater. Prior to arriving at the theater, we watched three short rehearsal videos of QUIXOTE at earlier stages of its development. These videos and subsequent conversations with Mark and Amy gave us the opportunity to see their creative process unfold. We observed a creative thinking strategy in use, on which Mark elaborated during a subsequent in-class workshop: “Start with any idea and then move to the next step to see how it develops.” We could see for ourselves the process of ideas developing in the QUIXOTE rehearsal.
Image: Creative Thinking students observe HOWL in rehearsal. Director Mark DeChiazza (center, left) and Production Manager Ryan Graves (center) explain the collaborative effort to present QUIXOTE on the Kasser stage.
Following the rehearsal, students wrote 200-word statements about the creative process involved in the QUIXOTE experience. I evaluated the level of perception students evidenced in their writing assignment and decided many needed to lift their percipience level. For one, perception is improved by thinking through symbols. One of the most familiar symbol systems we have is language. But still, as a class we need to build the ability of our language to create deeper meaning through metaphor.
We now also start every session with creative thinking exercises. We use many pragmatic exercises for practicing steps towards coming out of “the box”. One method suggests that, by making new connections that we don’t usually make, we are exercising our creative thinking. Still, to make connections we need “stuff” to connect. The exercises we employ in class include the “stuff.” Some exercises let us forage for our own collection of “stuff”— the material, or palette, for creative thinking. Watching the working rehearsal for QUIXOTE at Kasser added to our palette, and gave us the experience of being in a professional venue, or sacred place for creative thinking.
Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University. A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools. A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.
Dr. Christopher Parker will write a series of posts to chronicle the progress of the Creative Thinking course this semester.
Imagine you are playing with a young child. On recycling day, you come across a big, corrugated refrigerator box. You both go into it, and stay there for a while.
In the first class we asked, what is creative thinking? Conversations led us to generate a metaphor for what isn’t creative thinking. These were the paradigms, memes, cultural norms, family and peer pressures that tended to keep us away from thinking creatively. For example:
“Mom and dad, I really want to take a class in actually writing poetry.”
In unison parents respond, “Oh my goodness! Make sure you adhere to your major. Write poetry on your free time, if you have any…free time that is.”
So, the box represents the limitations we impose on our creative thinking. Insecurity in moving beyond the norm also defines “the box.” Fear of failure. Being trained by cultural paradigms as to what it is good to do and what is not. We decided there was “in the box” and “out of the box.”
We still couldn’t define exactly what creative thinking is, but we agreed that the box sets limits on creative thinking. Some students thought that there may be ways out of the box. Or, at least we could cut windows in the box so we can peer outside of it. One student suggested listening to great music. It was generally agreed that this method may help one to begin to think creatively, and this may separate us a bit from the trapping paradigm. But how does that work? How does listening to music allow us to separate from paradigms and our typical patterns? It seemed we needed something like music to actually open a window out of the box.
Now imagine that you are back in the refrigerator box with your young friend. You hear an interesting noise, almost music outside. You don’t want to disrupt the comfortable environment and come out of the box, but you do rip a small window in the corrugated cardboard to peer outside.
But what if we don’t have access to music? Is there a way to learn from our frame of mind while we are listening to music? And, if so, can we actually define what frame of mind it is that opens “the box”? Then, if we understand that frame of mind, can we actually choose to open the window and look outside the box ourselves?
Fortunately, we had contemporary music ensemble HOWL to help us start the course by considering the window of sound/noise/music. While we concluded that music may lead us one way out of the box, it happened to be the discipline of the Peak Performances artists whom we had the good fortune to begin to work directly with. Enter, HOWL.
Commissioned through the Peak Performances two-year extended residency program PeARL: Performing Arts Research Laboratory, HOWL has been creating QUIXOTE, a striking “re-imagining” of the Cervantes classic novel to premiere in March 2017 in the Alexander Kasser Theater. This work features composition and libretto by Amy Beth Kirsten, direction by Mark DeChiazza, and a versatile ensemble including a soprano, mezzo-soprano, contralto, and four singing percussionists.
I first met with Amy and Mark at a summer residency in the Kasser Theater, where they were creating and composing QUIXOTE. Throughout the fall they will continue work on this complete theatrical experience. I think this “work in process” is an important part of the creative thinking development for the students. Rather than toss the class a loose syllabus that may imply, “ OK, it is a Creative Thinking class, so wherever you want to go is fine,” we selected a bullet point, a window out of the box, and intend to maintain the window, or theme. In that way, the class curriculum has a direction to go. Of course we can go elsewhere from sound, but at least we have a place to start, a first window in the box.
Christopher Parker, MFA, Ed.D, has a doctorate in Pedagogy and Philosophy from Montclair State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Columbia University. A lifelong teaching artist and poet, he has served the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as a poet in the schools. A playwright, Chris’s work has been produced by several Equity theaters in New Jersey.
by Karyn Henry, Creative Thinking Student, Fall 2015
Creativity can be a very hard word to describe. I went around asking people to define creativity, and I realized that it is just as hard a word to define as “art.” People could not do it; they found themselves giving examples of creativity rather than giving a definition. When I asked them if they believed that they were creative, most people found themselves unsure if they were or not. So then, what does it actually mean to be creative? The truth is that we are all creative; there is not a single person on earth who is not a creative being. In Creative Thinking (CRTH-151) at Montclair State University, you learn not only what it means to be creative, but how to manifest your own creativity. One of the many amazing things about this course is that it gives you direction, like any other college class, but also really allows you to freely interpret your own ideas on creativity.
Professor Galef, writer and Creative Thinking professor, constantly encouraged us students to provide our thoughts and opinions during class discussions. Creative Thinking was one of my few classes where I felt safe and comfortable giving my opinion. Professor Galef made sure that everyone was heard and respected. Although the class was categorized under a “lecture,” it never felt like one. During our discussions students would constantly challenge each other’s opinions on topics from our readings, while also questioning our own definitions of creativity. Professor Galef pushed us to think about how we previously defined creativity, and to broaden our horizons from that meaning. After taking this class, I find myself walking down the street and seeing creativity in things that I never thought of before. For example, if I notice that the shape of the stairs for one building is extremely unique, I now ask myself, “Why did the designer of these steps decide to make them this way?” Many things that we see are creatively designed for a purpose.
The most important and interesting topic I learned about in the class was pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is the use of everyday patterns that we know and understand from memory. Because of pattern recognition, we know the difference between what it looks like when we’re going up the stairs compared to when we’re going down; we know the difference between someone who is angry and someone who is happy. Because of pattern recognition, we can be creative because it forms an understanding of “the norm”; you cannot think “outside of the box” without knowing exactly what “the box” entails.
Creative Thinking was the most influential class that I took this semester. It is one of the few classes that I’ve taken where I did not feel like I was aimlessly working. Professor Galef inspired me to want to learn more about creativity and more about myself. This course is also much different from other classes, because with every lecture I felt like I learned something that I can apply to my life. We had many visitors of different professions, including Moe Angelos, actress from The Builders Association and Elements of Oz; poet Mary Jo Salter and jazz composer and pianist Fred Hersch, who collaborated on Rooms of Light: The Life of Photographs; and Professor Marissa Silverman of the Cali School of Music. The commonality among these visitors is that they all incorporated creativity into their lives. Creative Thinking has helped me, not just to define creativity, but also to learn how I am creative, and how I can incorporate creativity into my life. I would recommend this class to anyone who wants to change the way they perceive the world.
This spring marks the first semester in which two sections of Creative Thinking have been offered. Students in “Section 2,″ taught by biology professor Dirk Vanderklein and physics professor Ashwin Vaidya, explored the realm of dance and the process of making a movement vocabulary with dancers of ICKamsterdam: Derek Ceyla, Quentin Dehaye, Edward Lloyd, and Arnaud Macquet, the cast of the Peak Performances presentation of ROCCO.
ICKamsterdam led the students through an abbreviated form of their Double Skin: Double Mind workshop, which utilizes imagery and body awareness to lead participants through physically demanding stretches and breathing exercises. The objective is to focus on how the body executes repetitive movements, and to notice minute differences felt in the body with each iteration. As one becomes more physically exhausted, the mover temporarily abandons extraneous physical movement and previously engrained techniques and releases mental distractions, clearing the mind to observe the movement nuances within his/her own body. ICK dancers discussed how Double Skin: Double Mind embodies the company’s choreographic process: by establishing a familiarity with the movement patterns of their own bodies and unique capabilities, ICK dancers have a framework to push beyond to create new movement.
Prior to the workshop, Creative Thinking students attended a live performance of ROCCO, a piece inspired by the classic Italian film Rocco and His Brothers and the movements of boxing. Drawing on the performance, students were able to formulate questions for the visiting artists about the creation of the work and other aspects of ICK’s creative process, including finding inspiration in other fields like boxing, and training in the sport so as to learn new movements; keeping a dance exciting after dozens of performances; and defining creativity in the field of dance.
Several students reflected that they struggled to adapt to the instructions and difficulty of the movement exercises initially, but eventually grew more confident and embraced the uncertainty. The challenge of “keeping up” with the instructions, such as visualizing organs within the body, made obvious the vast knowledge the professional dancers have accumulated- from multiple movement techniques, to anatomy and other studies in movement, like boxing. The fusion of boxing and ballet movement vocabularies demonstrated to students the concept of finding inspiration across disciplines, a cornerstone of the Creative Thinking curriculum. Students also connected the rigor of the dancers’ training to the intense level of research conducted by innovators in all fields; that a vast understanding of a given field enables deeper questioning and opportunities for new ideas.
Back in September, Richard Schechner’s Imagining O opened the 14|15 Peak Performances season at the Alexander Kasser Theater. Perhaps the most unsettling characteristic of the performance was the expectation that the audience interact a bit- or a lot- with the ensemble of women playing sensual characters, toying with the emotional boundaries of control and submission. A more subtle novelty of the performances was the presence of the dramaturg, MSU English professor Carrie O’Dell, and a dramaturgy area in the lobby where one could read and touch floor-to-wall strips of mural paper filled with images, scribbles, writings, and drawings by the cast. The audience could quite literally step– or as seen below, sit– on the visual research behind the devised theater work.
Carrie O’Dell (left standing) and Richard Schechner (left seated) speak to Chris Parker’s Mythology students in the dramaturgy “corner” before a performance of Imagining O at the Alexander Kasser Theater.
The drawings lead curious audience members (as well as Arts and Cultural Programming staff) to ask, in what context did the actors draw and write these ideas, and how did this initiate the creative process? To be clear, these are not just random scribbles- but very intentional, though often spontaneous, hand-written ideas from the early stages of rehearsal and training for the performers in Imagining O in a practice called rasaboxes.
Richard Schechner began developing rasaboxes in the 1980s and 90s during his annual summer performance workshops at NYU and in rehearsals with East Coast Artists, following decades of practice in psychophysical exercises and research in neurobiology, psychology, a classical Indian performance text called the Natyasastra, and the writings of twentieth-century theater theorist Antonin Artaud (Minnick, Murray Cole, 2002). Rasaboxes is a tangible tool and process to access and express emotions within the context of performance. Rasaboxes trains participants to work holistically: the body/mind/emotions are treated as a single system (see "What is Rasaboxes?" at rasaboxes.org).
There are eight rasas that relate to various emotions; rasa is the experience between performer and the audience. In Sanskrit, rasa literally means essence, juice, or flavor. Schechner and other rasaboxes instructors use the example of tasting fruit: the sweetness "in" a fruit correrlate to the emotions within a performer, and the rasa is the “tasting" of the sweetness. The emotions dwell within the performer, but the experience of them between performer and audience is the rasa (Minnick, Murray Cole 2002). A few examples of rasas, as defined in the Natyasastra include: adbhuta (surprise, wonder), bibhatsa (disgust, revolt), and hasya (laughter, the comic). (For a full list of rasas, see "What is Rasaboxes?" at rasaboxes.org.)
An introduction to a holistic creative process seemed a unique opportunity for Creative Thinking students at Montclair State. In November Paula Murray Cole, professor of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College and director of rasaboxes training at East Coast Artists, visited the Creative Thinking class to lead an introductory rasaboxes session. This session was less intensive than the rasaboxes training that Richard Schechner provided to the ensemble of Imagining O- and also not performance-specific, but the intent to lead a group of individuals out of their comfort zone and experience a new method of creation remained a constant.
To prepare for the session, Paula used paper to create a grid of nine boxes on the floor. Each box represented a rasa, with space for writing and drawing and physically stepping into the rasabox (see below; the center box represented a neutral space). Paula also taped one line across the edge of the classroom, delineating space for students to enter the room; once they stepped over the line – at a time of their own choosing – it signaled they were ready to begin the session. There was a precision in how she prepared the rasa working area and divided the space of the classroom. There were tangible boundaries to offer students structure in an unfamiliar experience. As students gained comfort, boundaries could be stepped over by both the body and mind.
The line separating the spaces for preparation and participation. Paper surrounds the grid, creating spaces for writing/drawing and movement for each rasa.
After warm-up exercises- which can be tailored to unique groups- the session progressed through the following events: students moved about the boxes, writing and drawing words, quotes, and images associated with each rasa. After everyone had a chance to visit each rasabox, students were then asked to make facial expressions or body shapes that embodied the rasas. Students then added sound, movement, and breath to their expressions of each rasa and experimented with moving from box to box. The initial physical act of writing these emotional associations prepared the participants to recreate these emotions with greater use of the body.
Above: Rasaboxes grid following the session with Creative Thinking students.
Detail: Drawing from the Karuna (sadness, compassion) rasa.
For student Lucas Broughton, the rasaboxes session was particularly freeing, especially in developing his comfort with expressing emotion. In an excerpt from his course journal, a required, ongoing writing assignment for all Creative Thinking students, he writes:
Rasaboxes, whether used intensely as training for performers, or introduced to students who do not identify as performers, is a means of accessing and expressing emotions. The process of identifying these emotions fosters mindfulness, thinking physically, and interpersonal communication skills. Additionally this session led students from the familiar: personal experience and writing and drawing these associations, into the unfamiliar: expression with the body, face, breath. For students in the Creative Thinking course, this was a unique experience with a creative process that generates material from within and without the mind and body.
References:
Michele Minnick, Paula Murray Cole. (2002) "The Actor as Athlete of the Emotions: The Rasaboxes Exercise." Movement for Actors. Edited by Nicole Potter. New York: Allworth Press.
Further Reading:
rasaboxes.org/resources/readings/
Richard Schechner. (2001) Rasaesthetics. The Drama Review, 45,3 (T171) Fall 2001.
The Research Academy for University Learning (RAUL), co-developer of Creative Thinking, hosted the Annual Day of Mindfulness at Montclair State University on Monday, September 22nd. Additional collaborators of the event include the Office of Equity and Diversity, Council for Faith and Spirituality, Office of Health Promotion, and Contemplative Pedagogy and Practice Fellows. Lectures on mindful teaching practices and mindfulness-fostering events like a slow food movement lunch, a “yogathon”, and nature walk were part of the day’s events.
Mike Lees, Creative Thinking instructor and faculty member in the Contemplative Pedagogy Program, shared indigenous drum and song of the Lakota people. He invited the small group assembled to sit in a circle of chairs and burgundy floor cushions. I opted to sit cross-legged on a cushion – a necessary intermission from the office chair “hunch” I’d been performing in front of my computer for several hours prior. Much of the group, self included, admitted ignorance of indigenous cultures and art forms, to which Mike smiled and welcomed us to something new. After a brief introduction, Mike sat forward in his chair and lowered his eyes, pausing only to inhale before the powerful ring of song sailed out from him into the room. His performance was non-indulgent, but fully immersed so that we could glide along with him over the notes and steady rhythm of the drum.
Bookending each song with explanation and questions posed to the group, Mike shifted between the roles of both performer and teacher - and we trustingly followed along as students. Each song had a different purpose in Lakota tradition, be it a song typically sung by a young man seeking courage when alone in an expansive wilderness, or a song of regeneration and life sung literally in harmony by an entire community. In one song, the lyrics call out to animals by name, for example an eagle, a bear, or a deer, so that the singer may draw into himself the strengths each animal possesses, such as wisdom, power, or grace. Mike then asked us to associate traits or characteristics of the animals. Our collective thoughts on an eagle led us to imagery of “soaring/freedom/lightness/a wide perspective.”
Mike explained how he has adapted this kind of reflection for his students, using the example of a bear: she walks on all fours with an intense focus on the ground near her, but often stops to stand on two hind legs to look into the distance in every direction. Students then practice such behavior outside of class, pausing to look around themselves during their daily lives. What might one see that previously went unnoticed? What natural or man-made systems exist around us? Does imagining a birds-eye view or the massive stance of a bear on hind legs inspire us humans to view a situation differently? For students, this question can lead to awareness of their roles within one or many environments, and it demonstrates the importance of multiple perspectives and reflection. Reflection is not exclusive to those enrolled in the Creative Thinking class - the rest of us bowing before our monitors and screens daily can make use of this contemplative practice, too.
Recently, I wrote a post about creative thinking programs in higher education. Here is an update about the Creative Thinking course at Montclair State University:
This 13-14 Academic Year was the first time that the course has been offered every term. Mike Lees was Lead Instructor for the Fall '13 and Spring '14 semesters; Ashwin Vaidya returned as Lead Instructor Summer '14 since he last led the course in the pilot Summer section in 2012. Throughout the semesters, faculty and professional artists from across many disciplines visit the course to teach their best creative practices and research tools. To read more about some of the visiting artists and faculty, read two posts written by Creative Thinking student Christy Casey, "The Arsenal of Descriptive Language" and "A Glimpse of REALITY."
In June the Advisory Board for the course met again for a three-day professional development session organized by the Research Academy for University Learning (RAUL). It is a time to check in with the lead professors of the course, and for the course's visiting faculty to share with each other exercises from their own creative practice. This is also an opportunity to foster a network of faculty interested in teaching Creative Thinking, and brief them on the structure and objectives of the course. The Advisory Board reaffirmed the following goals:
Creative Thinking aims to dispel the myth that creativity “strikes”—like a bolt of lightning or a stroke of genius. The course is based on the core premise that it is possible to develop tools and approaches to foster innovative thinking. The course aims to help students create a personal toolkit for harnessing their own creative potential and to develop insights into how they can integrate their learning into a productive whole.
The course design is intended to support the following core principles:
Adaptive expertise: an ability and inclination to recognize and relish the opportunity and necessity for invention.
Challenging mental models: recognizing patterns of thoughts and habits that block our growth, ability to see things in new ways.
Negotiating ambiguity and failure: learning to speculate, welcome ambiguity, and accept failure as part of the creative process.
Curiosity and questioning: questioning convention/norms/routines through inquiry, speculation, and reflection.
Creative Thinking (CRTH 151) will again be offered this coming Fall 2014 semester with Mike Lees returning as the Lead Instructor. As of this post date, there are only a couple spots remaining for enrollment- register today!
Two themes have surfaced often in the summer session of Creative Thinking: perspective - such as a change in one’s own or the benefits of multiple in collaboration; and patterns- observing them is a first step to many creative processes.
Here is a literal interpretation of taking a new perspective to observe patterns:
As Lauren O'Neil waited in a terminal watching planes landing and taxiing, she wondered what airports look like from a bird's eye. Using Google Earth, O'Neil has carefully examined airports from around the world and cropped the images into abstract designs. The entire series of images, entitled Holding Pattern, can be found on Tumblr. The article shared from WIRED describes the lure airports had for O'Neil and how the regulations controlling airport design create dynamic patterns when viewed from above.
"Creativity" has become part of the curricula at a growing number of colleges and universities. As content knowledge evolves faster than ever, the need to adapt to new information is essential. Gone are the days when a college-educated student can study one field and stay within it throughout his/her career.
Some creative studies programs focus specifically on process: accurately addressing a problem, brainstorming any and all solutions, and narrowing them down to the best one. Other programs also explore definitions of creativity, characteristics of creative people, and strategies to enhance one’s own creativity. Most educators and students value creativity; many in the private sector do also.
In the recent publication Creativity, Inc. Senior Vice President of Pixar and Disney Animation, Ed Catmull, credits the creative culture to Pixar’s astronomical success. An excerpt from the book describes the Pixar Braintrust, a group of creative storytelling experts, including directors, writers, and heads of story, that assemble every few months or so to give feedback on Pixar films-in-progress. According to Catmull, honest candor is key to the effectiveness of this group. On the flip side, all the filmmakers who share work must be ready to hear honest criticism of their film. Another important rule for Braintrust sessions is that the film, not the filmmaker, is under scrutiny.
“The principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when challenged.”
Catmull bluntly states that initially all Pixar movies “suck” in the beginning because often filmmakers are trying to create a truly unique concept. For example, without the scrutiny of the Braintrust, the first 39 dialogue-free minutes of WALL-E could have completely alienated the audience. Catmull paraphrases writer and director Andrew Stanton: “people need to be wrong as fast as they can.” The Braintrust gets the worst versions of a film out of the way early, clearing the road to a truly innovative film. At Pixar, starting with the bad is not a sign of failure, but rather, a typical starting point.
Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2 deciphering the location of stolen toys. A fine example of how creative collaboration produces a film depicting creative collaboration. Photo from Reuters.
Learning from error is a valuable skill according to Lazlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google when interviewed about the qualities Google seeks in employees:
“We want someone that will argue their idea up and down, but be able to admit they were wrong when presented with another solution.”
He later adds,
“Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure.”
Catmull and Bock comfortably accept risk and error—a trait inherently at odds with many academic settings. For most students, avoiding failure is a driving motivator for performance. The fear of failing can be a great motivator, but the message is always, "If you do the work, you'll pass." For a firm at the scale of Pixar or Google—or even a freelance designer with a unique concept— "passing" is not always a realistic option. Furthermore, academic subjects are generally taught using progression: learning about variables and algebraic principles prepares you to understand y = mx + b, for example. So, how do you prepare students for the unexpected? In what ways can you place a student in a completely new situation and ask them to produce or create?
Creative thinking courses offer experience with the "unknown." Hearing that your idea “doesn’t work” and having the persistence to try again is a valuable characteristic for any field of creation, from computer science to teaching Kindergarten. When students endeavor through the creative process—where revision and criticism precede even more effort and revisions—they have experiences that transcend academia into the rest of their lives.
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