Businesses and organizations experience an array of rapidly changing and increasingly complex challenges. Today’s world demands that we think in new ways. More than ever, it’s an environment that requires creativity and innovation.
Category: Newsletter
Recent discussions and pending decisions regarding the government budget leave funding for the arts in limbo. If we care about a nation that’s both compassionate and creative; if we care about opportunities for young people, innovation, intellectual achievement, and our dignity as a national, then it is clear we cannot allow the arts to fall by the wayside. The value of the arts goes well beyond their social and economic benefits. The arts expand the mind and soul.
Remarkable things happen when you allow yourself to become fully engaged with creating art or performing music. At every level, you learn how little things make big things happen. The arts allow you to experience things from a global perspective and to bring real world meaning to basic knowledge and skills.
About 20 years ago I met a young musician who told me a story I’ll never forget. If you have ever wondered about the value of the arts—especially the process of performing music, dance, or theater, or making visual art—her story shows how the arts provide an opportunity to learn how to live a more creative and successful life.
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Contrast and Creativity
December is a month of contrasts. While it’s a time filled with the hustle and bustle of holiday activities, it also brings us the stillness and colder, darker, shorter days of the winter season.
Whether you live in an area with spectacular transformations or one with more modest changes brought about in the fall, this changing season tends to trigger all sorts of memories and a wide range of feelings.
As we prepare to take part in elections that will soon be held across the country, I think it’s important to consider the impact of the choices we make on the future of the arts—both public sector and arts education.
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Arts at the Olympics
The Olympic games regularly display the culture of the host country. Artists are featured in opening ceremonies, the works of local artists are displayed throughout the Olympic Village and city, and official posters are reflective of the creativity of the host country. But most people are unaware that in the first four decades of the modern games, official medals were awarded for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, along with those for the athletic competitions.
As another school year begins, I think it’s important for everyone to look more deeply into the value of learning through the arts.
I thought I’d share some thoughts about musical pattern, proportion, and structure in light of the hot topic of alleged music plagiarism that seems to be prevalent nowadays, most recently the case filed against Led Zeppelin and the opening bars of the hit “Stairway to Heaven.”