Solving Big Problems Through the Arts
Balboa Park’s iconic lily pond
Read Jim Chute's January 21st story in the San Diego Union-Tribune about Harvey Seifter's collaboration with the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership to research arts and science-based problem-solving, apply it to significant civic challenges and measure the impact on innovation.
Closing the Innovation Gap Through the Arts
Leader to Leader, Autumn 2012
Art of Science Learning Receives $2.6 Million Phase 2 NSF Grant
On September 5, 2012, the National Science Foundation has awarded a $2,654,895 Phase 2 grant to the Art of Science Learning for a project titled "Integrating Informal STEM and Arts-Based Learning to Foster Innovation." The project is based at the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership in San Diego. which serves as project sponsor. Paige Simpson, interim executive director of the Partnership is project administrator. Key national partners include Americans for the Arts, American Association for the Advancement of Science and Association of Science-Technology Centers. I am director and principal investigator.
Over the next four years, the grant will fund arts-based incubators for innovation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) learning in San Diego, Chicago and Worcester, Mass, as well as the development of a new arts-based STEM curriculum; experimental research to measure the impact of arts-based learning on creativity, collaboration and innovation; and public programs using the project's activities to advance civic engagement with STEM.
For more information, please see the official announcements from the National Science Foundation and Balboa Park Cultural Partnership.
Over the next four years, the grant will fund arts-based incubators for innovation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) learning in San Diego, Chicago and Worcester, Mass, as well as the development of a new arts-based STEM curriculum; experimental research to measure the impact of arts-based learning on creativity, collaboration and innovation; and public programs using the project's activities to advance civic engagement with STEM.
For more information, please see the official announcements from the National Science Foundation and Balboa Park Cultural Partnership.
Harvey Seifter at the National Academy of Science
The Art of Science Learning Phase 1
STEAM AHEAD - Shaping the 21st Century Workforce Through Arts-Based Learning
In 2012, the National Science Foundation awarded a Phase 1 grant to the Art of Science Learning to advance the educational use of artistic skills, processes and experiences to advance scientific literacy in America and strengthen Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) skills in the 21st Century workforce. I am Director and Principal Investigator; the Learning Worlds Institute serves as Phase 1 sponsor.
In 2011, we convened three conferences:
April 6-7, 2011 in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian's Hall of Musical Instruments
May 16-17, 2011 in Chicago, on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology
June 14 - 15, 2011 in San Diego, at CAL IT 2 on the campus of UCSD.
Through the varying perspectives of scientists, business leaders, educators, artists, researchers and policy-makers, these conferences explored and demonstrated how putting the arts to work in science education can enhance the innovative capacity and strengthen the competitive position of the 21st Century American workforce. For more information on the conferences and the broader initiative, please
visit Art of Science Learning.
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Journal of Business Strategy Special Issue
Creatively Intelligent Companies and Leaders, a special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy which I guest edited, along with Ted Buswick of Clark University and the Boston Consulting Group, was published in 2010 by Emerald Press.
The issue is entirely devoted to the increasingly important role played by artistic skills, processes and experiences in organizational learning and leadership development.
For more information or to order a copy, please click here.
Highlights of the issue include:
- short essays by business leaders such as Glen Fukushima (CEO of Airbus Japan) and Donna Sturgess (Global Head of Innovation for GlaxoSmithKline) on what business can learn from the arts;
- an article by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaeufer about the use of painting, jazz and dance to help companies and their leaders deal with emerging complexity, based on a decade of action research projects at Fujitsu, HP, McKinsey & Company and Shell Oil;
- case studies of arts-based learning in action at Microsoft, Intercontinental Hotels, NTT and Harcourt Assessment;
- an article by Nick Nissley that explores ways in which businesses and management education programs are turning to the arts to help them find "the innovation upside of the economic downturn"
- Nancy Adler's latest thoughts about how the arts can help transform "the dehydrated language of management."
| Seifter and Buswick, Creatively Intelligent Companies and Leaders |
Harvey Seifter and the Prague Chamber Orchestra
On November 13, 2009, Harvey Seifter was joined by musicians of the Prague Chamber Orchestra on the stage of Martinu Hall in Prague's historic Lichtenstein Palace, for a journey into the collaborative leadership process of chamber music.
The audience consisted of leaders and scholars from all over the world, who were gathered in Prague to attend the 11th Global Conference of the International Leadership Association and celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
To read Harvey's opening remarks about the Art of Transformation, click below.
| Leadership and the Arts |
