By Stephanie Kistner, Senior Education & Programs Associate
I love a good TED Talk.
Educational, inspiring, and sometimes controversial, TED Talks challenge the status quo, advocate for new ways of thinking, and emphasize innovation.
Because of their accessibility and easily digestible 18-minute segments, TED Talks offer an easy-to-fit-into-your-schedule way of consuming and sharing information. Their success, in part, according to TED Curator Chris Anderson, is because TED Talks are “long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention.”
As The TED2014 Conference came to a close in Vancouver last week, I began reflecting on the first TED Talk I came across in 2006, Sir Ken Robinson’s discussion about our education system and the lack of creativity that exists in schools today. While the ideas he presents aren’t so new anymore, the change he seeks to inspire is still evolving.
TED Talks boast an impressive collection of videos about arts and education from a diverse list of contributors. Some of my all-time favorite arts and education TED Talks include:
- Mae Jemison, an astronaut, doctor, art collector, and dancer gives a compelling argument about why the arts and science should be taught together, and how doing so would create the bold thinkers we need. Jemison puts it concisely: “Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.”
- Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of El Sistema, a youth orchestra system that has transformed thousands of children’s lives in Venezuela, delivers a powerful TED Talk about the El Sistema music revolution.
- Another TED Talk favorite is led by John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design. In this talk, he muses about math, art, design, and technology and how they can all coexist and work together to inform creative leaders.
Trending on Twitter last week was a comment made by one of the speakers at the TED Conference in Vancouver, Bran Ferren, technologist, artist, architectural designer, vehicle designer, engineer, lighting and sound designer, visual effects artist, scientist, lecturer, photographer, entrepreneur, and inventor (yes, he’s all of those things, and I’m quite inspired by this impressive list):
“Visionaries not only believe that the impossible can be done, but that it must be done #TED2014.”
Here’s to inspiring more visionaries, creating change, and making the world a better place, one arts education at a time.
