Creativity, Play, and the Imagination Across Disciplines
the chance to think freely, exchange ideas,
This May, Teachers College will be host to
an exciting forum for educators, artists,
scholars, and game-makers to come
together and share their ideas for how
creativity, imagination, and play can
inspire new ways of thinking in a broad
array of domains. Creativity, Play, and the
Imagination Across the Disciplines will be
held May 26-28 and seeks to create an
environment conducive to the free flowing
exchange of ideas in an effort to generate
new understandings. Born from a desire to
actualize an experience that is not just
about creativity, but is actively engaged in
creating, this unique conference will serve
as a venue for participants to not only
listen and learn, but make and do.
T h e c o n f e r e n c e i s p r e s e nt e d i n
conjunction with Game Show NYC, an
exhibition of games that presents a new
twist on traditional art exhibits. GSNYC,
which builds on Game Show Detroit,
originally presented at the Contemporary
Art Institute of Detroit in 2006, seeks to
broaden the concept of conventional art
shows by engaging viewers in a way that is
both active and educational. Presented in
the Macy Gallery, the reception for this
exhibition will serve as one of the
conference’s many exciting events.
A wide variety of sessions will range from
presentations on theory and practice, to
interac t ive workshops w here t he
presenters and participants will learn
together. Attendees will have the
opportunity to think and learn in an
interactive setting, and participate in
workshops that examine the role
imagination plays in the creative process.
Sessions will engage the audience in
various fashions, and participants will have
higher order critical and creative thinking
and absorb new and exciting knowledge in
an effort to inspire creative growth.
Some highlights from the program include
several sessions on gaming and game
design as a means of education toward
such aims as exploring the nature of the
creative process, and inculcating notions of
ethics and justice. Multiple presentations
involving theater and performance
investigate the role these art forms can play
in changing inner city lives and
approaching a greater understanding of
literature.
The conference will feature sessions in
which the process of artistic creation will
be taken up by practitioners discussing
their own works. Conversations range
from exploring strategies of doubt and
refusal, and approaches of getting beyond
external and internal gatekeepers. One
particular session delves into the role of
intentional constraints in opening
possibilities for creating, while another
examines the importance of cultivating
make-believe to develop creativity.  
Alternative approaches to educating will be
on display, including a talk with students
of a college founded on creativity and self-
discovery who will offer a behind the
scenes look at an interdisciplinary
classroom orchestrating an environment
for creativity and play. A number of
sessions will offer “provocations,” ways in
which to explore and bring forth
participants’ own expressions of creativity
in workshop format.
The conference also includes presentations
grounded in the world of assessment in
educational settings, including an
international panel comprised of
superintendents, principals, teachers, and
scholars from four global cities - New
York, Toronto, Western Australia, and
Singapore. At present, research focused on
understanding how top schools around the
world educate for creativity is being
conducted in schools in these cities. The
panelists will share their insights about the
latest developments in education,
exemplary teaching, and pedagogical
practices in their school that help foster
5
in students.
While not solely focused on offering
specific lessons plans for bringing
creativity into the classroom, the
conference will provide a wealth of
resources for teachers of all disciplines and
age levels to take and adapt for their
content area. Because creativity and
imagination can be seen as universal
concepts that can spark innovation across
disciplines, educators will be able to
explore the ways in which other teachers
and practitioners use various strategies to
elicit student innovation and share their
own methods for teaching creatively.
This student conference will serve
as both a rich source of
stimulating concepts for
educators to bring into the
classroom, as well as inspiration
for fresh ideas and ways of
thinking for those in other
disciplines.
Artists, scholars, and game-makers will be
just some of the voices from other arenas
that will be present. Nick Sousanis, one of
the conference organizers who is doing his
doctoral dissertation in comics form at TC,
explains that the nature of the sessions is
geared toward cultivating the examination
of one’s own pedagogy, allowing for
reflection and reinvention of practice. The
conference seeks the convergence of a
diverse group of people and ideas in an
effort to expand the possibilities for
learning and growth for everyone
involved.
In addition to interactive presentations in a
variety of formats, the conference will
feature a number of invited speakers. Tony
Wagner, founder and co-director of the
Change Leadership Group at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, is
scheduled to speak at the conference
dinner on May 26th. He will be sharing his
research from his latest book to be
published this year entitled Learning to
Innovate, Innovating to Learn and
discussing how we can educate for
creativity. (continued on next page)

Artist Betty Blayton
Betty Blayton, an artist in the Columbia
University program Art Cart: Saving the
Legacy, describes her artistic process, as
“painting something that is a future
knowing.” When Professor Joan Jeffri
dreamed up her idea to create a course at
Teachers College that paired aging
professional artists with teams of graduate
student fellows to document and preserve
their creative legacy, she had no idea what
the future held. Now, in the second
semester of the course, she is overjoyed
by the success the project has achieved.
“When people hear about Art Cart they
immediately want to get involved,” says
Jeffri. Since the course began in fall 2010,
it has generated a number of unforeseen
outcomes that have greatly benefited the
lives of its artists. Eva Deutsch Costabel
was recently featured in a 60-year
retrospective of her work at Gallery 307,
an opportunity that came from her
involvement with Art Cart. She received a
great deal of press for this show;
including an interview by NY1 that she
says had a great impact on her career.
This past weekend, Art Cart artist Ray
Grist exhibited his work at the Harlem
Fine Arts Show, which features works
from established and emerging African-
American artists from around the world.
There he spoke about his experience in
Art Cart as part of a talk by Jeffri entitled,
“Artists and Aging: Th e Good News.”
Grist first realized his need for
documentation when he sat down with
his lawyer to write his will. He thought it
would be as simple as “signing the stuff
over to his daughter,” but when his lawyer
asked him what the “stuff” was, he was
Art Cart Gets Legs
stumped. Art Cart has helped him define
his legacy.
Art Cart developed out of recognition of
the need for aging artists to document
and preserve their artistic legacy for
future generations. In her 2007 study,
“Above Ground,” Jeffri found that only
one in fi ve artists have a will and the
majority of them have no preparation for
the preservation of their work after their
death. In many of these cases, without
someone to take proper care of the work
after the artist’s passing, years of hard
work and creativity would be lost.
The documentation does more than
capture the artist’s body of work; it creates
a record of the artist’s life of creativity, a
history of the artist’s creative process.
Through the course, which includes an
oral history, the artists are telling their
story in a new way. Ting Olatunji, Betty
Blayton’s artist partner says, “For the fi rst
time, artists are able to record their own
histories. A project like this has been a
long time coming…it is a great
opportunity for artists' words to finally
be heard."
Artist Ray Grist’s exhibit at
the Harlem Fine Arts Show
In order to share the full experience of
Art Cart, Jeffri realized she has to do
more than just talk about it. Th is spring,
with the help of Columbia graduate
journalism student, Josh Haskell, the
Research Center for Arts and Culture is
producing a short documentary to show
the story of Art Cart. Spearheaded by Art
Cart fellow and Social Work student, Paul
Nikolaidis, the documentary will follow
the stories of the collaboration of students
with aging visual artists, illustrating the
process as well as the impetus behind
the project.
In April, the artists will be featured in a
panel at Columbia’s Creativity &
Innovation conference. In the fall, Macy
Gallery will present a multi-media
exhibition featuring the work of the
artists and their collaboration with the
fellows. At the end of its pilot year, Jeffri
plans to take the program to a national
level with the National Center for
Creative Aging.
–Marie Weller
Creativity, Play, and the
Imagination Across Disciplines
(continued from page 5)
Other speakers include Maxine Greene of
Teachers College, Fred Goodman from
the University of Michigan, and
Chadwick Jenkins from City College of
New York. These esteemed speakers will
be able to share a wealth of knowledge
from their research and practice to set the
tone for the conference.
Another aim of the conference is to
weave in the potential for future
collaborations. While the event will
feature a set structure, the overall format
will also build in time for informal
interactions. With presenters and
attendees coming from across the
country and a number of international
locations, it is hoped that this time for
unstructured interaction and more
intimate conversations will set the stage
for collaborations to come. In addition to
providing space for open interaction, the
conference will also feature a “wrap”
party on Saturday so that participants
have an opportunity to reflect on what
they’ve experienced, debrief, and begin
thinking together about what comes next.
Creativity, Play, and the Imagination
Across the Disciplines will be held from
May 26 through May 28, 2011 at Teachers
College, Columbia University.
For more information and to register,
visit: blogs.tc.columbia.edu/
creativityconference2011.
For more information about Game Show
NYC, check out gameshownyc.com.
–Liz Hoelzle