In looking at what Ken Robinson says about creativity and how schools are currently killing this natural part of our being, it’s clear that he, along with other visionaries, believe that this industrial model of education no longer serves us. He states that “creativity is as important as literacy,” and that we should be cultivating multiple intelligences rather than the current hierarchy that favors linear thinking with math and sciences at the top and the arts at the bottom. Intelligence, as he points out, is interactive and requires openness to many ways of understanding and expression.

At Sustainability Leaders Network, our Art of Sustainability program (AoS), flows from the same framework of understanding as Ken Robinson’s talk. AoS seeks to bring back the child in all of us that in most cases have been suppressed by school and society at large. Creativity and risk-taking are at the core of this long lost child in all of us. It is the great unknowing and willingness to make mistakes that most of us have been conditioned to reject. AoS cultivates creative experiences so that participants can engage as whole people and, in doing so, find wisdom and discovery in unexpected places.

To work for sustainability on the planet, it is crucial for activists to face this challenge as whole people. To be a “whole” person” both the right and left-brain modalities need to be in sync. This can also be seen as unity of the heart and mind. AoS is intended to be a visionary tool and critical part of helping various change agents be more effective and make their work more meaningful. This is precisely the kind of work that Ken Robinson seems to be promoting.