Let your imagination back out of the box
A few loose thoughts on the role art and creativity play in my research
Heads up: I’m switching gears a bit this week (shifting topics away from my usual themes of academic/scholarly writing, scicomm, and making academia a better place).
While I haven’t written about it much recently (though I have an extensive archive on the subject), creativity plays a huge role in how I experience the world and in how I approach my work as an academic. Specifically, I make art to notice, record, and play in the world, to keep me human, to stay connected to the more-than-human. And, I use arts practices to inform my hands-on teaching methods, enhance the tool kits of scientists I teach and coach, and even to study improved ways to teach field and lab classes. I also tap a lot of creative writing approaches to inform my writing and the writing support I offer. And I rely on my experience with arts organizations to enhance how I conceptualize and facilitate everything from strategic planning to grant writing.
I do so because creativity is vital to science. And, because art…