I talk a lot about creativity, but I’m very keen not to conflate creativity with the arts. I’ve been a lifelong advocate of arts education; I was a professor of arts education and it’s a big passion of mine. But creativity is a bigger idea than the arts. It’s represented in part by the arts, but you can be creative in science, in mathematics, or technology, absolutely anything that involves human intelligence.
Aesthetics means a sense of beauty. It’s as important in mathematics as it is in music, or dance. There is a difference between an aesthetic experience and one that it anesthetic. An anesthetic is something you take to dull your senses so you become immune to the world around you. An aesthetic experience is the opposite; it’s one that heightens your experience of the world around you and opens your senses.
That’s why the arts are so important. We live in two worlds, an interior world and an exterior world. The extent to which we connect with the world around us is the extent to which we understand and resonate with the world within us. The arts are channels for that.
Photos by Dana Ross
