Sea of Changes exhibit

Opening Reception: Sea of Changes exhibit 

View more than 50 artworks made by students at Oakcrest Middle School and Senior Citizens from recycled and reclaimed materials. All art is for sale; proceeds benefit Oakcrest School and the Senior Center! Enjoy light refreshments as you view the artwork. Artist Instructor: Rodney McCoubrey. The Artist Outreach Grant program is funded by the Kenneth A. Picerne Foundation.  

Saturday, June 1, 3:00-5:00pm

Encinitas Community & Senior Center

1140 Oakcrest Park Drive, Encinitas, CA 92024 

Free

Info

The Evolving Creative Campus

 by John M. Eger reposted from the Huffington Post

Van Deerlin Endowed Chair of Communications and Public Policy and Director of the Creative Economy Initiative, San Diego State University

Many colleges and universities are looking to put more arts at the center of campus life and in the process, foster creativity.
The Creative Campus initiative, a program of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, is leading the way.
The idea began early in 2004 at a meeting convened by the Ford Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Dana Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, Pfizer and the Altria Group. The idea simply was "to examine the factors that characterize effective partnerships in education and the arts: the projects, proposals, curricula, and creative forces that make such partnerships work."
Later, thanks to $3.5 million from the Doris Duke Charitable Trusts, the "Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program" was created "to seed innovative, interdisciplinary programs that brought together artists with a range of community and campus-based partners in order to stimulate arts-based inquiry and elevate the role of the arts in academic life. "
The grants now helping over 14 Universities establish projects that serve to nurture the entire campus including many "collaborative projects (which involve) intense partnerships that require shared language, trust, and a "restructuring" of knowledge and practice. While Creative Campus projects fell into both (cooperative and collaborative) categories, the truly collaborative projects proved most transformative for both participants and the larger campus."

After six years of study the Association seems pleased that the role of the arts has indeed stimulated academic life, but fully aware that:

"In spite of the incentives for campus-based arts presenters to work across disciplines and to become better integrated into the curricular and co-curricular life of campus, there are significant cultural and structural barriers that make such work difficult. Budgets, facilities, selection processes, and professional norms all work against innovative programming that places other goals (learning, engagement, conversation, community building) above more narrowly conceived notions of curatorial excellence. Furthermore, institutional structures and academic practices, from tenure to course review and scheduling and budgetary silos, also discourage faculty and other campus partners from embracing arts-based interdisciplinary inquiry."

One of the barriers, not surprisingly are the artists themselves. Alan S. Brown and Steven J. Tepper, PhD., who wrote the report and did most of the research, commented that "While a small cohort of artists and university arts programs explore the intersections of art and other disciplines, a large majority of the country's presenters and producers of performing arts programs - opera, classical music, jazz, dance, theatre and multi-disciplinary presenters - remain committed to finely tuned missions and business models that more or less exclude interdisciplinary work - much less work across artistic genres. "
Clearly, they argue, what is needed is a "new breed of artists who are vitally engaged in research and discovery, mindful and articulate about their creative process, open to critical reflection, and who can bridge disciplines and interact with people from different backgrounds."
Importantly, the University can do a lot of things to make the campus experience, as well as the courseware, come alive. Yale University, for example, (while not a recipient of the Creative Campus grant program) has started using their on campus Art Gallery to be a teaching mechanism for the whole university...including courses that help teachers how best to teach K-12 students. Already, last year they hosted over "48 courses from departments other than art history or art" according to The New York Times.
In addition to the art courses, according to the Yale University newspaper, 578 individual class sessions--from "women's, gender and sexuality studies...to a "Photography and Memory" course and an African American studies class on "Re-Visioning Subjectivities'--were held during the last year.
There is a message here for all universities desirous of seeing more interdisciplinary course development, and aspiring to be a creative campus. Ways to get faculty to work more collaboratively must be developed. Providing incentives for such collaborations to encourage art and science marriages is clearly essential. So too is leadership at the highest level to make such collaborations a critical part of the University mission.
The goal must be to forge an undergraduate curriculum that offers truly interdisciplinary courses, and curricula that make the college experience meaningful for life and work in the new global economy, an economy that highly values creativity and innovation.

 

Follow John M. Eger on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeger62

Art meets Engineering by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

Art meets engineering in new exhibitions at UCSD

By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt

An engineering building may seem an odd venue for art exhibitions, until you realize that UC San Diego’s Structural and Materials Engineering Building (SME) is affectionately called “Bauhaus West.”

The Bauhaus was a German school that flourished in the 1920s, combining art and technology and setting the course for modernist architecture and design. That collaborative spirit is now in evidence at SME, where art studios, galleries and performance spaces co- exist with engineering research labs, and a new faculty exhibit, “Corpus,” which shows off some of the intriguing possibilities that can occur when art and science intersect.

Most eye-catching is VisArts professor emeritus Eleanor Antin’s large-scale 2008 video installation “Classical Frieze,” a behind-the-scenes look at Antin’s restaging of ancient Rome in modern- day La Jolla that combines a Fellini-esque use of color and costume with chuckle- worthy anachronisms.

But other pieces are equally attention-grabbing, if you stop to examine them — especially the work of Maurizio Seracini, adjunct professor of structural engineering at UCSD and director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archeology in Florence. Seracini uses a copy of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci to demonstrate an amazing application he has in development, which allows viewers to discover what lies underneath an antique work of art.

By zooming in on a section of the painting on an iPad, and rubbing the pad gently with your finger, there’s a magical reveal of beautifully-drawn faces that Leonardo decided to cover over, faces that have been unseen for centuries.

“It is like magic,” Seracini said at the exhibit’s Feb. 21 opening. “There is magic in any work of art, and we want to take back that magic, so that viewers will be not just passive, but curious and excited by what they see.”

For developing the app itself, Seracini credits grad student David Vanoni, on his way to a Ph.D. in Engineering Studies for Cultural Heritage.

“You won’t find a university department like this anywhere else in the world,” Seracini said. “We’re creating human beings, not specialists; we’re training engineers to work with works of art. Now people will be able to interact with artworks, and make their own discoveries.”

By the end of the year, they hope to present the app to the city of Florence. And you can say you saw it first at SME.

Other notable pieces: A small but attractive depiction of the fighting power of neutrophils (aka white blood cells, dyed red for better visibility) by Klaus Ley, head of the Division of Inflammation of La Jolla Institute of Allergy & Immunology. And the dance photos and videos of Babette Mangolte.

“Corpus” is an insightful and delightful body of work in SME’s first floor gallery, and there’s more to see on the fourth floor — “The Practice Series,” a student group show in Room 406.For even more art and a chance to interact with the next generation of artists, don’t miss Open Studio Day at the Visual Arts Facility, a stone’s throw from SME, on March 9, and be sure to visit the gallery there for “Metaphysics,” a nine-channel video installation by Adrienne Garbini.

If you go

■ What: ‘Corpus,’ on view through May 17

■ Where: Structural and Materials Engineering Building, UC San Diego, Voight Drive and Matthews Lane

■ Gallery Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday-Friday; closed March 16-April 1

■ Open Studio Day: 3-8 p.m. Saturday, March 9, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego, Russell Lane, next to Gilman parking structure, visit studios of 37 grad student artists, 5-6 p.m. social hour/refreshments, 6-8 p.m. performances/screenings. Free weekend parking.

■ Contact: VisArts Chair Jordan Crandall, (858) 534-0418

First published in the La Jolla Light http://www.lajollalight.com/2013/03/08/art-meets-engineering-in-new-exhibitions-at-ucsd/

Lonnie Hewitt

Author/Arts & Lifestyle Writer

858-523-0223

hew2@sbcglobal.net

www.lonniebursteinhewitt.com

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain

We're bringing gameplay into more aspects of our lives, spending countless hours -- and real money -- exploring virtual worlds for imaginary treasures. Why? As Tom Chatfield shows, games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more. Tom Chatfield thinks about games -- what we want from them, what we get from them, and how we might use our hard-wired desire for a gamer's reward to change the way we learn

How Creativity Strengthens Community by John Eger

ArtsSmarts, a non-profit helping schools across Canada use the tools of arts integration, recently announced its plans to explore the larger issue of the role of the whole community in fostering creativity.

Through their annual confab this fall, entitled "Cultivating Creative Communities: Arts, Education and Spaces for Successful 21st Century Learning," the effort asks "how (can) arts-in-education programs serve as catalysts for reimagining spaces that cultivate creativity and innovation?"

The concept of teaching the curriculum through the arts -- arts integration -- is not new and has been a staple in many educational programs in America for some time. So it's not surprising that Canada, through its many provinces, established arts integration as a vital and necessary part of the nation's educational strategy over 20 years ago.

In a way, it's not fair to compare the U.S. with Canada.

They are different countries and of a different size. The U.S. does have The Right Brain Initiative in the Northeast, Arts for All in Los Angeles, Big Thought in the Dallas area and the A+ Schools Program in North Carolina, among other initiatives.

It is too early to tell how America is responding to President Obama's Committee on The Arts and Humanities report called "Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools." It unveiled the Committee's thinking about the important connection between art and culture and creativity, and promised an agenda for reinventing education in America.

Yet few countries have embraced the powers of the arts, and particularly arts integration, as an essential ingredient in fostering engagement and as Dana Gioia, former Chair of The National Endowment of the Arts, once said, nurturing the "pleasure, beauty and wonder" of learning.

Creativity is clearly a core competency for Canada's ArtsSmarts, a skill most in demand by employers around the world.

Among other findings the Obama Committee came to after over two years of study and research was that "arts integration" works, and that the "field of arts integration' (could be accelerated) 'through strengthening teacher preparation and professional development, targeting available arts funding, and setting up mechanisms for sharing ideas about arts integration through communities of practice. In this recommendation we identify roles for regional and state arts and education agencies as well as private funders."

Arts Integration, sometimes referred to as arts infusion, is about interdisciplinary education using the tools of the arts. As a unique consortium of arts organizations expressed it in a report called "Authentic Connections" such interdisciplinary work in the arts enabled students to "identify and apply authentic connections, promote learning by providing students with opportunities between disciplines and/or to understand, solve problems and make meaningful connections within the arts across disciplines on essential concepts that transcend individual disciplines."

Canada, believing that a mechanism for sharing ideas about arts integration through communities was essential, formally established ArtsSmarts in 1998 concentrating on art integration exclusively.
ArtsSmarts, importantly, is an organization that relies heavily on its partners and their communities of artists, teachers, parents and students, to work collaboratively in establishing programs in the schools. Perhaps for this reason, ArtsSmarts sees itself more like the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education (CAPE), which likewise, involves everyone in unique collaborations depending on the interest and desires of each community.

The organization has formed 16 key partnerships active in all 10 provinces that work with a total of 110 community partners and organizations. Together with their partners they have

"impacted the lives of over 475,000 students, 21,000 educators, 8,500 artists and 2,800 schools in 300 communities across Canada. In 2010-2011, our national network of partners completed 282 projects involving 22,672 students in 148 rural and 138 urban schools, facilitated by 370 artists, 1,164 teachers and 737 volunteers."

More regions of the world are coming to the realization that education is everyone's concern, and that the role of art-based training is critical to success.

Communities that fail to see the connections between education and economic development are left behind in fashioning strategies to compete in the world. Now that we are entering a new era in which creativity and innovation are the new drivers, failure to reinvent the city-the region-into a "creative community" will suffer as well.

Follow John M. Eger on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeger62 

Bubbles in Space “Mad World” Mastermind Michael Andrews Collaborates with High Tech Hig-School Kids On New Video

Bubbles in Space on Nowness.com.

Psychedelic flashes of Hello Kitty and Albert Einstein blend into vignettes of summery nostalgia in Josh Hassin’s animated music video for Michael Andrews’ “Bubbles in Space.” Comprising 3,000 frames hand-drawn by more than 100 students from San Diego’s High Tech High International, the flipbook-style piece was based on a live-action film Hassin and retro-pop singer-songwriter Andrews shot with their children, but takes Andrews’ lyrical concept of new fatherhood to an unexpected place. “I have a little girl, Mike has a little boy, and we think they’re so cute,” says Hassin, who has created videos for the likes of indie rock bands Metric and Celebration. “The school kids drew them and put crucifixes on their foreheads and other crazy stuff. But this is what goes on in their brains. So we just let that roll—it’s honest and that’s what this is about.” A prolific film composer with credits including Donnie Darko, which featured his breakout cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” with Gary Jules, and Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, Andrews is currently working on the score for Mira Nair’s new film adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Ahead of his new album Spilling a Rainbow, the musician talked us through his pregnant musical journey, from being uncomfortably numb to stealing love songs.

Susan Cain: the Power of Introverts

This Ted lecture from 2012 helps us see how both introverts and extroverts are a necessary part of creativity.

A new MA program where you can combine your love of film, literature, photography, theatre, and the arts (and sciences!)....it's here! at SDSU.... check out the MALAS program http://malas.sdsu.edu/

Applications due February 1, 2012 (with all support materials due, March 1, 2012)... MALAS, the MA in Curiosity @ SDSU!

MALAS GATEWAY | SDSU | The Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences @ San Diego State University malas.sdsu.edu

Ruth West, San Diego Interdisciplinary Artist

We met Ruth West at the Art of Science Learning Conference in June, 2011. Take a look at her website and see a sample below. Ruth West is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher working with emerging technologies. Her background spans new media arts, design, molecular genetics, information aesthetics/visualization, virtual/immersive environments, psychology, and mobile technologies. Current and prior affiliations include: UCSD Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, UCLA CENS (NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing), and NCMIR (National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research). Ruth's work has been presented or featured in SIGGRAPH, WIRED Magazine’s NextFest, UCLA Fowler Museum, CAA, Ingenuity Festival Cleveland, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, FILE 09 Sao Paulo, IEEE VR, Mobisys, SPIE, IEEE ICIP, the American Journal of Human Genetics, Genomics, Leonardo, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and NPR's The Connection, NY Times, Genome News Network, AMINIMA and Artweek.
Selected Project
	ATLAS in silico reflects on one of the elemental scientific and cultural challenges of our time: the shift from an organism-centric to a sequence-centric view of nature made possible by metagenomics and it’s ensuing impact on our understanding of the nature, origins and unity of life. It is a physically interactive virtual environment/installation and art-science collaboration that provides a unique aesthetic encounter with metagenomics data (and contextual metadata) from the largest known protein sequence dataset, the Global Ocean Survey (GOS) - a ground-breaking snapshot of biodiversity in the world’s oceans. Visit: http://www.atlasinsilico.net A brief description and video are here.

Art/Science Initiative at University of Chicago

“ This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience. ”

—Albert Einstein

Check out their video on their joint speaker series March, 2011

Creating Distinctive Collaborations

The cross fertilization between the arts and science is emerging as a dynamic new intellectual endeavor. How can each of these respective disciplines enrich and influence the other’s culture of inquiry, working methods and forms of creative investigation? The Arts|Science Initiative seeks to actively pursue these ideas, explore the crosscurrents where new disciplinary exchange is taking place, and advance a distinctive collaborative research agenda.

A University-wide endeavor, the Arts|Science Initiative was formed in partnership with the Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts and Provost’s Office, with the support of the Divisions of the Biological and Physical Sciences and the Office of the Vice President for Research and for National Laboratories.

Scholarship—Practice—Innovation

To break new ground and probe big questions, both artists and scientists know they must travel across disciplines and venture into unknown territories. This pioneering spirit of collaborative research and teaching environments which transcend academic borders is integral to the University and its mission. The Arts|Science Initiative will contribute to this groundbreaking culture, and support the ongoing development of transformative ideas, novel constellations of academic research, and creative innovation.

Opportunities for Exploration & Research

The Arts|Science Initiative will launch with sponsoring the Arts|Science Graduate Student Collaboration Grant. This is a pilot program to support teams of two or more graduate students, with at least one in the arts and one in the sciences, who work together to investigate a subject from the perspectives offered by their disciplines. Other programs in the planning stage aim to spark conversations among faculty and students that critically engage science and the arts in a broad spectrum of areas including astronomy and astrophysics, biology, chemistry, computer and information science, creative writing, literature, mathematics, media studies, medical imaging, music, physics, theater, as well as visual arts.

To learn more, http://arts.uchicago.edu/arts_science/

contact Julie Marie Lemon.

President's Committee Makes Strongest Case Ever for Arts Education by John M. Eger

May 6 will go down as a landmark in the history of Arts Education.

On this day the President's Committee on The Arts and Humanities released a report at the Art Education Partnership (AEP) Conference, called "Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools."

It unveiled the President's thinking about the important connection between art and culture and creativity and innovation, and promised an agenda for reinventing education in America. It is a landmark in new thinking that should set the stage for meaningful debate, discussion and hopefully, reform.

No doubt Obama was the first candidate for election to the Presidency to have an art and humanities plank. Early on he championed the idea that, "To remain competitive in the global economy, America needs to reinvigorate the kind of creativity and innovation that has made this country great. To do so, we must nourish our children's creative skills. In addition to giving our children the science and math skills they need to compete in the new global context, we should also encourage the ability to think creatively that comes from a meaningful arts education."

As President, he filled cabinet level positions with people who saw the arts as he did, and he appointed some of the best and brightest to his high level art and humanities committee.

But the fruits of these appointments and the President's long held view of the arts and America's economic prosperity interests are now becoming apparent in this report, the culmination of 18 months of research, meetings with stakeholders, and site visits all over the country. The report represents an in-depth review of the current condition of arts education, including an update of the current research base about arts education outcomes, and an analysis of the challenges and opportunities in the field that have emerged over the past decade.

Continue at this link at the Huffington Post

The Right Brain Initiative by John Eger

Yes, something called "The Right Brain Initiative" actually exists.

Many of us have been talking about the right brain and the whole brain and the urgent need to nurture both hemispheres in our young people. Our kids need to have the new thinking skills so in demand in an economy crying out for creativity and innovation.

An Oregon-based Regional Arts and Cultural Council (serving Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties, including Portland) launched the Right Brain Initiative (RBI) in the fall of 2010.

The RBI "is a collaboration among artists, arts organizations, school districts, governments, businesses and donors who are working to integrate arts education experiences into the standard curriculum of every K-8 classroom across the region's school districts. At present, 11,000 children and their teachers will be served in 20 pilot schools across 4 districts." They expect to "roughly double in size each year for the next 4-6 years until every K-8 student... is being served."

They are very clear about what they are doing: "Our vision is to give every K-8 student in the region access to the arts regardless of neighborhood, language, or income. Through an effort that engages the entire community, we're creating long-term, lasting change within our school systems."

Their approach is not more classes, more arts or music, more anything. That would be nice but, frankly, there is not money for doing anything more, only doing things differently. And there is a new (old, really) approach. It's called "arts integration"... using the arts as a catalyst for teaching across the curriculum.

The key is getting teachers and artists working together as a team to develop arts-integrated learning experiences, say experts in the field. Very much like CoTA, a collaboration of teachers and artists in Chula Vista, California, or the Collaborative Arts Resources for Education (CARE) in Balboa Park. CARE involves four premier arts organizations: the Museum of Photographic Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, the Mingei International Museum and the Timken Museum of Art.

However, the RBI is probably one of the largest efforts in North America, involving not just the arts and culture organizations, but all the schools, private donors, artists, local government, cultural groups and everyday citizens within the three counties. Like Thriving Minds in Dallas, Texas, this is an initiative everyone can take ownership of.

To date, the RBI has engaged the enthusiastic support of private and public interests in the three counties, all the schools, and every conceivable art and cultural organization in the region. Importantly, according to Marna Stalcup, program manager for the RBI, there is "a growing awareness and appreciation of our work by the business community... attributed (in large part) to our expanded definition of literacy that includes the 21st century skills of creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking."

Moreover, says Stalcup, "funding sources are nearly 50/50 public (city, county, school districts) and private (foundation, corporate and individual)... (and) corporate contributions have increased an average of 19 percent each year".

As the world map is being redesigned, and it is, this is what all communities concerned about their place in the future need to be doing; or surely they will atrophy and die. Arts Integration, which is an essential ingredient in revitalizing a city, truly works. Only becoming an innovation economy, as President Obama has called for, will matter. This makes efforts such as The Right Brain Initiative vital.

Arts Education and the Innovation Economy: Ensuring America's Success in the 21st Century by John M. Eger

John M. Eger
Lionel Van Deerlin Endowed Chair of Communication and Public Policy
School of Journalism and Media Studies
Director, The Creative Economy Initiative
San Diego State University

Follow John M. Eger on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeger62

IMPROVISATION INCREASES BRAIN ACTIVITY by Christoph A. Geiseler

Also at the Washington DC Art of Science Learning Conference:

TED speakers and prize-winners achieve online cult status when their short presentations become viral sensations. Dr. Charles Limb established himself as a member of TED's vaulted Hall-of-Fame when he proved to the online world that he could measure the brain activity of improvising musicians. At last week's "Art of Science of Learning" Conference at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, Dr. Limb discussed his inspiration for scanning musicians in fMRI machines and the future direction of his research.

Dr. Limb is a saxophone player and a pianist who labels himself as a music fanatic. He is affable and sprinkles his presentations with humorous asides; "I belong to a frustrated class of writers, musicians and surgeons who are trying to better understand what happens in our brains when we produce art." He exclaims, "something like music and art is a whole brain activity. It suggests that from a cognitive perspective few things activate the brain entirely as much as music."

Dr. Limb started his talk with a quick overview of the history of music-making and brain scanning. The first Neanderthal bone-flute dates back to 43,000- 80,000 years ago, which proves that the desire to make music is fundamental to all humans. "Artistic creativity is a product of the brain," he says. "At a time when early humans didn't have record players, musical scores or songs to memorize, they likely improvised." Fast-forward 50,000 years to the Johns Hopkins University lab where Dr. Limb places musicians in fMRI machines; his subjects "play fours", or exchange improvised jazz riffs, inside the fMRI brain scanners.

An fMRI machine looks like a huge sun-tan bed enclosed in a bubble and is "noisy, magnetic, spatially restricted and ergonomically challenging, not like the Village Vanguard." In order to scan musicians' brains in the fMRI machine, Dr. Limb created a digital keyboard / computer interface (powered by MIDI) that allowed the subjects to keep their heads motionless while using their arms/hands to play the instrument on their thighs. They played along with Dr. Limb, who sat in a separate control room with another keyboard. Dr. Limb and his subjects first played memorized sections, and then improvised. He measured the fluctuations in their brain activity between memorized and improvised sections.

The brain scanner detects not only the relaxation of the brain, but measures brain activity where oxyhemoglobin has its oxygen utilized, which it then converts to deoxyhemoglobin. During musical improvisation, blood flows to the pre-frontal cortex, thereby setting off triggers in the machine and visual hotspots on data screens. Dr. Limb points to increased brain activity at the hotspots, and concludes that changes in activity in these areas are linked to specific regions of neural activity. He poses several questions to help push his research forward:

- Do mechanisms that underlie musical creativity generalize to other forms of creativity?
- What is creative genius?
- What factors disrupt creativity?
- Can creative behavior be learned?

Dr. Limb's study integrates art with science, which re-emphasizes the importance of uniting both fields in the laboratory, classroom and Capitol Hill.

Christoph A. Geiseler is a social entrepreneur, filmmaker and musician from Los Angeles. As the founder and executive director of the nonprofit MIMA Music, Inc., Christoph oversees the implementation of community impact programming in the United States, Europe and South America. The brainchild of his senior politics thesis at Princeton University (A.B. 2004), MIMA uses improvisational music making as a tool to empower people, train leaders and build stronger communities. For more information about MIMA, visit: www.mimamusic.org

At the Art of Science Learning Washington D.C. Conference held April 6-7, 2011, the Keynote: Susan Sclafani, "Recreating Education for our Students" is a fascinating power point presentation of skills needed by student provided by the arts. You can see the PDF version at this link

http://www.artofsciencelearning.org/images/reports/sclafani.pdf

You can attend the SD Conference in June....check out the info