The Creative Mind Initiative is a continuation of the conversations that began with the New Curriculum over 40 years ago. Our goal is to develop innovative strategies for creative thinking and build upon Brown’s past successes in fostering the creative impulses of faculty and students. The Creative Mind Initiative will explore creative thinking, and integrate it, both horizontally across disciplines, and vertically between students and faculty.

Creativity is a particularly difficult concept to define. And yet, we all immediately recognize its cultural, social, and economic importance. It manifests itself everywhere, in all facets of life, from the most quotidian to the most sublime. Creative processes give form to the shape of the world around us. We recognize creative forces in the evolving processes of nature, and celebrate it in the great innovative achievements of our age. Our project is to better understand creativity — or more precisely, the creative process — and apply these insights to our learning, teaching, and research.

There is no single strategy for learning creative thinking. Creative thinking is an intuitive and critical response to the world around us — to our diverse curiosities and interests, to the questions our observations generate, to the ways we frame problems, and to the strategies we develop for translating what we imagine into new experiences. We believe that the unique creative character of the Brown community is our greatest asset for understanding creativity.  By providing a window into the classroom, studio, and laboratory, the Creative Mind Initiative hopes to foster a better understanding of the creative process as it plays out. It is our hope that these insights will provide tools for understanding our own creative processes, as we develop shared resources that encourage and facilitate the creativity of others.

Email us at creativemindinitiative (at) gmail (dot) com

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