Date: 27 November 2019

Time: 18:00 – 18:45 (followed by a small reception)

Place: Webster Geneva, LLC Commons Room

A public talk by Dr. Michael Hanchett Hanson, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, part of the Creativity and Innovation Lecture Series organized by the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation (WCCI).

While this is a free event, we kindly ask that you register >> HERE 

Curiosity is an important aspect of creative work, learning, development and mental health. Ironically, though, many of the ways we think about creativity – the never-ending imperatives to be (even) more creative! and to think "outside the box" of our knowledge and experience – seem designed to stimulate disorientation, guilt and anxiety rather than curiosity. As a researcher and educator, Dr. Hanchett Hanson proposes that we think of creativity as a set of questions rather than answers. These questions include how we think about ourselves, our goals, our attitudes and our values along spectrums between individualism/social consensus; hubris/humility; novelty/tradition; fulfillment/sacrifice and us/them, among others. With examples from everyday life and psychological research, he shows how these questions have been central to the history of our idea of creativity and how they work within some larger views of creativity and not others. These questions remain, however, as important as ever in the rapidly changing world of 2019.

Michael Hanchett Hanson is a psychologist and Director of the Masters Concentration in Creativity and Cognition at Teachers College, Columbia University. He teaches and writes about research methods, the history of creativity theory and its ideological functions. Dr. Hanchett Hanson is one of the leading advocates for participatory views of creativity, emphasizing the diversity of roles people take up as participants in change. He conducts research in school-based and community-based programs in the arts, youth development and general education. Dr. Hanchett Hanson received his BA in architecture from Yale University and his PhD in developmental psychology from Columbia University.