Imagination Now Is Back

My fellow bloggers and I are thrilled to announce the return of Imagination Now after a brief summer hiatus. Let me tell you about a few of the exciting developments that have kept Lincoln Center Institute busy in recent months.

LCI hosted America’s Imagination Summit—the capstone of our two-year, national Imagination Conversations initiative—on July 21 and 22 at Lincoln Center in New York City. The Summit gathered nearly 200 influencers—in business, government, science, and the arts, among other fields—to determine how to put imagination, creativity, and innovation at the center of U.S. public education. The event was streamed live to thousands of viewers across the country.

Among the Summit’s many speakers and panelists were Kiran Bir Sethi, founder of Design for Change School Challenge; Deepak Chopra; Peter Cunningham, assistant secretary for communications and outreach at the U.S. Department of Education; John Deasy, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District; the Honorable Judith Kaye, former chief judge of New York State; Vice Admiral Michael Miller, superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy; Sir Ken Robinson; Bruce Vaughn, chief creative executive of Walt Disney Imagineering; General Charles Wald, former deputy commander of the U.S. European Command; and Deborah Wince-Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness.

The Summit opened the doors to numerous possible alliances between LCI and diverse organizations eager to see imagination take its rightful role in our society. The collaborators confirmed as of this writing include Curriki, Design for Change, NASA, the National Creativity Network, and New Visions for Public Schools, with whom LCI will collaborate over several years as lead educational partner in up to 18 charter schools. Additionally, we’re working with the U.S. Department of Education, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and others to plan a major follow-up meeting in Washington, D.C., this fall.

You’ll find everything you want to know about the Summit at http://imaginationsummit.org, and you can follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/ImagSummit.

Welcome back to Imagination Now, your online resource for all things imagination-related. With the momentum of America’s Imagination Summit behind us, I expect my colleagues and I will have a lot to say here. Stay tuned!