The Creative Nomad Project Launches!


Dear Friends & Creative Nomads,

As you may know, I’m embarking on a new journey with The Creative Nomad Project. This project is an exploration at the intersection of Design Thinking, Education, and Art which partners with local and global organizations, schools, and museums, to find Art and Design in various life and business contexts and create principles to help give people the tools to learn to think differently and creatively.

There are three major motivations for launching this project:

1. Increasingly, the conversation in education is focusing on the need for more STEM skill development. And at the same time, leaders are saying "that the most important skill for successfully navigating our increasingly complex, volatile, and uncertain world is none other than creativity."   

Personally speaking, my own ability to see a problem from multiple angles, to propose solutions that aren’t linear or the most logical solutions, to being able to comfortably work in the grey, and to feel confident in the ability to come up with unique and empathetic solutions, I know that my own creativity is a direct result of the fact that I’m, first, and foremost, an artist.

Having spent time at arguably the best tech and engineering company in the world, I believe that having an MFA has actually been my most critical asset. Possibly the most famous engineer/artist of them all, DaVinci himself said, “Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world. ” In fact, I’ll bet that with just about every incredibly talented and creative engineer or scientist you’ll find a history of arts in their past (or present).

And, as arts budgets are increasingly slashed, I wonder how exactly we expect our children to be creative when we aren't providing them with the tools to learn to how to think differently and creatively? 

2. Through this journey I hope to learn more about how art, design thinking, and education shows up in different contexts, about what it means to teach creativity, and to share these experiments and lessons learned with teachers, designers, and other creative nomads. In my work in design thinking for education I’ve heard a lot of teachers ask for more examples of what different design and curriculum looks like in practice. For those of you that care about the future of education, and different ways that arts can show up in that future, this exploration is for you.

3.  And the third motivation for this project is, to experiment with designing the right balance of designing, educating, and creating art in my own life, to prototype how I can best show up in the world to make the most positive impact while focusing on the areas I’m most passionate about. 

The full project has not yet been planned as I’m leaving this journey open to the opportunities that arise along the way. Each project will be somewhere in the intersection of design + art + ed---some more focused on art, some more on design, and some more on ed. I’ll choose partners according to their needs, how I can help, and what I hope to learn.

Lest this be too serious, here, you’ll also find the myriad of quirky, silly, and unexpected lessons that adventures promise, plus a visual logbook to keep your senses stimulated. The Creative Nomad Project is part global adventure, part earnest design trek, and whole lot of navigating into unknown territory.

Join me.