Cultivating Creative and Civic Capacities
Developing dispositions toward creative problem solving, nuance, imagination, and empathy.
Creativity—or using imagination and critical thinking to generate new ideas of value—has always been valued in human societies as critical for fulfillment and success for individuals, communities, industries, and countries. As our contemporary world grapples with the complex opportunities and challenges of human diversity, technological advancements, environmental sustainability, etc., developing the disposition towards creative problem solving, nuance, imagination and empathy is more pressing than ever.
The Cultivating Creative and Civic Capacities project is a 3-year research-practice collaboration between the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) and Project Zero to investigate and document ways to catalyze young people’s capacities for creative and critical thinking and a sense of community with room for divergent perspectives, and the conditions that promote young people’s curiosity about complex issues, openness to engaging multiple, often divergent, viewpoints, and a sense of social responsibility about actions they may take.
The PZ team supported CMA’s efforts to build on and extend its "Teaching for Creativity" framework; to design productive ways of examining the role of creativity in developing civic capacities; and to enhance and track the impact of the framework on teachers.
Gain an introductory understanding of C4 and what makes it unique and powerful.
Explore the four core lenses of C4, ideas for viewing situations in creative and civic ways.
Concise ideas for tapping into each C4 concept in your practice, developed with C4 teacher-researchers.
Activities that support a specific C4 concept lens: Investigation, Imagination, Influence, and Interconnectedness.
Playful prompts to support creative and civic habits. Includes tips and variations to tailor to your contexts.
A thinking routine and follow-up questions, tips sheet, and sample art works from the CMA collection to promote observation-based exploration and other types of C4-supportive thinking.
Meet the C4 Team
Acknowledgements
Thank you to team members from the Columbus Museum of Art: Jason Blair, Caitlin Lynch, Jennifer Lehe, Britanie Risner, and Cindy Meyers Foley.
We are grateful for the courageous investigations and imaginations of the C4 teachers: Marc Alter, Maggie Boggess, Lindsey Danhoff, Lori Ehrensberger, Becky Grabosky, Eric Gregg, Dione Greenberg, Molly Hinkle, Rachelle Howland, Laura Koontz, Karmyn Metzger, Sarah Pence, Emily Reiser, Sarah Rough, Christine Scarborough, Pam Sexton, Meredith Stone, Matt Szozda, and Andrea Vescelius.
Thank You to Our Funders
Special thanks to the generous donors who made this project possible: the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation and Battelle.