Why Arts Education is Crucial to the New Imagination Economy

"Engagement with art – with the product of someone else's imagination – can change your life, often for the better, and sometimes profoundly"
Advances in scientific knowledge, communications, culture, and the global economy make it clear that humanity has the potential to make momentous positive advances in the design of its future as a race. If we wish to develop the flexible thinking and wisdom that will enable future generations to come to terms with this potential and these challenges, we must transform the way we learn, bringing the arts, creativity, and imagination to the centre of the educational curriculum, and making it the focus of a broad social agenda. Max Wyman delivered this lecture, called "Times of Crisis: Why Arts Education is Crucial to the New Imagination Economy," at SFU Vancouver in October 2008. Wyman is a Vancouver writer and arts policy consultant, and one of Canada’s leading cultural commentators. He was dance, music and drama critic for The Vancouver Sun and CBC Radio for over 30 years, and is the author of a number of books on the arts in Canada, among them Dance Canada: An Illustrated History and The Defiant Imagination: Why Culture Matters, a passionate manifesto asserting the central importance of the arts and culture to modern Canada.