Provides a solid, foundational understanding of creativity that enables readers to elicit creative performance from their students. The first book of its kind in the school library field, The Creative Imperative: School Librarians and Teachers Cultivating Curiosity Together assists educators, school librarians, school counselors, and parents in learning about creativity and inquiry as well as how to foster these desired processes in school settings and beyond. The work begins by addressing the foundational aspects of creativity, and then discusses creativity within the educational setting, exploring how educators can be more creative themselves and coax creative performance from their students. The final part of the text focuses specifically on school libraries and the role of librarians in developing environments and opportunities for inquiry that nurture creativity.

The Creative Imperative confronts the most critical question of our time: how we must think to have a vital future. It first introduced the thinking of Creative Systems Theory over thirty years ago and remains one of the most important resources for understanding the theory and its contribution. It is also a valued reference for people interested in a deep understanding of creative process. Creative Systems Theory is a comprehensive framework for understanding purpose, change, and interrelationship in human systems. It helps us better understand the past, tease apart current cultural dilemmas, and make sense of what a vital human future will require of us. The theory offers a overarching approach to understanding that reflects the more mature and encompassing kind of thinking that will become more and more essential in times ahead. The Creative Imperative is significant not just for the insights it brings from Creative Systems Theory's beginnings, but also for the particular attention it brings to many of the theory's foundational concepts. In addition, it richly documents ideas with photographs of art and architecture through history. Much in Creative Systems Theory has not been expressed more richly or fully since.

The conundrum of understanding, practising and teaching contemporary creativity is that it wants to be all things to all people. Almost all modern lists of creativity, creative thinking and how-to ‘becoming creative’ books begin with one premise: the creative individual/artist is not special, rather each of us is creative in a special way and these skills can – and must - be nurtured. Increasingly, industry and education leaders are claiming that creativity is the core skill to take us into a prosperous future, signalling the democratisation of creativity as industry. Yet centuries of association between aesthetics, mastery and creativity are hard to dismantle. These days, it is increasingly difficult to discuss creativity without reference to business, industry and innovation. Why do we love to think of creativity in this way and no longer as that rare visitation of the muse or the elite gift of the few? This book looks at the possibility that creativity is taking a turn, what that turn might be, and how it relates to industry, education and, ultimately, cultural role of creativity and aesthetics for the 21st century. In proliferating discourses of the commodification of creativity, there is one thing all the experts agree on: creativity is undefinable, possibly unteachable, largely unassessable, and becoming the most valuable commodity in 21st-century markets.

In mid 2006, Ogilvy & Mather China embarked on an ambitious journey to understand how Chinese society and business are being transformed by creativity. It is, as concluded, a Creative Imperative. Whether it is a student attempting to be noticed by a recruiting company in class, or a small clothes store-one among the scores of businesses ? in the underground "Fashion Lady" market in Nanjing, or a poor migrant labourer with only 25 square feet of space to live in, or a Vienna?bound music composer - it is essential for them all to unlock the creative potential that lies within. When you have to compete with another 1.3 billion people to make yourself heard and recognized, the only way of doing it is by being creative. This book will make you rethink China's creative potential.

This book aims to reinvigorate the Marxist project and the role it might play in illuminating the way beyond capitalism. Though political economy and scientific investigation are needed for pure Marxism, Martin’s argument is that the extent to which these elements are needed cannot be determined within the conversations of political economy and other investigations into causal mechanisms. What has not been done, and what this book does, is to argue for the possibility of a rethought Marxism that takes ethics as its core, displacing political economy and "scientific" investigation.

This book is the place to go for a deep dive into the forward-thinking, multi-faceted ideas of Creative Systems Theory. From the book's back cover: "Creative Systems Theory brings big-picture, long-term perspective to understanding who we are and why we think and act in the ways that we do. It is pertinent equally to appreciating the past, teasing apart current cultural challenges, and making sense of what a vital human future will require of us. This is the definitive work on Creative Systems Theory and its implications. "At a practical level, Creative Systems Theory provides powerful tools for making effective choices in both our personal and our collective lives. More conceptually, it makes a major contribution to the history of ideas. It clarifies how, while modern age institutions, values, and ways of thinking have served us well, they cannot be sufficient for the tasks ahead. And it offers a comprehensive approach to understanding that reflects the more mature and encompassing kind of thinking that will become more and more essential in times ahead. "This volume brings together fifty years of committed inquiry and practical application. It is part guidebook, part memoir, part compilation, and part an effort to extend Creative Systems Theory's thinking just as far into the future as is possible."

Politicians, educators and business leaders often tell young people they will need to develop their creative skills to be ready for the new economy. Vast numbers of school leavers enrol in courses in media, communications, creative and performing arts, yet few will ever achieve the creative careers they aspire to. The big cities are filled with performers, designers, producers and writers who cannot make a living from their art/craft. They are told their creative skills are transferable but there is little available work outside retail, service and hospitality jobs. Actors can use their skills selling phone plans, insurance or advertising space from call centres, but usually do so reluctantly. Most people in the ‘creative industries’ work as low-paid employees or freelancers, or as unpaid interns. They put up with exploitation so that they can do what they love. The Creativity Hoax argues that in this individualistic and competitive environment, creative aspirants from poor and minority backgrounds are most vulnerable and precarious. Although governments in the West stress the importance of culture and knowledge in economic renewal, few invest in the support and infrastructure that would allow creative aspirants to make best use of their skills.