Solving complex, persistent and intractable problems like health care, water supply and climate change requires creative, innovative approaches.
And where are you going to find those approaches? The arts.
That’s the essence of a multimillion dollar, three-city National Science Foundation-funded project being conducted in San Diego, Chicago and Worcester, Mass. Home base for the effort is San Diego, under the auspices of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, a nonprofit comprised of representatives of the park’s 27 organizations.
The National Science Foundation has awarded the Cultural Partnership a $2.6 million grant (over four years) — one of the largest, if not the largest, grant to a San Diego cultural organization from a federal agency in recent memory — to research arts- and science-based problem-solving, apply it to a significant civic challenge and measure the impact of arts-based learning on innovation.
The project is directed by Harvey Seifter, the author of the book “Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management” and a pioneer in the field of arts-based learning (essentially applying strategies used in the arts — such as improvisation, collective decision-making and multidisciplinary thinking — to fields outside the arts).
“It changes the world if we can show this,” said Seifter, who anticipates generating data that could conclusively show arts-based learning as a driver of creativity and innovation.
“I would never say the arts are the only source, the only manifestation (of creativity and innovation) — but they are an awfully rich source.”
The project is the second phase of the Art of Science Learning Initiative, which was developed by Seifter in collaboration with the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership and others, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Americans for the Arts.
In 2011, during the initiative’s first phase, Seifter assembled a group of 400 scientists, artists, educators, researchers and business leaders in conferences at Calit2 (at UC San Diego in cooperation with the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, which is now the lead organization in the national project), the Smithsonian Institution and the Illinois Institute of Technology, “to explore the connection between arts-based learning, scientific innovation and economic competitiveness.”
The National Science Foundation grant is funding the creation of “innovation incubators” in San Diego, Chicago and Worcester, Mass. As has each of its collaborators at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and EcoTarium (the Worcester Science and Nature Center), the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership has convened a wide-ranging advisory council to identify a civic challenge that can be approached through arts-based problem-solving.
The Worcester advisory council selected transportation. Chicago is still deliberating. The San Diego advisory council has identified three potential civic challenges:
• 21st-century health care: It would look at the “intersection of mobile telecommunications with health care and biotech industries” and its potential for transforming medical research, health care delivery and health information.
• Climate change: It would address global warming and its impact on the region (wildfires, rising sea level, heat waves, drought, wildlife, etc.)
• Water: It would look at how the region can “ensure the reliable, sustainable, high-quality water supply it needs” to support a healthy society, economy and environment.
“Although the issues have global significance, they have tremendous local relevance as well,” said Nan Renner, the recently hired director of the San Diego incubator. “The work we do here, coming up with innovative solutions, could help us address our local problems and may inspire solutions elsewhere.”
Once a topic is chosen — based on a community vote at bpcp.org/sdchallenge — the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership will form an incubator comprising 100 volunteers from a diverse group of professions who will be divided into 10 teams that will work together over the course of a year — September 2013 to September 2014 — along with several other groups.