Defining Creativity: Recent Episodes
Debbi Ponella
Creativity is unique for everyone in its expression, process, and manifestation. Through conversations with people across demographics, generations, and cultures, creativity researcher Debbi Ponella explores how individuals relate to, embrace or exclude, and define creativity in their lives.
Jonathan Phillips combines his expertise as a scientist and as classically trained violist in creativity that permeates all aspects of his life. He explains, "I'm motivated by natural curiosity, my love of creative people and ideas, and my spiritual foundation."
In this episode of the Defining Creativity Podcast, Jonathan shares insight about his journey from Kodak to Google and ultimately to his current position as VP of Imaging Science at Imatest and how his profession has progressed.
“Even before we called [them] digital cameras and digital photography, it was electronic still imaging I believe was the term that was used, so even the terminologies and how we describe technology changes over time. So, moving from the very chemical based imaging to the fully digital based imaging has been the pathway that I’ve been on which naturally leads to learning and creativity and innovation.”
Jonathan is an author of "Camera Image Quality Benchmarking”
Follow Jonathan on LinkedIn
Terry LaBolt is featured in this week's episode during which he discusses creativity in his life from childhood to Broadway and Carol Channing to Indiana University (IU). Influences for the development of Terry's creativity came from diverse experiences, a significant one being exposure to Schoenberg's String Quartets performed by the LaSalle Quartet while at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM):
“In my tenure at the Cincinnati Conservatory, there was a string quartet called the LaSalle Quartet and at the time I was in school, they were recording the complete Schoenberg String Quartets for Deutsche Grammophon… every semester there was a recital where they would try out a Schoenberg Quartet. So three times a year I would go and hear the LaSalle Quartet play Schoenberg… and the Schoenberg was tough for a year or a year and a half, and my ear started to expand and, instead of just hearing... what you might think of as like Tertian harmony or traditional harmony, I started opening up to just listening for events and not listening for a chord to resolve or an 'amen' cadence and to just enjoy wherever it was headed."
Another source of learning at CCM was Terry's peers:
“A lot of my creative thinking came from sitting around with my classmates talking about how we play and how we think and how we interpret, how we remember, how we forget… you know, just analyzing, analyzing, analyzing to a ridiculous degree, but it did change me. All of that information changed me.”
While living in New York City in his early 20s, Terry took advantage of museums such as the Guggenheim, expanding his appreciation of abstract art and thinking. His work on Broadway and beyond included a significant amount with Carol Channing:
“My primary employer was Carol Channing, and [she] would say… ‘I love it because you’re the first person who conducts it the same every time’ and really I was the first person who did it differently every time, because I knew exactly what she needed all the time. I knew from the way that she walked on stage and how many times that she blinked her eyes in a minute; I knew how fast she needed to go. And, these are minor adjustments I would make. It wasn’t something that would throw the whole show off, but… I would just conform the show to her.”
Terry generously shares his expertise and experiences with students, most recently at the IU Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance. His creativity goes beyond music, informing relationships and interactions through flexibility, listening skills, and openness allowing him to engage students and colleagues as well:
“I always have to know with who I’m dealing with—whether it’s a student or a colleague or people in a show—I have to kind of know where they are. If I don’t have students’ attention in class, my first thought is I’m not engaging them; they’re not being bad. It’s always like, ‘What am I doing that’s making them check out?’ And, I would say the same with my colleagues. So I’m kind of hyper-aware of where other people are all the time and I’m making adjustments.”
“There’s success and there’s achievement and that gets very confused for a lot of people… With my students, I really try hard to get them to understand the difference because most of them are people who have wanted to get the best grade on the test and who have wanted to know what the teacher wants and do all those things and I’m included in that. We equate achievement with happiness and really we shouldn’t do that. We can equate success with happiness, but success is not like a job or a salary, it’s a personal thing. It’s ‘Did I do my best?’ and so forth, not ‘Did I get this? Am I #1?’ all those things. That helps students be creative when they realize, ‘How can I do my best?’ instead of “What do they want?’ That’s a huge thing. That’s a goal that I have for each of them.”
Malcolm Webb embraces creativity in a variety of ways. Acknowledging that creativity in his profession of investment advisor can be problematic, Malcolm channels his creativity into understanding and communicating with his clients. Similarly, being a pilot and much of his Civil Air Patrol duties do not lend themselves to creative manipulation, but he finds a creative outlet in the instruction of cadets.
Malcolm discusses the impact of his interior designer mother and musician father in his cultivation of creativity:
“I became fascinated with the process [interior decorating] and [my mom’s] ability to see something in her mind that we didn’t see, and I tried to develop that...”
Another impactful personality with whom he interacted growing up was Leonard Bernstein. One remembrance Malcolm shares is the following:
“Charlie [Malcolm’s brother] was listening to Earth, Wind, and Fire, and he said to Mr. Bernstein, ‘It’s just rock music’ and I’ll never forget, Leonard Bernstein looked at him and said, ‘Yes, but is it good rock music?’ Now, that question expanded my thinking in a way that had not been done before, because I was young and I had not thought of rock music in terms of quality and now I did. With that one question, I did. Charlie’s answer, incidentally, was, ‘Well, it’s Earth Wind, and Fire,’ and he said, ‘That is good rock music.’”
An tribute to the relationship of Malcolm's family with Leonard Bernstein can be found in the movement VII of Bernstein's "Arias and Barcarolles" entitled "Mr. and Mrs. Webb Say Goodnight" in which Malcolm and his brother, Kent, are part of the dialogue as the soprano sings: "Boys! Stop that noise! Malcolm, Kent, cut the noise!"
Listen to a recording by the San Francisco Symphony here.
Carlene Quinn is the BSW Program Coordinator for the Indiana University School of Social Work in addition to her roles as social worker and teacher of social workers. She makes a strong case for how creativity is immersed in every aspect of social work. Additionally, she taps into creativity as an educator and both sees and appreciates it as well in others as well.
“A social worker can’t be a very binary thinker, right? We work heavily in the gray—the 90%. We’ve got 5% on one end of extremely wrong and 5% on the other extremely right. So being able to work in that gray space where a lot of folks aren’t comfortable, makes it easier for a person to feel seen heard and valued.”
“In education, creative expression—any form of it—can be channeled well and I think educators if, you know, you’ve got a kid that’s creative and their brain’s just always doing creative things like reading or doing art or making noises, making songs or… to channel that is better than to squelch it, because squelching it is just gonna teach them they have lousy ideas and that’s super unproductive for everybody and so hurtful.”
Dev Meenagh finds and embraces creativity in every aspect of life— from performing in various capacities and working with children to escape rooms and cosplay:
“I think that I kind of approach everything with this strong sense of wanting to know more, wanting to go deeper… and that ties into things like psychology. It ties into empathy. It’s all these little kind of feelings that I’ve always a sense for. And curiosity is a really big part of creativity, ‘cause creativity is all about an output and the input of that has to be a point of view, a psychological assessment, an idea, a feeling… There’s so much that you have to put into that. So, in my day-to-day life I’m just very curious... I’m very interested… and not just in things that would be described as typically interesting, but in the mundane—in things that are very quiet, in things that are very small, that just catch your attention because you think, there’s always more there. There’s always more going on… and not just with people, but things, like something like just staring at a cloud that looks a little bit different than all the other clouds. You know you can take things in from just anything, so just having a very open mind and open eyes.”
Brooke Ivey, the Chief Sales Officer for a niche company in Jacksonville, FL that provides services to insurance companies, embraces the creativity she has cultivated her entire life. Her family has provided a multitude of examples for applying creativity—from vaudevillian grandparents, a trial attorney father with a job that necessitated publicly standing in front of people and delivering important concepts, and mother who was a 2nd grade teacher and elementary school principal, to her creatively inspiring husband and young daughter.
Proclaiming that everything she does is either telling stories or listening to people, Brooke understands the value and applies those skills to her job:
“Instead of just saying, ‘How do we find people who want to buy this product? [and] How do we find people who want to buy this service?’ (certainly the foundation of any sale)… We try to go beyond that though and say, ‘What are the problems out there that people have that we can solve? What needs are there in the market that we can solve? How do we become partners to people?’ and that’s, I think, really where business and creativity really meet oftentimes.”
She shares an encouraging outlook, not only in the positive and supportive way she is a leader, but also how she views changes in her industry:
“We seem to have come to an era of understanding where there is not only a willingness to say we value everyone’s voice, but to say in valuing everyone’s voice we have an obligation to make sure that voice is heard—not just to invite people to speak up and be a part of the conversation, but to make sure that they really are a part of the conversation and that’s really exciting to see for me.”
Todd May, Director of Innovation and Process Improvement for the Indiana Department of Transportation, has a unique perspective of creativity, incorporating his professional and personal world. With interesting comparisons of DOT work with sports and the arts, Todd offers reflections from firsthand experiences interwoven with those of his children in baseball and dance. One observation made connections between golf, ballet, and the business of construction:
“You start seeing it in your mind’s eye before it actually happens. You start seeing the result of if the [golf] ball lands here, I know that it’s going to hit twice, check up and move to the right or to the left. And I think… watching ballet and being steeped in ballet through my daughter for so many years, she would see it in her mind’s eye before she ever tied her ribbons… she would kind of close her eyes and almost visualize in her mind’s eye what this is going to look like and then translate that from the abstract to the real. That happens in sports and I think that happens in my world of concrete and asphalt. People have to see it in their mind’s eye—kind of start with the end in mind and work to that and figure it out—and it’s pretty cool when it works out… That doesn’t mean that there’s not mistakes in between. That doesn’t mean that a dancer doesn’t fall or an actor screws up a line or a batter in baseball strikes out. There’s failures that happen. That just happens. That’s just life.”
David Hale brings a wide variety of experiences to his recently launched Gemini Wine Company. Even as he introduces himself in this episode of Defining Creativity, it is evident that his background in musical theatre, opera, directing children's theatre, work alongside award-winning chef Michel Richard, and twenty-five years in the restaurant and wine industry all influence his approach to his business and life in general—though he ultimately chose to have the title of the episode designate him as a sommelier, because as he states:
"I identify with the spirit of what it means to take care of somebody— and that's just what I try to do; try to do it with love; try to do it with energy and passion behind it."
Michael Menapace is an insurance lawyer who applies the creativity cultivated as a saxophone player to the various aspects of his life. This episode of Defining Creativity is chock-full of analogies from Michael that demonstrate the application of creativity and its parallel between music and his current endeavors.
Michael reflects: “My creative process in writing is very similar to how we were trained as musicians since we were five or ten… whenever we started… What I do now, whether it’s writing a book or it’s solving a legal problem, is I take the issue, I break it down into all of its component parts—I research those parts, I figure out the background and the history of those parts, I then perfect each one of them, I make sure that I’ve really dug in, and then I put the whole thing back together, so I can present it as a convincing whole. As a musician, this is what we’ve done since we started performing. We have a piece of music, it’s not a problem, it’s a piece of music—we break it down into its component parts, we understand where it came from, we understand the history, we break it down into every two measures, we perfect them so that we can perform them, and then we put the whole thing back together and have to present it to somebody as an effective piece of music, as a performance.”
Megan Elyse Fulmer is TV, film, and stage actor who was raised in Morrisville, PA by her Puerto Rican mother and German/Irish father. Megan embraces her roots, as well as her varied experiences, as she engages creatively in both her work and everyday life. Currently performing in "In the Heights" with Stages St. Louis, she reflects:
“Coming from Latin roots, there’s a lot that’s always unspoken, there’s a lot of things you don’t talk about and then you put yourself in the world of this show [In the Heights]… This show has meant the world to me since it came out on Broadway. I was obsessed with it and I felt so represented for the first time, because, yeah we had West Side Story, but I’m literally a product of what that show is against the entire time... They don’t want a white man marrying a Puerto Rican woman, and that’s me. My father is Irish-German. My mom’s Puerto Rican. So, for the first time, I saw families like mine; I saw stories like mine. But now that I’m twelve or thirteen years older, those stories hit on such a deeper level… all these moments in the show that directly relate to my life—yes, I’ve worked through as me, but now I’m portraying it through my art, through my soul, through my body, through my passion…”
“I have so much diversity just within my family and so many different cultures within my family… and when you [welcome everyone with open arms], you’re able to learn from so many different people’s points of views, feeling… Our family would not exist if we were not open and if we were not willing to explore. And then comes the creativity with building families, with cooking different dishes, with traveling to find roots—again, we go back to those roots. We are creative from the roots.”
This week's episode features a conversation with Louise Neilson, a mediator with a master's degree in creativity and innovation. She shares her extensive exploration of creativity and conflict styles, along with the parallels between mediation and creative problem solving using first hand examples from her considerable career. Louise has authored two books related to our creativity discussion:
"Mediating with Picasso: Relying on Your Inherent Creativity When You Need It Most"
"In Cahoots: A Playbook for Creative Collaboration"
Cindy Ripley, a nationally recognized educational consultant and master teacher, takes on additional roles as mentor, facilitator and peacekeeper as she dons various hats. Cindy’s enthusiasm for connection is evident—eliminating barriers of culture, experience, age, or any other roadblock encountered, while fostering community. Any interaction or discussion with Cindy shows clearly that her actions illustrate what her website clearly states: “Cindy fervently believes that all individuals are inherently creative. Her passion for excellence is her trademark as she celebrates the spirit within all of us.”
John Holzhüter describes his profession of chaplain as being someone who connects with people in need. The flexibility of his position allows that connection across demographics, cultures, and generations—meeting people wherever and however that need exists. John's specialty is triage, and he embraces his creativity in situations from assisting with traumatic events such as natural disasters or a car crash to engaging in programs to cultivate creative outlets for young people struggling with addiction. John’s contagious positivity shines throughout this discussion as he illustrates his creativity with an entertaining and insightful use of analogies and endless energetic search for creative solutions to life’s myriad of challenges.
Tatiana Kolovou brings her vast experience in professional and personal development to this discussion about creativity. A native of Athens, Greece, creativity permeates all aspects of her approach to life, making evident her status as a prominent and respected leader and educator. Tatiana's passion for teaching and nurturing development is apparent on every level as she reflects on raising her children, working with college students from freshmen to graduate students, and helping individuals' pursuit of fitness and health goals.
Tatiana offers more than 15 LinkedIn Learning courses and a newsletter, Stronger, in addition to teaching at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Connect with her at:
LinkedIn— https://www.linkedin.com/in/tatianakolovou/
IU website— https://kelley.iu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/profile.html?id=TATIANAK
Mary Losure introduces herself as an author who writes narrative nonfiction for kids and Mary's website labels her as an "Author, explorer of worlds both real and imaginary." Prior to becoming an award-winning children's author, Mary was also an award-winning environmental reporter for Minnesota Public Radio as well as a freelance contributor to National Public Radio. In this episode of Defining Creativity, the discussion touches on how creativity is interwoven in these various forms of storytelling, drawing from history to everyday experiences, influencing our interactions with and connections to life.
This episode of Defining Creativity features an interview with André Watts recorded in 2019. It’s a fascinating discussion with a musician who, not atypically, begins with the idea of not being a creator, but instead, a re-creator. However, creativity oozes out of every sentence no matter the topic.
With a career spanning 60s years, André has traversed the world while performing with musicians and ensembles considered top in their field and been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the prestigious National Medal of Arts. The breadth of his creativity as a performer, teacher, and beyond music as a human being is unmistakable—how it influences his actions and interactions throughout his life.
Interviews with musicians about creativity often get responses in the extreme. Either they fully embrace music as a creative art and way of expression or they fall on the other end of the spectrum and insist that they are not creative—rather they merely read what is written on the page following dictated notes, dynamics and expression. André, in some ways, splits the difference, embracing the designation of “re-creator” as he explains in this fascinating discussion. His vast magnitude of creativity is evident though and he credits early lessons learned navigating his musical development. One key influence was Leonard Bernstein, with whom André first performed at the young age of 16 years old.
Leonard Bernstein introduced André Watts at the Young People's Concert with the New York Philharmonic which aired January 12, 1963. Find pictures at the Library of Congress [https://www.loc.gov/resource/musbernstein.100030207.0?st=gallery] and video from the concert [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2nFcOLn00o}.
Mr. Roger's Neighborhood episode "Making Mistakes" featuring André Watts was first aired on May 7, 1987 and can be found at:
https://www.misterrogers.org/episodes/a-visit-with-pianist-andre-watts/
Recording of André Watts playing "Totentanz, S.126" by Franz Liszt with the London Symphony Orchestra, Eric Leinsdorf, conductor:
Apple Music—https://music.apple.com/us/album/liszt-totentanz-franck-variations-symphoniques-ep/1099790070
Spotify— https://open.spotify.com/artist/4WAWF88jefCusmHVGL0qem
Nicole Johnson, self-proclaimed storyteller, ukulele player, and ignitor of social change makers, discusses creativity as it applies in her life. From starting a nonprofit at age 15 to her current doctoral work and development of The Harriet Tubman Effect, Nicole organically taps into her creative instinct by addressing social issues and social responsibility through artistry. Creativity permeates all aspects of her life—"It can be the same kind of creativity in every single one of my industries because I’m utilizing the same muscles that I do to create a song, that I am to build a document for consulting.”
Connect with Nicole at www.harriettubmaneffect.com and M.O.V.E. at https://www.proudtobeamover.com/