Brainpower: Carolyn Jack, "Exploring the depths of creativity"

Hi, I’m Carolyn Jack, Co-Director of a new online business called, Geniocity.com – that’s our site. And it’s focused on creativity and innovation. What we offer is a combination of media and retail that look at information about different kinds of creativity in all fields and we also offer creative goods for sale in a store by artists – right now, from over Northeast Ohio, but eventually from around the region and the nation. The site is an outgrowth of my background as a journalist; I’ve been a journalist for thirty years and most recently at the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, where I was first a free lancer, theater and art critic writer, then the Fine Arts Editor for four years and then an arts reporter for four years. And in those last four years as an arts reporter, it became clear to me – and this had been growing on me for many, many years as a writer of the arts in all areas of the country, but especially in the last four years where Cleveland, in particular has been dealing with a bad economy, and it became obvious that people in the more traditional walks of life were beginning to consider the arts as part of the solution to the local economy in a way that, years ago, they would never have considered. Part of this was because they were desperate and they were looking for any solution they could possibly come up with to help change things here. But, I also think that the time had come, finally, in our nation, for a discussion about the role of the arts as a factor, and not just in terms of personal enrichment, or even in spiritual things, but as an actual element in our society, in our education, in our economy as a driving force. And, in the course of covering that for four years, I began to realize that it wasn’t just the arts, but it was creativity in all fields. I began to write about the cognitive sciences behind why humans are creative and it became evident to me that current science finds that the human brain is wired for creativity – not just in the arts – but, in all different kinds of ways: scientific, religious – there was a great awakening of the human brain about 30,000 years ago and they can’t really explain it yet, but the neurologists and neuroscientists who I’ve spoken to said it might be due to an actual growing proximity in the brain of nerve endings, where before there were not these nerve endings touching each other, and at some point the human brain made a leap – these parts of the brain actually touched, and suddenly we could synthesize these ideas and create metaphor and we understood why something could represent something else, and out of that came religion, out of that came art, we began to understand we could represent the truths and realities of our lives through these things and, human creativity was, well it just wasn’t just born, but it made the jump to hyperspace, is what happened. And I think that ever since that time, people have not really sat down and thought of and about creativity as being a force the way they think of science and math, as being root subjects behind so much of our progress. But, I think that it is time now for us to realize that creativity is perhaps the single most underlying factor, besides perhaps love, that unites humans, that moves us forward, and gets us to think and invent new things and change our lives, and we need to start looking at it comprehensively from a journalistic point of view. Newspapers and magazines don’t really don’t write about creativity and innovation in any kind of comprehensive way. There are many publications that write about a story here and there, about a particular advance or new trend, but there really, as far as I know, is not a publication that focuses on this with any great rigor. And it became obvious to me after a while that even the state of journalism, which is going through a very difficult time right now across the nation, that now is the time not only to approach this subject, but to approach it in a new technological form, namely the Internet. Newspapers particularly, have not made a foresight-ful attempt to move into that medium. And so, it was time for me, I thought, to, since I was concerned about it, make the effort to join these two subjects: creativity and online journalism. So, that’s what my site is, I formed an LLC and our site, Geniocity.com is our project. What we’re trying to do right now is, in starting a news operation, which can be very costly, we couldn’t leap right into that, so we are finding Bloggers to write about various areas of expertise. We have someone writing about business, creative best practices in business, we have someone writing about the cutting edge of the law, we’re starting a new Blogger soon who is writing about technology, another who will be writing about thought and religion. I write about what it’s like being an entrepreneur, because that in of itself demands creativity, and also demands nerves of steel. Its kind of fun to write on what the day to day is on that. We’re trying to offer a great many types of information that relate to creativity. One of the Blogs that is central to our site is, the COSE Arts Network from the Council of Smaller Enterprises in the Cleveland area. They have a new network leader there named Matthew Charboneau, and he is going to be starting his blog soon about what the resources are that are available to arts businesses in the Cleveland area and how they can help grow creatively and from a business point of view. So, all this is to try to promote among the public, a sense that creativity is not just Grandma’s tatting, or their child’s finger painting, but an active part of their own lives and a necessary part of their futures. A way that we must enhance, in order to get proper education for our children, and a more open way of finding solutions to our problems for everybody. This is what I’m most passionate about at the moment and have been for several years now. Trying to figure out a way to show the public that clearly in all the years that I’ve been writing has to be told again and again, “Why are the arts important?” “Why is creativity important?” Sometimes they just don’t understand that connection. This is what my site is for, to try to help the public understand the value of creativity and to try to practice creativity more themselves. Eventually we’re going to be offering breaking news stories about the cutting edge in all of these different fields – environmental science, or medicine…to international relations, whatever it might be. Whatever the most inventive turn is we want to write about that. And we thought it wasn’t enough to just provide information, we thought it would be not only fun and informative for people, but also a service to the community to try to increase the marketplace for artists who create original things and inventors as well. If they had an online source where they could put their merchandise, in a shop and have it be seen by potentially millions of people from around the world. So, this is what we’re trying to do, is to find worthy artists all over the place, and inventors as well, who want to have a broader marketplace and introduce them and their work to the public who can then appreciate and enjoy the merchandise they find in our store. So, it’s a dual purpose. What I want people to understand in all this, primarily, is that you look around the nation and the world right now and we have some very, very terrible troubles to get through. And the only way to get through them in a better way than we have in the past is to think creatively and come up with better solutions. I want people to, hopefully by reading my site, seeing what’s on the site and broadening their ideas about what creativity can accomplish, to be more open minded about what solutions can be to realize that you don’t have to think about one narrow area, you have to think about all areas to see how they connect. Connect them in new ways. I would hope that people would begin to understand that we must have more creative approaches to education in our nation. That we must have a more creative approach to government relation and policy and the approach to political process than what we have, and the way we create our social structure, and the way we think about the world. Not only in terms of practical things, but also in terms of philosophical things. I think it’s very easy for people, without really even considering it, to slip into habits. And once they’re in habits then it becomes all too comfortable to stay there. We need to shake ourselves up a little bit, not in perhaps a scary way, but a refreshing way, to help everybody understand that there are limitless possibilities that we can do to make our world a better place. And that is ultimately the goal of what I’m trying to do, is to in some small way, make our society, our world, our lives, our personal lives, better places, more entertaining, educational places, more progressive places, so that we can come up with whatever we need to, to change the problems that we have for the better. And that is what I see in the future. What I’m really hoping is that as people become that they themselves can do something creatively to help change the world, that we’ll have better educated children who are more open minded about what can be done, that we’ll have better relations among ourselves personally and with other nations, and we’ll try to understand other people better and not fell threatened and work together better to come up with solutions. And we’ll especially be coming up with better products, processes, strategies and policies that will help make our lives better of every moment on a day-to-day basis.