As everyone else here
When I was told to read out loud at school,
I got so nervous, covering my face with the book like this··
I could read very well, but it was just my face getting red·
So if everyone here could help me and clap well, and react,
and make me feel less nervous,
I think that way it would make a better talk.
In a baseball game, what is the first batter supposed to do?
Anyone who likes baseball?
Right, advancing, they have to survive no matter what.
Today as the first batter,
With a surviving talk rather than just a good talk
I will have this time with everyone. So let us begin.
What I have for today is,
3 factors of developing creativity.
As I was introduced, I am a teacher.
Many of those who give speech at Ted
They put something into practice for a long time,
Or those who research something, who actually do something
Those people come to give speech at Ted,
Compared to those,
I would say that I am much smaller of a person
Sharing my everyday like with children at school,
What I saw around the children for 7 years,
What I realized after being with them,
I am going to tell a story about it.
So I am going to share this story with you,
About what I observed
not as a researcher, nor a doer but as an observer
It﹑s already cold these days,
But when you hear the word ﹐Sea﹑, what comes to your mind?
You want to go, right?
Yes, I want to run right after we finish this
Let﹑s see, there is a sand beach at the sea
Actually there is no outline for a sand beach
No outline, no limitation.
If we recall memories of our childhood,
What was the first thing we used to do at the beach?
Writing on the sand, like ﹒I love you‧, drawing heart shape·
And build a sand castle·
And there were some kids who fill a basket with sand
And turn it upside down and make something..
We could try anything, all kinds of experiments,
Because we knew that
wave would come and put everything back,
At the sea, we were allowed to do anything without any limitation.
Sometimes with kids with too much curiosity
Something like this might happen,
Try and try to make something and end up burying ourselves·
And as these experiences build up,
Somehow as we get older,
Maybe we learn to make great masterpieces.
So the first factor to develop creativity is
Like this sand beach, something we can do as we like,
Or where many things are allowed
But with little limitation.
I feel that this kind of place, background space is necessary.
So the first factor to raise our creativity,
Background space, and I﹑m going to talk about this.
This is the school where I work,
And about 4 of these
3 story buildings are linked together
with the bridges between them.
Also the second building and third are
Linked with the bridge.
As you can see in the photograph,
unlike any other schools, we have this balconies
And we have big windows, and walls are made of wood
and all the spaces give you this open feeling,
rather than closed, exclusive feeling.
Our kids wouldn﹑t just pass by these nices spaces.
I find it a good place to play or come up with something fun,
Sure enough, this spring
It wasn﹑t an official event of the school
But some high school students organized
an event called Art Week and
announced to hold the event.
So everyone gathered regardless of their major
and prepared for the Art Week for 2 or 3 weeks,
designed the project and hosted it.
I will tell you the story about it.
In schools or at any places,
We can see many empty, blank walls like this.
So let﹑s see how our kids fill these spaces.
This is one of the works,
If we look closer, this is a work named ﹐Dance, butterfly﹑.
Let﹑s see what﹑s written here. (And even if we take the pin off the butterfly,)
This is a phrase by a 11th grade student, (And even if we take the pin off the butterfly,)
Somehow philosophical, (he doesn't fly away.)
I don﹑t know how deep of a meaning it has, (he doesn't fly away.)
so with many different materials, (Perhaps he believes he's still fixed there.)
made a piece named ﹐Dance, butterfly﹑. (Perhaps he believes he's still fixed there.)
Drawing on an unusable CD,
Expressing a mosaic work with
torn colored papers.
And making something out of
a snack wrapper by tearing it
And· this is a cap of a tin can? Is it?
Opener. Students also express a butterfly with it.
And this one, what is this?
Wire, cloth hanger, rather?
Students expressed a butterfly by bending a cloth hanger.
Like we saw there, even if we take those pins off,
These butterflies wouldn﹑t be able to fly
As if there were always like that,
I think they wanted to expressed something locked,
And another student here, there was a safety bar set up
for students with handicaps,
And this student wondered what the bar originally was.
The original figure of the bar
So the student wanted to
awaken, let realize the original form
and expressed in this work.
By the title ﹒Becoming a tree‧,
He wanted that everyone, even for just a moment,
wonder what they used to be.
In an empty space like this,
We don﹑t know what will come in, but the children
It﹑s iron, right, anyways, using materials like this
create something amazing,
And also in a space like this
come up with a piece like stained glass
and exhibit the works.
In this event, not only the students who major Art participated,
But participated anyone
who didn﹑t have any relation with Art.
Even more, we didn﹑t﹑ only have these kinds of Art works,
but as we see here, we had students who challenged in Performance Art.
with the theme of ﹒Life of homelesses‧
So for a week during their lunch time,
They are first year student of high school,
They wanted to show the real life
of homeless as it is,
At first, they also felt awkward and
came out there and were just sitting there.
But as one day, two days passed
They found a bottle of soju, (laughter) *soju : Korean famous hard liquor
and brought harmonica
And play it, - they didn﹑t even know the right chord-
Anyways, they did their best to express their theme.
Some collected waste cans
That thing up there is supposed to be a pigeon,
and with those cans, set up a tower
that symbolizes peace.
Let﹑s see, this one looks quite elegant,
Where do you think this place is?
This one here, on the day before the autumn festival
of our school, students have eve party at night.
So this is a scene of the eve party,
They set up an outdoor cafe,
The thing that was even more interesting was the place,
In the middle of the school track field,
Students made tables, and set up candles,
Even more, they played music that they could play,
from classical music, played everything
on their own and sang
Usually sang at the gazebo there,
And that gazebo was made by
the parents of our students,
who had never done the carpenter work,
They put their efforts together and made it for us.
We utilized not only what there was,
but we also started to create spaces that didn﹑t exist.
Students play in a band and brought in a truck,
aying that they wanted to play music
in an open place,
not an underground band
And used a truck as their stage.
This kind of things showed not only in festivals,
but also in our daily lesson scene.
This is a work done by a student who
takes the practical art course,
(Our school has theoretical art course and practical art course)
Let us imagine for a moment what the title would be.
The title was ﹒Walking along the path alone‧.
It﹑s a path that is risky, and
that makes you want to come down right away, but the artist of this work said that
He wanted to express that it﹑s a path we have to walk anyhow.
Let﹑s see this one too, we have a class called Public Art,
and it﹑s a photograph of the student working in the class.
What is this bridge called?
It﹑s called ﹒Cloud bridge‧, but not only literally,
the students wanted to make it with actual cloud,
they draw and painted every single pieces
and set up on their own.
The complete work looked like this.
They adored their own work so much that
they eventually made it a rule to go on it only with barefoot,
and never to go on with shoes on.
Our student who utilized
many spaces in school like this, started to feel that
it wasn﹑t enough just within the school.
They started to go outside the school.
This underpass is located
right on the way to our school.
Our students saw this underpass and
started to imagine, to come up with something.
And one day on the bulletin board,
There was this cartoon saying that
they were organizing the underpass gallery,
But there was one condition that, not only students who
took the public art course, but everyone who wants to participate
was to draw and bring their work on canvas
that would be given out freely.
So that was the condition.
And as weeks passed,
gathered all the paintings
and started to hang the works in the underpass one by one.
The completed gallery looked like this.
It was quite scary going through the underpass,
But thanks to the paintings
Well, I am not sure if it makes it even scarier to some of you,
it helped quite a bit, I think.
And going down the street holding something,
This is a downhill road in front of our school, and
there is a bus passing once every 30 minutes
by our school, but the timetable
At the bus stop, there used to be no bus stop sign
So people always stood somewhere around there
and the bus also stopped somewhere around the place.
And the students thought that there should be a bus stop sign,
Like this, what is that called, basket (Dara) in an old language,
found this basket and made a sign to show that it﹑s a bus stop
And also found a bench and painted so that people could rest,
But if we see, the paintings are quite serious.
just like any other high school students..
And the biggest flaw of this bus is that
there is a time period when the bus doesn﹑t pass,
and if you wait for the bus not knowing what time that period is,
One hour passes without any gain.
To inform this,
We made this and posted it around the telephone pole
without any other place to post it.
So, our students who found use of spaces
Not only within the school, but also the spaces outside,
And I wondered, ﹒Would it be because our students are special?‧
But it wasn﹑t, and I came to wonder
﹒What is it that differs our students from others?‧
And I learned a big lesson that
Ah, with a space provided
For them to make any kinds of use,
Any other students as wells as the students of our school,
would be able to fill the space,
and create something with their own color
and that would be a fundamental desire of anyone.
And this is the second story.
This time it﹑s a story about time.
This scene is to be seen at any school.
Which period of time would it be? (lunch time..)
Yes, it is lunch time.
They﹑re running to eat before everyone else.
We teachers tell them to eat inside the cafeteria,
But the students like to go outside
and eat with friends.
They don﹑t care about all the dust.
When our school was founded, -was founded in 2003-
At that time our lunch time was 2 hours.
There was no workplace that allowed 2 hours of lunch time,
But we were allowed 2 hours.
It was a real bliss,
It was time to do anything
When it was okay to do anything
and the teachers felt relaxed, as well as the students.
But one day aroused an opinion to use time effectively,
And it was shortened to one hour and 40 minutes,
Now it﹑s cut down to one hour and 20 minutes.
I really hope that it doesn﹑t get any shorter than this,
But even though I say this,
Other teachers at ordinary schools envy this.
because at ordinary schools, lunch time is 40 minutes to 50.
Anyways, this relaxed feeling that the spare time gives
makes the students change.
Not just because the student of our school are different,
but because they have counseling time with teachers
And sing together, freely.
Also play with ball.
We have a human right group,
named ﹐Aureum﹑ (Joining together)
and at school we hold a official event in May,
during the period of ﹒18th of May KwangJu Democratization Movement‧.
And the members of the human right group
organize a human right concert in order to earn money for the official event.
Using the luch time, they promoted the concert like this.
Moreover, members of envirionment group
They let others know about recycling and
Using a game, ﹒Where to throw?‧ and teach
confusing knowledge about environment.
Students who take ﹐Social Enterprise﹑ class
gathered together stuff they don﹑t use
and with concept of ﹒Beautiful Store‧ (Non-profit second hand item store)
they wanted to hold an event,
and started to collect items from students.
Next, during the lunch time,
Small concerts take place
And let﹑s take a minute to watch it.
Sound of footstep getting closer silently Someone passing by unconsciously
But he messes up my mind, more and more everytime I look
Who on earth is this person
Footstep silent today as well Did something happen today?
On your white note, I wonder about the painting
Who on earth is this person
We promised to meet Under the wheel
If I go through the long, long tunnel Will I run into you?
If you look at me just once, If you look at me just once,
I would smile at dear you
If you talk to me just once, If you talk to me just once,
I would say that I love you
Having some spare time can be a great factor
for the kids to have more chance to experiment variety of things
and also for the creativity.
Third, it is a culture of tolerance.
Our school doesn﹑t have uniform policy,
And hair, piercing is allowed as well.
Anything to express oneself is allowed.
However, if the students are allowed to do everything as they want,
at first they try everything they wanted and after a year,
they get bored and don﹑t do it very much.
They tend to find something that is more interesting.
As every child has different color of their own,
They need to be allowed to express in different way as much as they want.
Sometimes it can be expressed in a ridiculous way.
Sometimes they can imitate others
as if they were celebrities.
In my opinion, creativity comes from imitation.
There is a child who is content playing drum,
And there would be a child who would be happy playing a roll in a musical show
And children who are happy rapping, singing,
or playing instruments.
Like this, maintaining their own color
and with culture that supports and admit it,
all the children will be able to show
all the talents they possess.
I will sum this up.
3 factors that develop creativity are
Space, space that is allowed.
And freedom of time, spare, rather than freedom,
And culture of tolerance.
one more time
Space, Time, Culture of tolerance.
With these three factors provided,
Our children will be able to show off all their talents
within the space, time allowed to them.
Thank you.