It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
~J.K. Rowling
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Ian David Moss: How does mapping a community’s cultural assets benefit the arts and culture field?
I have been reading, and pontificating on, systems thinking. Not looking at just one piece of a system, but looking at the whole. The book that has been my nightly devotional about systems thinking: The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge.
Example after example, Peter demonstrates the importance of looking at the forest instead of a single tree. In one example, Peter tells the story of a technology company that, despite increasing sales staff and pouring money into marketing efforts, went from top dog to bankrupt. It was the inattention to customer service that was the company’s demise. The technology company, to paraphrase Peter M. Senge, became their own worst competitor. Seems simple, but if we are only looking at one piece at a time, the simple can be missed. Sometimes the entire system is flawed.
My co-worker pointed me to this link. It is a piece I see missing in Atlanta’s arts and culture: understanding the system, or the macro picture. We cannot move forward until we know, as a community, as a system, where we stand now, and how we all fit together.
Take a very brief moment to view this video.
I want to marry this article
This goes to the heart of why so much research around arts education and student achievement is lacking. How we operationally define measures is soooo important to the research process. I am always cautious about people who quote research outcomes, but could not tell you how the research framework was constructed.
