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Welcome everybody thank you for coming, its my pleasure to introduce you to Sir Ken Robinson
who is a wonderful man. When I first met Ken he was Professor of Arts Education at Warwick
University, then we were just talking about this is the blaze when i was in the Department
for Education doing implementation of all the difficult things in education like the
Literacy Strategy, the Numeracy Strategy, dealing with school failure, making sure OFSTED
did lots of inspections, holding people to account, all the things they didn't like.
Ken got to chair an amazing group of creative people maybe he'll talk about it in a minute,
to think about creativity in schools and they published a report called All Our Future which
was a reference to a report that had been published in 1963, so a whole generation earlier
called Half Our Future, this was All Our Future and its a very inspiring report, we'll talk
about that later in the interview and from there he went on to become what you can only
call a guru of creativity, not just in education but in life in all of those things and he
made the still by far the most watched TED talk that's been made and probably most
of you have seen it, he spends a lot of his time, he lives in Los Angeles and does lots
of work in America but he loves coming back to Britain and I think, certainly going back
to Liverpool where he and I both have, both of us were born at slightly different times
anyway he's written this amazing book which I read over the weekend called Finding Your
Element and I found it really, really helpful actually, I immediately made two decisions
about my life on finishing this book, one of which is that I'm going to go one more
time before I get too old and walk up in the high Himalayas because I keep putting it off
and I going to go and do that not sure when but I will definitely do it, and the other
one will maybe come up later but its a great book and I'm going to talk to Ken about some
of the content of it but we won't be able to cover all of that so I'm going to interview
Ken for 25 - 30 minutes and then there will be lots of time for you to ask questions some
of you emailed questions in, I might throw some of those into the mix as well and thank
you very much for those but its just going to be a kind of conversation about creativity,
education, those kinds of things for a while and then please feel free to chip in and I'm
sure Ken won't mind what questions you ask him, he's experienced at dealing with questions
of all kinds.
So Ken thank you very much Plus I don't have to answer them do I?
Exactly. If you're really stuck, you can say the answer is on page 146, so you were born
in Liverpool in 1950, I was born in Liverpool a few years later than that, but not that
long after and Liverpool is a kind of city with a reputation for creativity do you think
there's something about the city, is that just pure coincidence that you come from Liverpool
and you're a creativity guru.
I think that may be a coincidence I never think of myself as a guru really
Well somebody once said to me, actually I heard someone say on Platform people call
me a guru but its only because they've forgotten how to spell charlatan but I wasn't saying
that about you.
Yeah thanks Michael that's great yeah
I remember that there was a Drama Teacher years ago, a very, very distinguished Drama
Practitioner called Darcy Hethcote, she wrote very well and was a fantastic practitioner
of drama in schools and she once said that artist is a gift word you can't give it to
yourself, its an evaluative term, that always worried me when people put artist on a passport
for occupation, I'm going to pop upstairs and make some art because its doesn't always
come off and some work works and some work doesn't and if people think its an artist,
you're an artist then that's great but its a hard job description to fulfill eight hours
a day and I think guru is a bit like that , a term that other people give you if they
find your advice helpful and people clearly have done, the TED talks for example, come
back to Liverpool by the way, but the TED talks have really taken off and I was in a
University in, I think it was in Michigan Illinois, do you care where it was (not much)
and a member of the faculty at the University said to me you've been at this a long time
haven't you, I said what's that, he said creative education, you've been doing this a long time,
I said yes I have, he said what is it seven years now, I said why do you say seven years,
he said well since the TED talks, I said yes but I was alive before that, I've been pushing
hard at this ever since I can recall and it does have its origins I think in my own education,
I would always hate to psychoanalyze it, it wasn't that I was sitting at school restlessly
thinking one day I shall become a guru and put all this right, it wasn't that but as
I got more interested in education I was always mindful of my own education and the experience
other people had but its definitely true of Liverpool is that its a very sharp witted
place, its very funny. Actually I did Desert Island Discs early today with Kirstie and
I think you should know that, she went to Liverpool for the first time, she's from Glasgow
and she said it was like being in Glasgow, what they have in common is they're both big
sea ports. Liverpool was in the 19th century evidently, well it was the most important
sea port in the world for a well, sixty per cent of world trade passed through the port
of Liverpool some of it of course slavery so its had its darker side as has the whole
empire I think but it was a fantastically wealthy place a very cosmopolitan place and
it occupied this sort of cultural oasis in Lancashire so there was a tremendous cultural
mixture of, melting pot so to speak, in Liverpool and people coming and going and it did create
I think an edgy culture and I add to that the fact that I was a member of a large family
I was one of seven kids and that was always a lot of cut and thrust so yes I think its
not a coincidence that a lot of rock bands have come out of Liverpool, lot of actors,
comedians, artists, and of course distinguished scientists too.