The Education We’ve Been Waiting For

The disruption wrought by COVID-19 has many people rethinking, along with many other things, education. Right now many are considering different options for how education takes place, the necessary skills for educators to possess, and what new economic models schools might need to employ.

The social consequences of not only COVID-19 but decades of persistent inequalities have raised additional attention to the essential services schools provide (meals, safety, etc.), their problematic ties to the criminal justice system, as well as history curriculums that may or may not be offering students all the facts on our country’s continued legacy of racism.

Beneath all these questions that have recently surfaced lies this important one: What exactly is the purpose of education? Or, more pointedly, what is the purpose of schooling and schools?

Read More
Lydia HooperComment
Why it’s important to teach and learn creative practice

Eventually a vision came to me, of a career in which I might be able to do professional creative work that might be valued for its importance to furthering science. I felt certain there was a need for creative tools – in particular, written and visual ones – to help people better understand how scientific research might be helpful to them, how it might be something they could use to make decisions in their daily lives. So began a journey. It wasn’t long before I started to notice that I had a range of creative tools to bear, a way to invite people into not just the logical places of themselves, places they sometimes were actually out of touch with, but their imaginations, places that we all have readily and, sometimes secretly, cherish.

Read More
Looking for hope and possibility? Look to creatives.

When I meet people and they find out I'm an artist, I often hear the same responses: "I don't have any artistic talent.” "Why did you choose a creative profession?” "How did you get to where you are?" The answers are never simple. I've learned that the journeys of creatives rarely are. I believe that, like everyone, we were told when we were young that our art was poor, self-centered, and/or pointless. Those of us who think of ourselves as creatives simply chose not to believe that. We chose to keep making.

Read More
Do's and don'ts for using visuals during virtual meetings

Virtual meetings are on the rise but they don’t come without some risks and potential downsides. Groups may already be facing difficult communication challenges, and distance can create even more obstacles for team culture and progress. Just as with in-person meetings, visuals can play an essential role in supporting individuals and groups with building relationships and getting results. Here are some basic dos and donts for using visuals during online meetings.

Read More
Braving the new frontier: Part two of my journey as an intrapreneur

Last year I took a bold step, in the opposite direction that many seem to be taking these days. I let go of working for myself and returned to working as part of an organization. Many reached out to me to ask me how I planned to overcome additional challenges I’d encounter once I was working in an organization. I understand their concerns. There really isn’t an easy road these days, whether you choose to hang your own shingle or clock in nine to five. But I still think we have so much work to do and we need to do it together - and only by being true to ourselves will this work germinate and grow what we hope it will.

Read More
Tips and Tools for Visualizing Qualitative Data

The field of data visualization has yet to bring qualitative data visualization to the fore. This is unfortunate because there is so much qualitative data we need to understand better, and because qualitative data helps us understand certain things much better than quantitative data does. In this article I offer many tools and tips based on my experience working on many qualitative data visualization projects over the years.

Read More
How Visuals Can Unlock Healing

As an unapologetic health and healing “nut,” I’ve developed many practices over the years. It’s taken me decades to realize that the best of all of them predates any investments I’ve made in yoga, psychotherapy, naturopathy, or body-based therapies. The most potent practice of all I started as a very young girl: using and creating visuals.

Read More
The 6 major myths of visual aesthetics

If there’s one thing I’ve learned working with and conducting workshops for hundreds of people to help them create meaningful visuals, it’s that people have specific beliefs about visuals. Many of these ideas are not based in experience or evidence, but rather pervasive myths that take root at an early age and rarely go unchallenged. If I could give any stranger just one gift to help them on their journey, it might very well be this list of myths. I believe they are keeping us stuck in our work, our society, and even our humanity. 

Read More
Creating visuals that inspire real-time conversation

Vision is the primary way we sense and experience our world - and we are social beings who process information with others. We can easily leverage these tendencies if we want to inspire specific conversations in specific moments. The conventional way of doing so is using presentation slides or videos to introduce or explain important topics. These emphasize what is important from the perspective of the presenter, they do not necessarily offer opportunities to capture what a larger group of people thinks or feels. Here’s how to easily design an opportunity for groups to have intentional conversations and create meaning collectively…

Read More