About Jen Lehe

Jen Lehe is CMA's Manager of Strategic Partnerships, overseeing programs for learners throughout their lives. Jen directed the IMLS-funded Making Creativity Visible initiative and launched the Leaders in Creativity fellowship to build teachers’ capacity to advocate beyond their classrooms. Jen holds an Masters in Arts in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a BFA in Photography from NYU. When she’s not at CMA, she’s gardening with her pit bull, Chompsky.

Q&A with Aniya CMA’s Newest Teen Mentor

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Jen Lehe

Aniya Anderson-Wilson is one of the newest teen mentors at Columbus Museum of Art, and is also an alum of the Surge teen program, a citywide free drop-in program designed for teens to experiment with technology, and hang out with other young creatives. Aniya is an artist and illustrator, and over the course of her years as a teen in Surge, Aniya became a natural leader. So, when she graduated from high school last May, she was offered a position as a mentor at CMA’s Teen Open Studio, one of six programs that are part of the Surge network across Columbus.

We sat down with her recently to talk about her role as a Surge-teen-turned-mentor, her studio practice, and what is special about Surge.

What exactly do you spend your time doing when you work in the studio?

Usually when I come in I try to stay focused. I’ll come with a set goal in mind, like I want to start designing a particular character. It’s not anything serious, just a task I set for myself, but I would come here to do it and socialize with my friends, get their input, and wind up with a collection of ideas.

Has anything surprised you about the experience during your time here?

Surprised me? What has surprised me in particular had to be the diversity of students that come in and the amount of things that I got learn when I was coming. So between the mentors that were here when I started coming as a teen, to the artists that they brought in, to just the collective knowledge of the other students was a big thing I was surprised about. It wasn’t just a teacher telling you things, it was more about “we’re here and sharing these ideas.”

In what ways do you think Open Studio has benefitted the individuals who attend?

Teen Open Studio is such a big difference when compared to school and I think that’s the main part that has kids coming back regularly. The fact that we get to share and work off one another really does help. For instance there will be instances where a friend of mine doesn’t know how to work a program, so I get to teach them. But then they point out something that I didn’t recognize because I don’t think like that person. Teaching someone how to do something, in itself, is almost a better way to learn that thing.

For the individuals who attend regularly, or have visited multiple times, have you seen progression in their work?

Just from an example standpoint, I’ve seen a lot of progression from the teens who work in the sound booth. I’ve seen in their interactions between themselves and Andre (another mentor and music producer) communicate better. They can discuss certain things and go from “I have an idea” to execution. Seeing not only the stages of their work but how it progresses step-by-step is really interesting. What starts as an idea slowly becomes this final product and that’s really cool.

What is the most memorable piece of art that you’ve seen someone make during Teen Open Studio?

That’s a tough one. The first thing that comes to mind is recently one of my friends did a piece digitally for the first time, because I decided to hassle him over and over again. This was before I was a mentor so I wasn’t hassling a student I promise (laughs), but he was a friend of mine who was strictly traditional. He tried digital for the first time after I managed to get him to do it and he created this cool piece. I loved it so much, it told an interesting story, and it was just fantastic to see.

What would you tell a teen who hasn’t been to the Studio to convince them to give it a shot?

I think teens would want to come for above all else the community that’s built when you come here. Realistically, Fridays are the quieter of the two days for those who might be apprehensive. But even when there aren’t a ton of people here there is still life in the Studio. You get to play with new materials and you don’t have to pay for any of it. And who doesn’t enjoy being creative in a space where everything is free?

Come meet Aniya, hang out with other young creatives, and make your mark at Surge Columbus! For more details about the Surge program visit www.http://www.surgecolumbus.org.

SURGE is a collaboration between CMA, Columbus Metropolitan Library, Wexner Center for the Arts, TRANSIT ARTS and WOSU Public Media, and COSI and is made possible by a grant from Battelle.

Art Lab: Helping Teens Come Into Their Own

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Jen Lehe

Art Lab for Teens

If you visited the Columbus Museum of Art on a certain Sunday last December or April, you might have stumbled upon a gigantic, quilted heart into which you were invited to pose a question to your soul. Or you may have been ushered into a translucent dome representing the social “bubbles” we live in. Or you might have found yourself in a dark, curtained booth, listening to the life stories of young strangers. You may even have unburdened yourself to a “therapist” who then dispensed her prescribed “medication,” capsules filled with substances like glitter (to bring more excitement to your life) or dirt (to help you find a sense of grounding).

These are just some of the many participatory art works created by teens in Art Lab. Art Lab is a yearlong, in-depth experience in which a small group of high school students spend a full day each week with the Museum. Teens apply to participate, and selections are made to include a diverse range of past experience, with special consideration to youth with limited access to other arts opportunities and those who have not been successful in traditional school models.

Throughout the program, youth explore the creative vibrancy of the city, work with Columbus-based artists, learn about careers in museums, and craft visitor experiences such as those described above. What results is a jaw-dropping array of art and ideas, exploring profound themes in dynamic ways. Perhaps most impressive is the way the teen artists, often shy at the start of the program, actively engage visitors in thoughtful dialogue around fundamental questions of art and life.

Art Lab in the CMA sculpture garden

The CMA team guides and coaches throughout the year, supporting teens to craft their own experience – from idea to implementation – in collaboration with one another. Teens thrive in this culture of collaborative and authentic learning, and the growth of these young people is incredible. One parent remarked that without Art Lab, she didn’t know where her son would be.

In 2015, researchers Danielle Linzer and Mary Ellen Munley published a groundbreaking research initiative Room to Rise, which investigated the long-term impacts of museum-based teen arts programs such as Art Lab. This study found that participation in programs like Art Lab leads to powerful and prolonged impacts on teens, including

Increased social capital, personal development, participation in the arts, and artistic and cultural literacy;
Close and trusting relationships with peers and museum staff;
Growth in a sense of identity, confidence, achievement, and empowerment;
Expanded career horizons;
Increased value placed on community, collaboration, and diversity.

The hundreds of visitors who interacted with Art Lab artists have seen the seeds of this growth. The young creatives of Art Lab challenge themselves and their peers; create art that displays courage and vulnerability; stretch themselves intellectually, creatively, and socially; and help to reimagine what a museum can be. Indeed, you the audience play an important role in this growth; one teen reflected that a visitor “came up to me and was really interested. It made me think she believed in me more than I believe in myself, and it really touched me.”

-Jennifer Lehe, Columbus Museum of Art Manager of Strategic Partnerships

Championing Creativity All the Time

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Jen Lehe

Teachers practicing their own creativity at the final workshop of the Teaching for Creativity Institute.

Recently I had an experience that left my head swimming. It was the last session of the Teaching for Creativity Institute , and we were closing out the year with a day of teacher-led workshops. The participants in the Institute and the Leaders for Creativity fellows who designed the day are extraordinary. I have worked with them in different ways all year long, and seen them re-imagine, experiment, and reflect in truly impressive ways. It isn’t surprising, then, that I walked away from this bonanza of puzzles and inspirations with many ideas bouncing around in my mind, ricocheting off one another to head off in new directions.

One such sticky idea came from Jason Blair, a teacher and frequent thought partner. He highlighted creativity as a mindset with us all the time – not a behavior confined to particular moments and packed away when it is time to move on to more serious pursuits. Learning can be designed to explicitly build and stretch creativity; however, if we really value creativity we must celebrate it all the time.

This sounds simple at first. Who wouldn’t want to support creativity all the time? In practice, though, we often welcome creativity only when it is on our terms.

Jason contrasted the reaction to student creativity on an assigned project – This is exactly what I hoped for! – to the reaction when a child demonstrates creativity when it hasn’t been asked for, like dancing down the hall rather than walking – That is NOT the way we behave in the hallway! Show some maturity! We adults, after all, know better. There is time for imagination and play, but it had better respect the schedule.

You may be thinking that rules are in place for safety; just one false dance move can land a kid in the nurse’s office. That is a fair point, and at the Museum we take the safety of visitors and art very seriously. But reflecting on every moment as a space for creativity, how might we maintain safety while fostering imagination, another priority during a museum visit? Cat Lynch, who leads young child programming, has some delightful approaches to this. For example, she might have children imagine sneaking through the jungle of a landscape (“remember to quietly push aside the vines and grasses!”), or imagine they are creatures, characters, or crew-mates of a vehicle in a work of art they have just explored together, (“we’ll need to steer together”).

Cat also has a rule in her summer programs that any play fighting must be done in slow-motion. Kids of all ages love to play-fight, but this presents a threat to safety. Instead of engaging in an unwinnable fight against fighting, Cat identified the actual reason fighting is a bad idea, and found a creative compromise. The result is as absurd as you are probably imagining – but no one gets hurt, and there is the bonus benefit that kids have an understanding of why they shouldn’t play fight (i.e. even if it is a game to you, quick and violent motions could hurt someone.) This is just one educator’s response to the specific example of walking down the hall, but it illustrates that we can identify what matters about a rule and find ways to get what we need without inhibiting creativity.

When we stifle creativity that emerges organically at a time that is “inconvenient” for us, we make spaces unsafe for originality. When we value conformity and obedience in children, we crush the impulses needed for creativity, the basis of change and innovation. Later, as these young people enter the workforce, we wonder what happened to their creativity problem solving skills. Perhaps we left them in that hallway.

Innovators don’t spend their PreK-12 years assiduously following rules, then, upon receiving their exit ticket from high school immediately have the capacity to see the world in new ways. They were often the misfits all along. What we label rule-breaking in children, we often celebrate as visionary with adults. This, however, calls for a moment of honesty: We may value rebelliousness in the heroic stories of innovators, but how often do we really value and cultivate radically original ideas in our own workplaces? If you want a deep-dive into this, I recommend Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant. It is a must-read for anyone who cares about fostering better ideas in their organization. CMA just wrapped a Leadership Series group-read of Originals in partnership with the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation. The book upends a lot of assumptions and workplace practices, and left me with many puzzles and knots to tease out when I reflect on my own management practice.

As managers and colleagues are we welcoming and rewarding creativity, even when it’s not “on our terms?” Or do we shoo it off in order to “get down to business?” In thinking about “safety” (physical or otherwise), do we set and communicate intentional parameters so that our teams can be free to imagine? Anyone who wants original ideas must be willing to look long, hard, and often at what they should start doing, stop doing, and do differently in order for creativity to thrive on its own terms.

You can follow Jason Blair on Twitter @epesArt for more of his insights into creativity in learning

Find out more about the next Creativity Institute. Final deadline to apply is May 5, 2017.

The Teaching for Creativity Institute and the Leaders for Creativity Fellowship are supported by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation.

-Jennifer Lehe, Columbus Museum of Art Manager of Strategic Partnerships

Committing to Creativity

Posted on January 9, 2017 by Jen Lehe

The new year is upon us, which means that many of us are striving to build new habits. As we all know, resolutions and indeed any kind of change in our behavior is hard. Building new habits requires that we have a deep belief in the power of the change we want to bring about, confidence that we can advance toward that change, and a manageable routine to get there. For our resolutions to stick, we need all of three of these, but I argue that the first is the most critical. The stronger our belief in the change we want to see, the more likely we are to devise and commit to a strategy to get ourselves there. Commitment to something we truly value drives our creative problem solving and follow through. When the going gets tough, commitment to what we value is what keeps us going – either through force of will or by helping us to imagine a different path.

For us at the Columbus Museum of Art, that means remembering and helping others understand why creativity is so important to ourselves, our communities, and our world, and what they can do to help spread it. Finding ways to better and more deeply spread creativity – the process of using imagination and critical thinking to generate new ideas that have value – is our perpetual resolution. As with any resolution, it is a deep commitment that will compel and propel change.

One of our most recent initiatives to spread creativity was the creation of our first-ever Leaders for Creativity Fellowship. This initiative, supported by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundations, brings together some of the most incredible, reflective, imaginative, and curious teachers we have had the pleasure of working with. Together we explore how to better support creativity in learning, and collaborate to lead for creativity throughout the school system.

Unsurprisingly, a recurring theme in conversations with this group was the need for a shared understanding and commitment to creativity among families, teachers, administrators, and the community. Life is full of competing priorities, and as with our New Year’s resolutions, those desired changes that aren’t grounded in a powerful belief are likely the first to be dropped. In the eyes of the group, families, educators, and other stakeholders need to better understand what creative thinking is, and why it is the most important skillset needed for our future. Everyone wants the children they care for to be successful, but how well do adults understand the mindsets and dispositions children will need in a rapidly-changing world? How closely does the school experience align with what we hope children will learn and who they might become?

The need to advocate – to help families, educators, and decision-makers understand the importance of creativity – was especially apparent with certain key habits that get short shrift in schools, such as curiosity, play, and risk taking. So for our December meeting, we decided to do a special creativity challenge: Working in pairs and using only Legos, black construction paper, and chalk, create a public service announcement (PSA). Each group was assigned a particular audience: “parents/families,” “administrators,” or “reluctant colleagues,” and a habit of creativity: “Play,” “Curiosity,” or “Risk taking.” The only additional parameters were that they only had 30 minutes to create something that needed minimal explanation and alteration in order to be “press ready.” It was an ambiguous challenge – just like the kind we would assign to young learners! It also adhered to one of our favorite sayings from our educational advisor Dr. Fred Burton, “Never work harder than your students” (in this case, our teacher fellows.)

See below to see what they came up with.

PSAs for Creativity

Jason Blair and Marcella Cua were asked to create a PSA for curiosity, addressed to parents and families.

They zeroed in on the natural curiosity of young children (represented by a cradle), which is often suppressed as children get older. Curiosity is the basis of everything we know, and is necessary for innovation.

Britanie Risner and Matt Szozda were challenged to create a PSA in support of risk taking, addressed to reluctant colleagues.

A single green Lego encroaches on the plain white box, and sparks a transformation (note the green Lego reappears at the top right of the new invention.)

Finally, Patrick Callicotte, Becky Coyne, and Emily Risner used a stop-motion animation app and some random odds-and-ends to create a video to promote Play among administrators.

The deluge of needs and priorities in schools can seem dizzying. Ultimately, however, play is the cornerstone of all learning.

It was fascinating to see the really different (and yes, creative) ways that each group approached the challenge. More to the point, we were delighted to see such simple materials so quickly transformed into opportunities to spread the word about the importance of curiosity, risk taking, and play. These dispositions of creativity are vital for success in life, learning, work, and change.

This creativity challenge to make on-the-spot public service announcements is a somewhat cheeky way to package bite-sized messages about the importance of creativity. Advocating for why creativity is vital to thriving lives and communities is ongoing, profound work. But if nothing else, we hope that these whimsical PSAs start conversations about why creativity matters – conversations that will form the foundation for change for creativity.

-Jennifer Lehe is Manager of Strategic Partnerships for Columbus Museum of Art.

Reflections on the Creativity Summit

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Jen Lehe

When I last wrote, I was tittering with excitement for the Creativity Summit, a once-in-a-lifetime convening of incredible thinkers and questioners both on the stage and in the audience. Since then I have read hundreds of response forms, tweets, sticky notes, and other ways that participants made their thinking visible. These are artifacts of participants’ willingness to be vulnerable and take risks, to be playful and serious, to consider and reconsider, to navigate ambiguity, to fail, to resist the lure of easy answers, and share this process in a spirit of generosity and collaboration. These are the behaviors that creativity demands, and they show through in the insights and questions participants left behind.

Here I want to share a tiny handful of the insights and questions that spoke to me. I hope they will spark thinking and wondering, and reveal some of what inspires me every day as I work with the CMA team, our visitors, and our partners to ask what creativity looks like, and how we might better support it for ourselves and others.

Designer and Futurist David Staley challenged the room to design a school re-imagined for creativity.

We asked people to wonder…

At CMA, we emphasize questioning as a creative behavior. This was in full force throughout the Summit, especially as author Warren Berger led everyone to generate our own “most beautiful question.” Here are just a few:

How might we educate our communities about the importance of creativity, and harness the momentum to effect change?

How might we inspire curiosity and creativity by making it safe and acceptable to ask questions in our culture?

How might we cultivate creativity by acknowledging differences without judgement, and creating an open and brave space for individual and group ideas?

Audience members, including Emily Reiser of the Making Creativity Visible Initiative, shared their groups’ “beautiful questions” with author Warren Berger.

We asked people to reflect…

John Dewey famously said “We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” In that spirit, we asked participants to tell us one way they were thinking differently about creativity:

Diversity leads to increased creativity…some creativity comes from dissension.

I have a new sense of understanding that creativity can be both deeply personal and collaborative, evoke both vulnerability and a sense of safety, technologically inspired and still human.

I am thinking differently in my practice in that I am thinking about promoting and fostering creative thinking versus taking “art” and art students as creative in and of itself/themselves.

Katherine Prince, Senior Director of Strategic Foresight for KnowledgeWorks, engaged participants in exploring the implications of possible futures for learning.

…And we asked people to #share

Each day we asked participants to use our hashtag to share what was sticking. The response was amazing – #CreativitySummit was trending on Twitter on April 7 and 9; I encourage you to search #CreativitySummit to get a bigger picture of the event.

Here’s a taste of what thoughts resonated:

The decisions we make on a day-to-day basis either create conditions for creativity to thrive or stifle it. – Cindy Foley

“The comfortable expert must become the restless learner” – Warren Berger

Condition of creativity: Permission to be wrong. – Artie Isaac

“Same people assume same ideas and perspectives” – Melissa Crum

“Diversity should be scrutinized across all dimensions & platforms to make sure we get the best ideas” – Marshall Shorts

“We empower people to do the work that they know in their hearts is right for children.” – Todd Hoadley

“We think about our students changing the world in big and small ways.” – Trent Bowers

“Creativity will differentiate humans from robotic counterparts – Katherine Prince

“The world doesn’t care how much you know. The world cares what you DO with what you know” – Tony Wagner

This last comment brings me back to the first morning when Sean Foley asserted, “You can choose to leave here today and see the world in different ways.” As I set back out to show the world “what I can do with what I know,” I will be guided by the many voices of the Summit, and by the beautiful question, “How might I help myself and others see the world in different ways?”

[Feature photo by @gladannie]

Creative Communities: Creativity Summit

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Jen Lehe

Think of a time when you felt creative. What did it feel like, sound like? What were you doing? What were others doing? Close your eyes and spend a minute reliving that experience of creativity.

Now, imagine that you could experience that daily – at work, school, home – and that you could foster that experience for others. How might you do that, and what might be different for you and for them? This question is at the heart of meaningful life in today’s dynamic world, and of tackling the unprecedented challenges that come along with it.

When I interviewed for my position here, I was asked to share a time when I had practiced creativity. The example that came to mind was from fourth grade when I participated in a yearlong creative problem-solving competition. I don’t remember how exactly I came up with the idea, but I remember a few of the ingredients – scraping my fingernails along the strings of my violin to hear their eerie resonance; playing with the distortion and amplification of speaking into a cup; spending hours alone with the rustles and croaks of creatures in the creek near our house. I took all the strings off my violin, strung them over the opening of a plastic cup, and made a cricket. The E string (the one without ridges), was strung perpendicular to the others to make the scraping sound I had made with my fingernail. The design went through several iterations before I was satisfied, but in the end I was so thrilled with my creation that I remember it 20 years later. It was, by far, the best thing I ever did with that violin.

An idea that transforms a community or a field begins in a sketchbook, debate, or garage.

Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t submit my cricket to the patent office. This is a just a simple illustration of how opportunities for authentic creativity can matter deeply to a person. Creativity can affect our sense of ourselves and change our way of seeing, discovering, and engaging in the world. It is also the basis of the dispositions needed to tackle the unprecedented challenges of our times. Innovation emerges when people and groups have the confidence, permission, space, and time to mess around with ideas. An idea that transforms a community or a field begins in a sketchbook, debate, or garage.

Creativity builds and rallies the habits of imagining, analyzing, making and remaking, persisting, questioning, wondering, noticing, all with the authentic purpose of addressing things that matter to us. This is what learning looks like, though it isn’t often what schooling looks like. This is what good work looks like, though it isn’t often what workplaces look like. This is what living in community looks like, though it isn’t often what our neighborhoods look like.

But it could be.

Our 2016 Creativity Summit, April 7-9, will convene an amazing mix of provocateurs from the national stage and from our own backyard to help us reimagine. They will ask with us: What could creativity look like in our lives, workplaces, and schools, and how might we better cultivate it in ourselves and others? So many remarkable thinkers will be inspiring us in this inquiry that I can’t possibly choose one to highlight. Instead, I am going to tell you one, completely unmissable experience each day:

Thursday – Workshop an actionable and inspiring question in our galleries with author Warren Berger,
Friday – Hear a range of Columbus creatives discuss what enables creativity, then play around with these ideas by designing your own space
Saturday – Synthesize this 72-hour blitz into a “gift” for a stranger, under the inspiration of the fabulous street artist Stephanie Rond

You don’t have to come to every day, but each will be incredible and unique. And as a bonus, on Friday night we will host a free screening of the award-winning documentary “Most Likely to Succeed.” Based on Harvard innovator Tony Wagner’s book, the film is a deep look at a school designed to promote the kind of learning and creating I was engaged in when I was making my cricket. The film makes the case for reimagining learning, and shows how one school has done it. It’s an inspiring story, and more inspiring still will be the families, educators, and community members who will come out to start a conversation about what this could look like for the children they care about.

That is what the whole Creativity Summit is about – coming together with other people who care about creativity in all aspects of life, and asking how we can recapture that creativity you imagined at the beginning of this post, strategizing how we can create the conditions for creativity, and connecting with diverse minds to activate creativity within our spheres of influence, whatever that may be. I am excited to take up this challenge, and I hope you will join me in it.

Author Archives: Jen Lehe