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Recently, the Board and staff at Dodge asked ourselves what overarching themes tied our grantmaking in the different fields of Arts, Education, and Environment back to our mission of fostering a more humane and livable world. We responded with two: Creativity and Sustainability. Creativity seems essential to us to both imagining and bringing about a better world. It is dynamic and evolving, and at times profoundly practical, as when any of us moves from thought to action, from vision to decision. It is a source of joy in itself, and when applied to challenges new and old, it can lead to outcomes of great social worth. Sustainability asks us to consider what is worth sustaining over time, and why. It asks us what we mean by "success" and "progress," for ourselves and our neighbors. It reminds us of our responsibility to future generations while helping us find meaning for our own. It asks us to see the whole and ponder connections, between people, between disciplines, between sectors, and between places. We believe these two themes complement and enhance each other. For our crowded home state to become more sustainable, we will need all the creativity we can muster to create models and narratives that inspire action. To foster creativity in our schools and communities, we will need sustainable systems that provide opportunities for people of all ages, and we must sustain our country's unique civic sector. Playwright David Mamet provides us with a useful metaphor in his essay "Race Driving School." If your car goes into a spin, he learned, look at the road, not the obstacle you're afraid of crashing into, because you will unconsciously steer in the direction you are looking. It's another argument for keeping Creativity and Sustainability in our sights - we'll steer where we are looking. We are sharing the wheel with our grantees, and their responses to the themes of Creativity and Sustainability below have encouraged us to give these themes more prominence in our 2010 guidelines.
Dodge Grantees on Creativity and SustainabilityWhen we asked a number of our grantees what they thought of the themes of Creativity and Sustainability, separately and together, their responses encouraged us to feature these themes more prominently in the Foundation's revised guidelines for 2010. Here is what we heard:
On Creativity: "A critical component of Creativity involves re-casting or re-visioning that which is old in a new manner." "Creativity is not an end in itself but clears the path for ... a constant cascade of evolving and branching ideas and creations." "Creativity is what happens after inspiration. It's the getting down to work and turning inspiration or vision into something - a poem, a playground, a curriculum, a building, a policy." "Creative ideas are often generated when one discards preconceived assumptions and attempts a new approach or method that might seem to others unthinkable."
On Sustainability: "The term sustainability is in Isles' mission statement ... We used the word to connote the goal of impacts that endure." "We are talking about the responsibility of current generations to future generations, and we are talking about the need to not just balance, but integrate all of our activities in a way that support the continued well-being of Nature and natural processes." "Sustainability is both a reactive and proactive response to correct or reverse problems in our environmental, social, political, educational, and civic systems." "Sustainability is not a policy or an effort or science - it is a way of living."
On Creativity and Sustainability Together: "We need to recognize that creative ideas are fragile and seldom fit into a prescribed timeframe. We must give people, especially children, the ability to question and test assumptions wherever possible ... In short, we need time for exploration, daydreaming, trial and error - an environment that can sustain creativity." "Creativity is an essential ingredient in developing sustainable communities, in part because people need new models to learn from and inspire them. I would suggest that creativity and sustainability are powerfully and inexorably connected in that each is the servant - and the master - of each other." "Without an immediate, massive and profound engagement in many and varied types of creative, out-of-the-box thinking, (nothing) may be sustainable. To put it more simply - if we don't start coming up with some radical new ideas and systems for almost everything, we can say adios to things as small as butterflies, as large as oceans, and everything in between." "We regularly hear conversations about sustainability that focus on reacting to problems that currently exist. If we could encourage community and political discussions that are focused on a vision of the world that is as sustainable as possible, it will be more likely that more of us will take action ... We may arrive at some very creative methods and processes for bringing the vision to fruition."
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