History
History of The Creative Pulse
A Graduate Program in Integrated Arts and Education
The concept for The Creative Pulse originated twenty plus years ago—the brain-child of Dr. James Kriley and Dr. Randy Bolton. The sincere desire to shake up educational practice materialized during those early discussions, and remained the basis of their creative thinking. Kriley and Bolton agreed to seek out and offer the experiences and new knowledge master educators need—to supplement standard ways of thinking with augmented and expanded high value learning tools designed to complement the usual curricular thinking in education.
Bolton reflects that “it is cosmically crazy that two months before his death, Jim Kriley invited Kimberly Sheridan, co-author and researcher of Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education to address The Creative Pulse. Sheridan offered our graduate students snippets of the work she and her team investigated and documented: observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, reflective self evaluation, engaging and persisting in creative work, making connections between classroom work and the world outside the classroom. These testable skills across the school curriculum augment ways of thinking and creating found absent in much of the standard discipline teaching. “It was just what we had been after all along,” Bolton concludes.
Over the years The Creative Pulse has endeavored to supplement the usual curricular thinking in education. These tactics form the basis for Kriley’s and Bolton’s creation and development of a graduate program in Integrated Arts and Education, as well as the on-going mission of The Creative Pulse. Our students universally applaud the incorporation of artistic ways of thinking as high value learning tools in schools and in on-going real life.
