IMAGI-NATION {TV}, the début episode. It’s a show created to elevate knowledge, so we start with Thinkers sharing what they know. Here goes.
Doctor Derek Bland Empathic imagination is seeing things through other people’s eyes. He cites high school students, mainly from backgrounds labeled ‘disadvantaged,’ wanting to be involved in something meaningful that could help their families and communities.
Schools can train empathy. In one school teaching philosophy to very young kids, incidents of bullying dropped dramatically.
Mentor and artist Stephani Beck Kids can use their imaginations to create new realities. Whether it’s a pair of boots that can run across the ocean (ocean marathons!) or flipping the script and living the life they want, it’s important to consistently believe in that vision, keep it in the front of their minds and work on it everyday.
Mathematician and journalist Adam Spencer Mathematics is really an imaginative and dynamic way of thinking. Take the COVID-19 virus: mathematicians are taking all this hard data, looking at problems, trying to map out where it’s going and what we do as a society. There’s a lot of creativity and imagination in that.
He’ll be firing his daughter’s imagination and getting her to explore her imaginative side at this time.
And their imagination training programme for kids at home:
Look at things in your home – books, light switches, everything – and re-imagine how they can be used.
As soon as you wake up in the morning, be creative – sing, paint, draw, anything!
Invent a new board game.
Find a kids’ story and give it a completely new ending.
Create a completely new meal, maybe even invent The Spence Burger!
To end, a lookback at Taika Waititi’s AIME TV interview in 2017 on understanding each other, success and life advice: “Read books! There are so many ideas, knowledge and wisdom in books that’s not available on the Internet. It’s whole worlds of imagination and ideas, all tied in with words.”
Irmin x
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