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OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. (May 15, 2012) – The Oklahoma ArtScience Prize winning team was announced on May 11, 2012 at the Oklahoma ArtScience Awards and Announcement Ceremony at the Metro Technology Center Auditorium.  Team Virtual Hope, whose project is entitled One Step Up, seeks to bring together resources needed by homeless families.  Their decision to address this particular issue stemmed from the fact that two of the students have experienced homelessness first-hand.

Team Virtual Hope is comprised entirely of sophomores making it the youngest team in the competition. Members of Team Virtual Hope are Anant Attamakulri – Pathways Middle College High School, Thomas Hernandez and Vivianne Garcia –  Santa Fe South H.S., Ken Higuchi – Northeast High School, Victoria Washington – Harding Fine Arts Academy, and Sadee Parker – U.S. Grant High School.  Mentors for the team are Kara Whitmire-Floyd, an artist-in-resident at City Arts Center and art teacher at St. Eugene School, and Kaitlin Agel, a biology teacher at Santa Fe South High School.

The winning team earns a trip to the International Innovation Workshop in Paris, France the last week of June where they will be joined by teams from Harvard University along with ArtScience teams from Minneapolis, Boston, Paris, Dublin, Singapore, and Dhahran. Teams placing 2^nd – 4^th in the Oklahoma ArtScience Prize, will attend the Oklahoma Innovation Workshop at the University of Oklahoma from June 4-8.

In September of 2011, 36 students were selected from 14 different Oklahoma City public schools to participate in the first full year of the Oklahoma ArtScience Prize. Since the beginning of the 2011- 2012 school year, Oklahoma City teens have been meeting from 4:00-6:00 pm each Wednesday and Thursday at the Oklahoma ArtScience Lab at Creative Oklahoma.  The students were placed into six project teams under the guidance of trained mentors and tasked with designing a project about which they could passionately work to fulfill a societal need.  The teams chose to address teen stress, homelessness, school nutrition, stigmas of mental illness, lack of comfort for families of long-term hospital patients, and the massive trash gyre building in the world’s oceans.

This innovative after school program for inner-city youth is part of the international ArtScience network.  The ArtScience concept began at Harvard University under Dr. David Edwards.  Oklahoma City was only the second site worldwide to be selected for the ArtScience Prize.

All sophomores and juniors in the Oklahoma City public school system are eligible to apply for the program. Visit www.artscienceprize.org/oklahoma for more information.

About Oklahoma ArtScience Prize and Creative Oklahoma:

Oklahoma ArtScience Prize is project of Creative Oklahoma and an internationally federating educational program of ArtScience Labs. ArtScience Prize engages students in in-depth learning in the arts, sciences, and idea development to cultivate creativity and the ability to realize innovative project ideas generated in the classroom. Creative Oklahoma is a statewide non-profit organization advancing Oklahoma’s creative economy through creativity and innovation based initiatives in education, commerce and culture. The mission is to transform the state of Oklahoma through projects and collaborative ventures that help develop a more entrepreneurial and vibrant economy and an improved life quality for its citizens. Visit stateofcreativity.com for more information.

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Media Contact:
Meg Jackson at 405.232.5573
meg@stateofcreativity.com

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. (May 15, 2012) – Creative Oklahoma announces the one-day Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2012 will be held on Tuesday, November 13 at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

Keynote speakers include internationally recognized creativity and education leader and author, Sir Ken Robinson, and Chairman and CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Peter Diamandis. “The forum is a rare opportunity to learn from some of the world’s foremost innovative leaders,” said Susan McCalmont, president of Creative Oklahoma. “The Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2012 will bring internationally renowned speakers together with Oklahoma practitioners for a dynamic conversation about how to become a more creative individual and make your school, workplace, or community a thriving environment for ideas and innovation.”

Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere. An estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries have seen the videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks at the prestigious TED Conference. His book, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything,” is a New York Times best seller and has been translated into twenty-one languages. His latest book is a 10th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative.” Robinson is also the founding advisor to Creative Oklahoma.

Dr. Peter Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, a non-profit focused on designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.  Diamandis is an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector.  Diamandis is also the New York Times bestselling author of “Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think.”

Registration for the Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2012 will be available soon at stateofcreativity.com.

Creative Oklahoma also announces a Pre-Forum professional development workshop on November 12, 2012 that will be available to a limited number of registrants. The workshop will feature the Creative Oklahoma Experts in Residence, a group of nine Oklahoma academicians and practitioners in creativity and innovation. The workshop consists of four 90-minute in-depth sessions on creativity and innovation principles and how to apply those principles to your organization or business. Registration will be available July 1, 2012.

McCalmont added that Creative Oklahoma has year-round initiatives that encourage innovation in Oklahoma. The State of Creativity Awards program includes: Creative SPARKS!, awarding grants to Oklahoma students and their schools; Great Inspirations, recognizing inspiring past or current innovations by Oklahomans that contribute to the greater good; Oklahoma Innovation Prize, sponsored by SandRidge Energy, is a new award granting cash prizes to high school, college, and post-college youth for new ideas or innovations that address needs in the community, state, nation, or world. The Oklahoma Creativity Ambassador program honors nationally and internationally known Oklahomans for their creative contributions.

Other initiatives include the launch of the Oklahoma Innovation Challenge Index, a cross-sector project to investigate the creative inputs into Oklahoma K-12 education; the Oklahoma Creative Communities project, a creative-problem-solving initiative for Oklahoma rural communities; and the Oklahoma ArtScience Prize, a high-school after-school program using collaborative, aspirational thinking to resolve global issues. Additionally, Creative Oklahoma has been instrumental in changing public perceptions of Oklahoma through the national public television documentary series, ReCreating America, by award-winning producer David Kennard; educational workshops and webinars with renowned creativity experts; creation of the National Creativity Network, a network of 15 creative districts in the US and Canada; and representation as the only North American region in the 14 member international Districts of Creativity Network.

About Creative Oklahoma:
Formed in 2006, Creative Oklahoma is a statewide non-profit organization advancing Oklahoma’s creative economy through creativity and innovation based initiatives in education, commerce and culture. The mission is to transform the state of Oklahoma through projects and collaborative ventures that help develop a more entrepreneurial and vibrant economy and an improved life quality for its citizens. For more information please visit stateofcreativity.com.

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Media Contact:
Meg Jackson at 405.232.5573
meg@stateofcreativity.com

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — As with any idea, it’s a lot easier showing something that explaining it. That’s part of the reason four local high school students had so much fun in downtown OKC. A photographer with a business called Newspin360 had Maribel Martinez, Gabrielle Coffee, Jesus Duran, and Amanda Sandoval posing with a project that’s taken a year and a half to get this far. Maribel says, “there were times when I felt like we weren’t going to make it.”

Each of them is getting ready to graduate soon, but as juniors they came to a small set of downtown offices to brainstorm. Art Science Oklahoma is one of only a handful of programs around the world that forms and nurtures teams of kids to take an idea and make it into something. Gabrielle demonstrates their edible bottle project by melting one of them under warm water in the sink.

Maribel, Gabrielle, Jesus, Amanda, and another girl Esther DeVanne got inspiration from stunt bottles from the movies made of sugar. The also had a lot of conversations about the growing problem of throwaway plastics in the environment. They thought, ‘why not make a bottle that could hold liquid and that would disintegrate quickly even if you didn’t chew on it. “We did a lot of experimenting,” says Gabrielle. “Then when that didn’t work we’d go onto something else,” says Maribel.

They tried different molds and sugars. The bottle they used in the photo shoot isn’t their finished product but it was enough to win the ArtScience prize last year. They got a trip to Paris, France out of it. The project could have finished after a year but the students kept it going. Nathan Pratt, their project mentor, saw it become something more than just extra credit. “The biggest reward was learning how to work together as a team, and come up with an idea that would impact society.

All of them are off to college in the fall. But an idea that ‘holds water’ still binds them together. Someday more of us might actually be able to take a drink and eat the container thanks to a group of kids thirsty for ideas.

Oklahoma ArtScience Prize: Click here for more information

Oklahoma ArtScience Prize is project of Creative Oklahoma and an internationally federating educational program of ArtScience Labs. ArtScience Prize engages students in in-depth learning in the arts, sciences, and idea development to cultivate creativity and the ability to realize innovative project ideas generated in the classroom. Creative Oklahoma is a statewide non-profit organization advancing Oklahoma’s creative economy through creativity and innovation based initiatives in education, commerce and culture. The mission is to transform the state of Oklahoma through projects and collaborative ventures that help develop a more entrepreneurial and vibrant economy and an improved life quality for its citizens.

By Tom Bolitho – The Chickasaw Times April 2012

InCA Films senior producer David Kennard and Gov. Bill Anoatubby met several years ago at a Creative Oklahoma, Inc., gathering in Oklahoma City. The few minutes of conversation between the two men convinced Mr. Kennard he must visit the Chickasaw Nation and discover more about the tribe and its people.

“I traveled to the Chickasaw Nation and we produced a film on creative techniques being employed at several schools,” Mr. Kennard said. “We visited the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy at East Central University and I was tremendously impressed.”

Mr. Kennard, whose company has offices in several cities, including San Francisco, met Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate at the Arts Academy. The San Francisco Symphony was, coincidentally, at that time recording and performing original scores by Mr. Tate.

“The San Francisco Symphony rarely does something like that (recordings), and here I was in Oklahoma with the composer of that original music,” Mr. Kennard said. “And this composer was here sharing his knowledge and techniques with these outstanding young Chickasaw musicians.”

Mr. Kennard knew he was onto something special.

Following his film on creativity in education, he turned his attention to the Chickasaw Nation, Gov. Anoatubby and Chickasaw empowerment. The more he discovered about the culture of the Chickasaw Nation, he said, the more he saw the keys to the tribal success.

“Gov. Anoatubby empowers people,” Mr. Kennard said. “He helps foster creativity. He is a ‘social entrepreneur.’”

In this second film in the series, “reinvention” is explored. Four stories of people who have recreated themselves and achieved success are capped in the final 18 minutes with a focus on Gov. Anoatubby.

“The Chickasaw story is tremendous,” Mr. Kennard said. “We wanted to show how this empowerment has such a big effect on people. It becomes an avalanche. We said to ourselves, ‘Look at what they are doing!’”

For more information on the film “Reinventing Yourself,” directed by David Kennard, please visit http://stateofcreativity.com/initiatives/films/reinventing-yourself/

to send the Oklahoma ArtScience Prize winning student team to Paris, France to attend the International ArtScience Innovation Workshop at Le Laboratoire where they will be joined other winning teams from around the world.  The international ArtScience network includes Harvard, Boston, Oklahoma City, Paris, Dublin, Singapore, Dhahran, and Cape Town.

Selected teams from Artscience Prize (ASP) locations around the world and leading universities travel to Paris each summer to participate in an intensive 7-­day idea development workshop held at Le Laboratoire, Paris. At the workshop, students interact with international experts and other students from other ASP and Idea Translation Lab sites throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. During the workshop students work on art and design development, business plan development, intellectual property, presentation skills, prototyping with designers and team-­building that will facilitate translating their ideas further.

Le Laboratoire, located in Paris’s first arrondissement, invites the public to experience the creative process that drives innovation and value in culture as in industry, society, and education as a fusion of art and of science producing tangible – if transient – art and design outcomes. These outcomes or “works-in-progress” result from experiments conceived of and led by leading international artists in collaboration with leading international scientists. Le Lab is a kind of off-Broadway, or pre-museum, aiming to catalyze change in culture, industry, society and education with partners who invest in the exploration process more decidedly than in the guarantee of any outcome this process might produce.

Oklahoma ArtScience Prize is project of Creative Oklahoma and an internationally federating educational program of ArtScience Labs. ArtScience Prize engages students in in-depth learning in the arts, sciences, and idea development to cultivate creativity and the ability to realize innovative project ideas generated in the classroom. Creative Oklahoma is a statewide non-profit organization advancing Oklahoma’s creative economy through creativity and innovation based initiatives in education, commerce and culture. The mission is to transform the state of Oklahoma through projects and collaborative ventures that help develop a more entrepreneurial and vibrant economy and an improved life quality for its citizens.

Oklahoma ArtScience Prize

International Innovation Workshop 2011

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