Dorte Nielsen:
If you show the children, this is the robot, let’s build one. They all built one exactly like that because they don’t want to make mistakes, they don’t want to fail, they don’t want to get it wrong. So once you start celebrating this mindset, suddenly you realize, wow, I can do this, I can do that. And suddenly they can start to play both with their imagination, but also coming up with new visions and new thoughts for what might be. And that gives. I mean, that’s building the little personality in a completely different way to what
we’ve seen.

Matthew Worwood:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

Matthew Worwood:

Will be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of
creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome to another episode in season nine of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. Not many more episodes until we conclude this season. And for this episode, we’re going to to be exploring a global perspective of creative thinking in
the classroom. So if you’re interested in that concept, particularly a global perspective, then stay tuned because you’re going to love our conversation.

Cyndi Burnett:

So today we welcome to the show Dorte Nielsen. Dorte is the founder of Creative Thinker and the center for Creative Thinking in Copenhagen. She has dedicated her life to helping others become better creative thinkers. After her advertising career in London, she has been teaching and researching creativity. She founded a bachelor degree program for conceptual thinkers and made it one of the most award winning creative bachelor’s programs in the world. And after her success in training creativity at the university level, Dorte took her uniquely effective creativity curriculum to primary schools.

So, Dorte Nielsen is the author of 10 books, three games and thinking tools. Her books are published in 11 languages and are sold in 65
countries.

Cyndi Burnett:
Welcome to the show, my friend, Dorte Nielsen.

Dorte Nielsen:
Thank you so much. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Dorte, you come from a background in the creative industries and Matt’s Matt works at University of Connecticut in digital media and design. And so where I want to start is actually in creative and I quote air quotes here. You can’t see it, but I’ve got little air quotes of creative industries because as we have all been trained in deliberate creativity. The three of us, we understand creativity as an its own academic discipline. But I have always struggled with creative industries and people who inherently think they are creative because they are an industry where creativity is sort of a given.

So what are your thoughts around creative industries and the intersection of these creative industries with deliberate creativity?

Dorte Nielsen:
I think it’s a great question. Thank you. The wonderful thing about the creative industries is it’s industries where they live of their creativity. What I’m often finding because I’m also training and working with a lot of very, very highly creative companies like Google and Lego and Nordic Films. So these industries is that they are actually not as deliberate as we know how to be from the science of creativity. So it’s a lot of people who happen to be creative who has brought up and stayed that way and now can make a living of it professionally. But it’s very, very interesting how when we go into these industries, we can actually use the science creativity to help them as well become even better creative thinkers. And I think when I think back to the happy 80s or 90s, there was a lot of creative people in these industries.

Dorte Nielsen:
Today we know that everybody are creative and it’s a need we see everywhere in every industry in at every level of education. So where it was something that was faced within certain industries, we now see a need for this kind of thinking everywhere. And this is wonderful.

Cyndi Burnett:
And do you get pushback when you work with the I’m going to air quote it creatives, do you get pushback on bringing in deliberate creativity?

Dorte Nielsen:
No, actually not. It’s super exciting. I have found a way and right now I’m doing so much work with some of the biggest and most highly
creative people and companies. They need training as well and they don’t actually know all the things we know from the science of creativity. So we can actually put the two together and make something which is really, really beautiful. So this kind of training and understanding of deliberate creativity is something that can help everybody, even the creatives in people that believe they go right.

So I think the principles and the science and all the tips and tricks we know is important is not just for the highly creative people, but it’s actually something that everybody needs.

Matthew Worwood:
So daughter as Sydney referenced, I work at the University of Connecticut Digital Media and Design department and quite often I’m working with students that are focused on some type of creative industry. So one of the things that I find and you’d said you don’t typically, typically get pushback, but I am wondering if that’s because you’ve been invited, which means that to a certain extent they’re open to learning something new in order to enhance their creativity. I’m in that scenario where sometimes I’m working to teach aspects of the science of creativity to my students. And because of this concept of I’m a creative, I think that I’ve slowly began to adapt my approach within the context of digital media and design, partly to do with my experience of 10 years teaching these students or interacting with faculty from creative field and adapting. And there was, there was something that you had referenced I think was really important is that you’re, you’ve, you, you’re familiar with A the advertising field and B, you had said that you’re in essence, you’ve got respect for how they’re already doing things and going about and maybe you’re modifying and customizing things, making connections between, you know, this general divergent thinking exercise and what it might look like within the context of this particular group of individuals. And I think that’s really important.

Dorte Nielsen:
By the end of the day, we are all human, we all people. And some of these things are so universal. And what has surprised me is how this is spread in sort of globally in so many ways. It means it’s something we instinctively know as human beings. So I think you’re right and maybe I, maybe I can share this little story just to sort of. Let’s get to this. So I came from the creative industries as we said. I was heading an education called Creative Commutation.

Dorte Nielsen:
And at this time when I was heading the education, less than 3% of the applicants came in. We had 585 to get into 20 seats if you like, in the class. And so what we did was we asked them to do portfolio folios. We did exams to get in. They did a two day trial. They do all kinds of things. And we did interviews. So these were sort of people that managed to get in because they were very, very good at what they
were doing.

Dorte Nielsen:
They were high ideators. What we also found here was this was BA level was that a lot of them actually weren’t able to do their finish their high schools or their sort of previous education. Some of them have been going to six different schools not being able to actually finish it. So we can give dispensation for their academic records to allow them into the education. What we saw was at the university college where I was working, this was one of nine different educations. Our grade average was the very, very lowest, which means these kids, these students who were really highly creative thinker who is now working in New York or Sao Paulo or Shanghai and very Paris, exciting places. They actually have the lowest academic records for all the educations that were there. I got to work with them throughout the bachelor degree.

Dorte Nielsen:
They actually were winning awards and were doing really well. The Ministry of Education came and said, this is the kind of people we need. And what I could see was that when they finished their bas, they ended up having the highest grades of all the educations on the whole institution, but they came in with the very, very low, lowest, and some of them didn’t even have the education they needed to get in. So what I could see was that all these highly creative people that were admired, they actually had had such a bad time at school, they couldn’t go. They had been putting, you know, they’ve been out the door. They had different diagnosis. They had so many different things that have been so difficult for them in the school system. So a part of me.

Dorte Nielsen:
So when I saw what was happening and I had parents crying, say, what have you done? You know, I have a child who’s never been to school and didn’t want to go, and now they live at the school and they love doing this. What is going on? So for me, I was sitting talking to the politicians, realizing that World Economic Forum is asking us to have spread these skills and at the same time realizing that we have not been good at giving the right environment throughout the primary schools to make this happen, or even the high schools. This has been really, really difficult. So for me, I set out to actually wanting to change that. I wanted to show the difference that we could make. So it isn’t just the odd ones that actually manage to go through the system and can make their way into the, what we call the creative industries. But this is actually skills that everybody can have.

Matthew Worwood:
Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.

Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to Create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community, all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So, Jorda, I want to shift this a little bit, but keep, keep that spirit of what’s happening in Copenhagen because as we mentioned earlier, you’re the founder of the center for Creative Thinking in Copenhagen. Tell us more about the role of creativity in the curriculum in Denmark and what you’ve been
doing to nurture creativity and children and how is it different or similar to other countries.

Dorte Nielsen:
So I think when we look at it, when I first started working with some of the primary schools, the creative feel or the creative topics or curriculums were within cooking or what you call it woodwork or that kind of sewing. What was important for me was the thinking came in and could be used in every single topic or subject that were being taught. So what happened was first I started to do train some of the teachers. But there was. I found there was a sort of, one thing is working with teachers, another thing is how do we actually get this into the classroom? And this is where the hard step, I think, is. So when I was working with one of the schools, I asked the head of the school if I could be allowed to work with a fifth grade or sixth grade just to show the difference that creative thinking can make. And she’s. So we were talking and she said, what is it you would actually like to do? I said, I would like to train them for two hours every week just to show how this kind of thinking can spread and can make a difference in everything they do.

Dorte Nielsen:
And when I told her what I wanted to do, she said, this is wonderful. I want to do it with all my pupils. So at this school, every pupil from grade zero, when they start up to the ninth grade, they clear two hours every week. It said creativity on the weekly schedule. And I made all the materials and all the things for Everybody. I taught 12 teachers how to actually teach this so we could do it at every single level. Also for the special needs classes then. So we would go in and work with the principals.

Dorte Nielsen:
We will also teach them to see connections. We would teach them some creative process and creative problem solving. But what I think was really instrumental for this to work was that I said, we can’t just have them training for two hours every week. We need to get it into everything else. So I got to work with all staff, 68 people, and got to train them and say. And everybody promised to say, okay, we’re going to try this out within this semester at least once or twice. So we got to work with this in history, in Danish and English, in math and science. And I think this is what really made the big difference.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Dorte, I’d love to hear more about. So what were the outcomes? So you worked with these students in an entire school, what did the teachers notice? What did the administration notice?

Dorte Nielsen:
So what was kind of interesting, we started as an experiment and first for six months, and they immediately said, we will do this for it for a year. What we could see was the dynamics in the classroom was changing. The students started to thrive better. They had a greater understanding of the fact that they were all different types of thinkers and that you could be deliberate with your thinking. And sometimes we have to think in one way and other times we have to go in and think creatively. So there was a much bigger respect between the pupils and their abilities and their talents. What we found was concrete. There was less sick days, both between the teachers and the students.

Dorte Nielsen:
We could also see an effect that some of the students reported that if they found it hard to come up with a topic and sort of had a writing block, this creativity training could actually help them to come up with new ideas. We could see them in math that if they couldn’t solve the problem, they could maybe think around the
problem, and maybe they didn’t use the right rules, but they could, ah, so what if I turn it around and it’s like this? And then three of them and then. So we could see, suddenly they took it into other disciplines. And I think for the special needs education, this is where we really saw a difference. We used creative processes as
learning processes, so we were clarifying what is it we have to learn, and using divergent and convergent thinking at every step of the way. And suddenly you had pupils coming home saying, wow, today we did this. And they were excited about it and they could suddenly emember what they’d done. And we had parents coming in saying, this is the very first time my child has come home and reported what we’ve actually learned.

Dorte Nielsen:
So some of the special needs children actually managed to finish their ninth grade, the big exam for them, and where they hadn’t done that the previous years. So there was huge academic results, as well as sort of things that were really good for the environment. I had one child saying, wow, before we did this, I thought the other ones were stupid. Now I know they’re just different kind of fingers. And that was amazing because suddenly they could collaborate in a very different way. So it was really. The outcomes were very highly unexpected. We got more results in other areas than what we thought we would get.

Matthew Worwood:
Now, given how widespread that you saw the results, the outcomes of this effort, something just dawned on me, you know, particularly when you’re talking about the example in math, do you think to a Certain extent, it might be less about some of the specific strategies or developing specific divergent or converging thinking techniques per se, and more about the kind of overall values and the openness that’s represented at the core of creative, creative thinking training that actually finds its ability to then spread.

So if I’m challenged with a math situation, it might not be that I can find the right divergent
thinking technique in this particular scenario, but maybe I’m more likely to engage in a growth mindset or I’m more likely to just be open to the possibility of different answers or challenging myself when I’m maybe being negative. Just, just our curiosity, do you think part of it is attributed to that which is something we should also celebrate and not necessarily undermine when it comes to creativity training or creative thinking training?

Dorte Nielsen:
I completely agree with you. It’s all about the mindset and it’s about the way we think about things. I worked with also just the lowest. What do you call that in English? Sorry? The youngest.

Matthew Worwood:
We typically reference early years.

Dorte Nielsen:
Yeah, early years. And already this time what happens is that children really don’t want to make mistakes. So we have sort of fostered this kind of thinking where for 200 years teacher holds the right answer. And most of the time there’s. All that happens is the pupils are trying to get that guess this one right answer. And once the pupils realized, oh my God, there’s so many answers. And when we’re working with the teachers and we start to ask open ended questions, suddenly it was about learning new strategies. And it was like a relief seeing these children because suddenly it was not about
being right or wrong.

Dorte Nielsen:
Suddenly there was a lower level of stress and anxiety, which is something we really see a lot amongst youth today. They feel very worried about getting things right and going down the right path and guessing the right question and doing everything as it should be. So if we can work with that mindset, suddenly something happens and it’s a positive mindset and it’s something which is so much bigger than even creativity that I didn’t see that coming. But it’s huge. And we have parents who are coming in saying that the children, even from the, from the very beginning, are very anxious of getting things right. I can tell you. There was, there was a huge art museum that came to me and they said, we put on a big exhibition. It’s about the
future and it’s about the robots.

Dorte Nielsen :
And we’ve now invited all these children to come in and build robots and they put out all these materials and they said, to the children. See this? Here’s a robot. We all going to build robots. And all the children built a robot that was exactly the same as the one they were shown. So the museum asked me, daughter, could you please come and work with these? Because this is what happens if you show the children. This is the robot. Let’s build one. They all built one exactly like that because they don’t want to make mistakes, they don’t want to fail, they don’t want to get it wrong.

Dorte Nielsen:
So once you start celebrating this mindset, suddenly you realize, wow, I can do this, I can do that. And suddenly they can start to play both with their imagination, but also coming up with new visions and new thoughts for what might be. And that gives. I mean, that’s building the little personality in a completely different way to what we’ve seen.

Cyndi Burnett:
Dorte, that sounds amazing. Were you able to document any of this that people who are listening might be able to look at what you’ve been doing or any stories or anything that you’ve written about it?

Dorte Nielsen:
I need to actually, we haven’t documented how we should do. Really. We need to make more science. We need to research because we can see the difference. And we hear it from the staff, we hear it from the parents. And what was very unexpected to me was the kind of impact this can actually have.

Matthew Worwood:
And I’d be fascinated as well if you looked a little bit about that mindset concept, really operationalizing this concept of a creative mindset, what it might look like in education, whether or not there’s an improvement to that mindset at the beginning and end of your work.

Cyndi Burnett:
Now, Dorte, I know you see this as a movement. If one of our listeners wants to get involved what they do, there’s so.

Dorte Nielsen:
Many things to do. I think it also takes a little bit of bravery to bring it in. So I think, of course, is start as a teacher to be deliberate about it. And then what we’ve also done is we. I’ve done an initiative called Our Sustainable Future. And in our Sustainable Future, we actually take creative thinking and we take the global goals and put them together. So it’s an initiative where children and young people up to the maximum the age of 30, can sort of have a stage for their ideas and thought. So what we’d love to do is to spread this and give people the opportunity to come and work with
this.

Dorte Nielsen:
So it’s a brief, open brief where people use, or children and young people can use creativity and creative thinking to sort of meet some of the global goals, to come with their ideas. And we think it’s a really beautiful thing that we would love to see them take it into schools and see how creative thinking can actually make a difference. And maybe we can do this globally. Maybe we can. You know, we’ve done it for a few years in Denmark and in Europe and we’d love to see it collaborate with more people. But I think it’s a beautiful way to start bringing it in to. Yeah. To start bringing it into the classroom.

Dorte Nielsen:
So that’s an opportunity.

Matthew Worwood:
So, d. Before we ask our final question, I did want to just kind of offer a little bit of a debrief because you’ve given us some really good insights. And I’ve got a few different notes I’d like to bring up on our debrief that Cindy and I will be having, I think next week or the week after. But I. One of the things that strikes me and I need to go away and ponder this a little bit more. But you know, when we’re going and facilitating creative thinking or working to teach creative thinking, the environment is going to play a particular role in what we might choose to focus on. It sounds to me that the example that you were sharing in the education setting that it. That it really is trying to promote this mindset and that the strategies and techniques of course are important because they’re a vehicle to which you can apply and engage that mindset and initiate that mindset.

Matthew Worwood:
Perhaps. But going back to our early conversation with the creative industries, it might be a recognition that actually you’re going into an environment where there is already a creative mindset. And therefore it might be a case of identifying the best strategy to promote that’s applicable to that particular need. I don’t know if you’ve got any follow ups on that, but ultimately it’s the fact that you can go in with the same goals. I’m going to go and promote divergent thinking. But you know, one is actually it’s more about being more tactically minded because the environment is already sold on the values and the other environment might be it’s more about promoting the values of divergent thinking as opposed to necessarily
mastering the technique.

Dorte Nielsen:
I think in everything I try to do with the schools, it’s all about being a deliberate thinker. So a lot of the time we try to work with triangular books where you on one page can have like divergent thinking, another page can have convergent thinking. So by having a triangular book, it’s a physical prompt that reminds you of this kind of thinking. So let’s say, with this one school, all the children had triangular books in their drawers. So whenever you would do the regular teaching and suddenly the teacher would say, now go and get your triangular books. Wow. The children lit up because now they knew they were going to use this other kind of thinking. So when you make it very visible, very like a physical prompt for them, suddenly they realize that there’s different styles of thinking.

Dorte Nielsen:
And this is almost like running by riding a bike. It’s amazing because this is tools you take with you for your whole life. And, and his deliberate kind of thinking, okay, now I’m doing this kind of thinking. Now I have to do this kind of thinking. This, it’s kind of making them, how can I say, making them savvy in thinking. It’s,
it’s. And this is of course about the environment, but we also have to allow that. And I think a lot of the anxiety is when people can’t see opportunities, when people can’t see possibilities.

Dorte Nielsen:
So teaching them that, okay, if you stuck in something, let’s try and change it, look at it in this other way. And the relief that actually gives is incredible. And that is the gift you can give to all the children. And this is, this is really what we need all the way up university, in businesses everywhere, because we need to be able to promote change, to see new things, see new opportunities. But if we haven’t learned it from when we were little, from when we were children, it’s going to be, you know, we need this. So it’s an important job to do.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, so we finish every single one of our episodes asking our guests for three tips that they would share with educators who want to promote creativity in their classroom. What are your three tips?

Dorte Nielsen:
First of all, I think that think about the mindset that you are cultivating in your classroom. So my tip number one will be always ask open ended questions. Try to not just be brave. Don’t know the answer to what you’re asking. So ask a question that can give multiple answers because this is where they think. This is to cultivate creative thinking when you give them the principles and if you teach deliberate using some of the principles, the simple ones being, let’s say, divergent and convergent thinking, you can so easily put that into what you already do. But when you do this, you can help making deliberate creative thinkers. So I recommend that it’s a number two and number three, I think I always talk a lot about connections.

Dorte Nielsen:
So it has to be teach your children to make creative connections. Let’s see some cross first can’t even say that. You know, let’s, let’s, let’s see all this magic happen when we take one thing from one field and marry it with something from another field. Because this is going to be the underlying mechanism that is going to help the children come up with new and really, really original ideas. And that is a gift that you can take and bring into any field at any time. So if we look into the future, all that we know is that change will happen. So I think the only thing we know that we need to know is how to think and how to work with this. And this is where creative thinking is magic.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Dorte, thank you so much for joining us today and it was great to see you and hear about all the wonderful things you’re doing in Denmark. So we will leave a link to Dorte’s page as well as a link to her book page so you can check out her books. She has Creative Thinkers, Creative Thinking for Children’s Book, as well as the Secret of the Highly Creative Thinker, which I have a copy of and love. And there’s also a little Creative Thinkers exercise book that we will link to as well. So please check those out. And if you like this episode or you’re interested in bringing creative thinking into your K through 12 school, we hope that you’ll share this episode with a friend or colleague. And thank you so much for joining us today. My
name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett

Matthew Worwood:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
This podcast was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. The episode was sponsored by Curiosity.