Cyndi Burnett:
What if creativity doesn’t begin with making something new, but with learning to see, to notice things in new ways and discover alternative perspectives? In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Keith Sawyer, a leading researcher on creativity, to explore how this idea influences the way we teach, design assignments, and create environments where creativity can flourish.

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

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

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fueling Creat 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:
We’ll 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. Dr. Sawyer is the Morgan Distinguished professor of Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leading researcher on creativity, learning, sciences, and innovation. Keith is the author of more than a dozen books, including the 2025 release Learning to Inside the World’s Leading Art and Design Schools, a groundbreaking account of how nationally known artists and designers teach in the top BFA and and MFA programs. Keith’s work has been featured in Time, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, shaping how educators, organizations, and policymakers understand and nurture creativity in the 21st century. Keith, welcome to the show.

Keith Sawyer:
Well, thank you. I’m really glad to be here.

Matthew Worwood:
So, Keith, I had the honor of being on your own podcast, which is the Science of Creativity, just last week. And toward the end, we started to get into a conversation about books and book titles and, you know, does the title come first or is it a case of the title emerges as you’re engaging in the process of writing the book. And at the beginning of your book Learning to See, you, you kind of like make this reference that the title was one thing and then it kind of morphed into Learning to See. So given the fact that we want to focus on Learning to See, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that story and how Learning to See emerged. And, Keith, a little shout out to me. You notice the way I’m using the word emerged a lot. You talk about that in the book as well, how things emerge as they go.

Keith Sawyer:
I think it’s a great example of the creative process more generally that you have to have something at the beginning to get it started, but you shouldn’t get too attached to the thing you have at the beginning. Because once you start engaging in that creative process, it’s a wandering and iterative process, and something will emerge that is better than what you could have thought of at the beginning. But you have to have something to start with. You can’t just start with nothing. I think of that starting thing, maybe it’s like a seed of a plant, and the plant is the creative process or some metaphor like that. It’s the same with book titles, I think. I mean, all of us who write books, I think we have something in mind as a title. And in my case, it was a research project before I even thought it might be a book.

Keith Sawyer:
I started doing this all the way back in 2009, where I was going to call the project Learning how to Create. I’ve been studying creativity, and I’d been studying, teaching and learning for over 10 years already by 2009. But I hadn’t brought them together to study. How would you teach people how to be creative? I had an opportunity to go into an art and design school. It was Savannah College of Art and Design, or scad. And I thought, this is going to be a great place to find out how you teach people how to be creative. I’ll go interview painting professors, interview graphic design professors. And I started my interviews.

Keith Sawyer:
I would say, you know, tell me how you teach people how to be creative. And already at that point, I was thinking, this is going to be a great book. I’ll call it Learning how to Create. But the professors that I was interviewing, they really were uncomfortable with that title. They don’t even like the word creativity, which, you know, I’m a creativity researcher, so I would say, well, what’s going on? Right. Why don’t you like the word creativity? And we can talk about that a lot more. But this word creativity seemed to be a hot button. Well, we don’t want to call what we do creative, and so don’t put creativity in the title of your book.

Keith Sawyer:
And the more and more I did these interviews, and the more and more I analyzed the interviews. Yeah, I myself was going through this creative wandering, iterative process, trying to figure out, what am I going to say? How am I going to tell the stories of these? Obviously, they’re brilliant artists and designers and educators, but so many of them told me that what they are doing, they’re teaching students how to see. That came up over and over again in a wide variety of disciplines. So it was painting, it was graphic design, it was advertising, it was architecture. Came up over and over. I’m teaching students how to see. I guess maybe the second most common thing was I’m teaching students how to think. So I suppose I could have called the book Learning how to See and Think, but learning to See, that was the most important thing.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Keith, I’m really fascinated by this because I know you have a background in the arts as a jazz pianist. You’re an improviser as well, right? You worked in Second City, right? Yeah, so I also have a background in the performing arts, as actually does Matt, who studied acting, and I studied musical theater dance. And I know when I went in to learn about the science of creativity, and I studied at Buffalo State University and then went on to teach for 20 years, teaching the science of creativity and talking about that with artists was always very challenging because when I went to the artists and designers and, you know, performing artists, and I said, let me tell you about the science of creativity, they would pretty much, you know, run away from me. And then, you know, because they would say, that’s not what we do. What we do, what we do can’t be taught. And I always found that really interesting. Like, no, there’s so much you can learn from the science of creativity. But they didn’t really want to hear that.

Cyndi Burnett:
And then on the flip side of that, you know, the artistic process, which obviously all three of us have been part of, it’s a part of who we are. We see that can be applied to the sciences. And so what I love about is this bridge that you have here, but can be applied to the sciences, but the scientists don’t want to hear it because it’s, you know, no, we don’t do that stuff. That’s not what we do. So I’m really excited about this conversation today because I think there are so many connections to be made, and I think it’s fascinating that they said we don’t teach people about creativity. And I want. I really want to hear more about that from you is like, what is their perspective of creativity? Did you hear this? This phrase, like, you can’t teach people to be creative? And then there’s another layer to all of this, which is the stereotypical creatives. I put that in quotes.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I know that Matt and I have had many conversations in terms of his work in design, where people think of, you know, the creatives as creative, whereas in the science of creativity, we’re looking at actually, everyone has the potential to be creative. So all of that said, you know, what was your experience in approaching these design educators and what did you learn throughout this 15 year process in interviewing them. I’d love to see that bridge because it’s something that Matt and I have spoken a lot about.

Keith Sawyer:
Thank you. Yeah, I think I understand what you’re getting at. And I started at scad, but I went to many different art and design schools. I went to School of Visual Arts in New York. I went to CalArts in Los Angeles. I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. So I wouldn’t say, nobody told me we can’t teach them. No one said.

Cyndi Burnett:
No one said that.

Keith Sawyer:
No one said we can’t teach art. They said, we’re uncomfortable using the word creativity. But all of them said, we can absolutely teach you how to do what we do. It is not mysterious. It doesn’t depend on brilliant moments of insight. It’s a deliberate process that can be taught. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re teaching these students and.

Keith Sawyer:
And as long as they are invested, as long as they do what we tell them to do, engage in the assignments that we give them. And sometimes they’re very difficult assignments. Sometimes they challenge the students to do things that students are not used to doing or not comfortable with doing. All of this is very intentional and very clearly designed with the purpose of helping these students learn how to engage in a consistent process that will lead to creative outcomes. So they would not say, you can’t teach creativity. They would say, we wouldn’t say we’re teaching creativity. We would say we’re teaching these other things a set of mindsets and practices. And then by engaging in those mindsets and practices, you will generate creative work.

Keith Sawyer:
So I think what they would say is, you know, we don’t see creativity as something separate from the act of engaging in the art or design process.

Matthew Worwood:
And I do want to come to process later in the show because in your book and in your work, you know, you do talk a little bit about there’s the execution of an idea, which we could say is a process. And so that isn’t necessarily always creative. But then we’ve got the ideas that continue to emerge and evolve and are modified that probably swing more toward the creative act. But before. Before we do that, I am curious of just kind of following this conversation a little bit, and I’m actually good. I’ve got a question for both of you. You know, we keep talking about this. I know that I.

Matthew Worwood:
So I’m in the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut. I was going to crack a joke, Keith, and say that I noticed that we were not reviewed in the book, but.

Keith Sawyer:
That’s right.

Matthew Worwood:
But on a serious note, what I would say is, you know, I have found I have a background in education, and I consider myself very much interdisciplinary in terms of my approach just to my practice. But I typically feel very uncomfortable because of conversations that I’ve had using the word creativity. I study creativity or I teach creativity. I definitely have kind of pulled back on that type of language within with my colleagues, and that that’s not like a detriment to them. I just know that it can be interpreted in a different way to how I’m seeing it. And because we might be using the same word but not necessarily talking about the same thing, I’ve recognized that it’s very important that, you know, just for the ease of clarification, that I kind of, when I’m talking about creativity science, I sometimes might use the word creativity science a little bit to try and encourage that distinction. But in addition, my work in education school, I’ve learned that it’s a problem there as well. Now, interestingly enough, it’s usually some of the art and design teachers that kind of feel like it’s almost as if I’m stumbling into their domain.

Matthew Worwood:
So when I’m standing up and saying we’re going to do a program to cultivate teacher creativity and how we integrate creativity into our practice, sometimes it’s a little bit of a pushback. And I’ve actually started to dial down the use of the word creativity from my experience working with these schools, because I know that it can also just lead to. I don’t want to use the word conflicts. I think that is. Is too strong. But maybe, Cindy, it’s what you’re saying. It’s like you’re butting up with the stereotypes. And unless you’re going to kind of go and do a creativity science one on one course, which really isn’t your objective, you know, you’re not going to resolve those stereotypes.

Matthew Worwood:
It’s more. And so where I’m coming back and dialing back to, I’ve kind of started to say to myself, does it really matter, you know, if we use the word creativity? You know, I understand why as a research field, we want to promote it, we want to advocate for it. But so long as we are cultivating all of the things, creating an environment, encouraging a process, encouraging individuals to engage in more creative acts, to produce more creative outcomes, to go out and do, you know, transformational creativity, it’s probably a big objective of mine with my students, as long as we’re doing that does it matter what we call it? I’m just throwing it out there, like, I don’t know, I’m not saying we need a new name, but does it really matter?

Keith Sawyer:
The main thing is for me, the process, and this has been my focus from the beginning of my career, when I study creativity, I study the creative process. Some of our colleagues study creative personalities like are you extrovert people more creative? So I was never interested in that. I’m not studying what kinds of people are more or less creative. And some people study creative outcomes, like creative ideas. You can study Nobel Prize winners and the Nobel Prize winning things they did. You can do quantitative studies of scientific journal articles, you can analyze a thousand patents for whatever pencils. So there are different ways you could study creativity. In my case, I’ve always been interested in the process.

Keith Sawyer:
And I think that comes from my own experience with jazz improvisation and theater improvisation, where really that’s all there is to it. It’s the essence is the process. The process of engaging in the dialogue or the process of engaging in interactions up on stage. It’s all about the process. You know, different individuals in a jazz ensemble have different styles of playing, but what is created is a collective phenomena. And again, it emerges from the performers. So it’s kind of missing the point to study on the psychology, the personality of any individual member. And in a way, I think it also misses the point to focus on the outcome of an improvisational performance because it’s ephemeral, right? The performance is the process is the performance.

Keith Sawyer:
Every moment of improvisation, that moment is the creativity. But then it moves on and there’s some other moment of creativity. So yes, maybe, I guess you and I would both say, since we studied creativity, creativity is everything. It’s just more complicated than people tend to think it is. The people that I interviewed at the beginning of the interview, that’s when I would say, tell me how you teach people how they’re creative. And they would be very uncomfortable with that. But by the end of the hour, I think most people would say, yeah, you know, we’re, we’re teaching them creativity. In the first chapter of my book, they say things more like, the students are already creative.

Keith Sawyer:
What we’re doing is we’re fostering their creativity, we’re maximizing their creativity, we’re facilitating their creativity, we are fueling their creativity. So they would use words like that. We’re not teaching them how to be creative, we’re taking the creativity that they already have and trying to help them realize that creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, so let’s go a little bit deeper into that because I think this is really interesting. So you’re facilitating this process of and ultimately are creative in this process. And that’s what they’re coming to the realization in the artistic process. Even though. And we could talk about, you know, domain skills in terms of artistic creativity and creativity skills, which are typically different, at least as designed in the literature or discussed in the literature. So if we were going to take that and put that in a science, could we take these principles that designers are using and bring it into other disciplines?

Keith Sawyer:
I think so, absolutely. Because even before I went into art design schools, I was a creativity researcher. So I’m familiar with research on the creative process. And in my view, the creative process being iterative, wandering that we have this mythical view sometimes what I call the linear insight view, that you have an insight at the beginning of the process and then all you have to do is execute it. And that execution process is fairly linear. So the idea you have at the beginning and what comes out at the end is pretty much the same idea you had at the beginning. I think that’s mythical. At least it’s not the way exceptional creativity works.

Keith Sawyer:
If you look at some of the most impactful innovations and inventions. And as a matter of fact, that’s what I see being taught in schools of art and design. The professors tell me when 18 year olds come into art school, they’re very talented, technically, they’re very skilled, they have to submit a portfolio to be admitted to a program. But apparently when they come in, they are working with this linear insight myth or view that they have an idea at the beginning and then they paint it and then the painting they have at the end is the same as the idea they started with. The professors I talked to say this is a problem because this is not going to result in successful creativity. It’s not going to fully realize the potential you have if the work that you generate at the end is the same as what you had at the beginning. So they spend a lot of time, I guess, unteaching or teaching students. You know, you’ve been doing it this way since you were 10 years old and you’ve been generating really nice looking stuff by taking this linear path.

Keith Sawyer:
But that’s not going to get you where you need to go. You need to learn how to engage in an iterative wandering process where you start with something, a tiny spark, but then something better than you could have thought of at the beginning is going to emerge from that process. And then you need to be able to see how to follow it. When they say learning how to see, they don’t mean learning how to see the world around you. They mean that too. But they also mean learning how to see yourself, learning how to see the work that you’re doing. And that work that you’re doing, when you see it clearly can tell you things about yourself.

Cyndi Burnett:
Keith, I have to just say that that really resonates with me and Matt. I don’t know if you’re picking up on this too, but Matt and I are working on a book together around the podcast and everything we’ve learned in our interviews. And it’s, it’s really interesting because we started with these 10 actions and they keep developing and sometimes it’s hard to let go of what we originally came up with as we continue to develop our thinking. But I keep reminding myself and Matt that, like, this is an iterative process and we have to go along with it. So what you’re saying really resonates with me. And I think educators will listen to this and think, how can I bring this into the process when I’m working with my students on things that need iteration, such as in writing or in drawing or any of their project ideas that they might have along, along the pathway? And how does that relate to the science of learning that you’ve written so much about?

Keith Sawyer:
It’s a challenge for education because it takes longer. Yeah. To learn the same amount of stuff. It might take three times as long because you’re going to be going through this wandering process. You’re going to be going down dead ends. So the teacher could just tell you the right answer right at the beginning. And it’s fast, it’s quicker, but it’s not as deeply learned. You don’t retain it as much as when you go through a discovery process on your own.

Keith Sawyer:
So, you know, I’m not the first one to talk about the importance of discovery based learning or project based learning. And I’m a big supporter of all of these things as being actively involved. You get students actively involved in trying to solve difficult problems where the answer isn’t known at the beginning. What design researchers might call them ill defined problems or ill structured problems. And Absolutely, those are the kind of problems where students engage with them and they’re more likely to learn in a deeper and more profound and more conceptual way. Absolutely. So there. And that kind of problem, working on that kind of problem has a lot of similar characteristics to this creative process that we’re talking about.

Matthew Worwood:
You know, just to kind of bring it all back together in terms of thinking about how this could go to different disciplines. One, Cindy I have, and so many of our guests, we talk, let’s focus less on the outcomes and let’s focus more on the process in education. And we’ve certainly been, you know, gone down that path pretty significantly. The other piece, though that’s interesting that I think you’re bringing with the learn to see piece is that if I’m a science educator, what I need to be mindful of is that, yes, I’m engaging them in, let’s say, an experiment, but I’ve got to make sure that I’m setting the conditions for creativity, which what I’m listening to you is providing opportunities for them to see and discover new things. And so as we’re going through this, yes, I’ve got the predetermined outcomes. I know what’s going to happen. I need to control the experiments. Nobody gets hurt.

Matthew Worwood:
But I probably need to make sure that I continue to provide, I’m assuming, with my conversations and the questions that I’m asking, the time for my students to go through that process of learning to see. And I think you could do the same in a humanities classroom where you’re learning to see new things with a text. And that, to me, I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of AI, but this is one of my concerns a little bit. You’ve got to know your learning objective, because if we’re interacting with a text from the 1800s, we may see things and discover things that actually hasn’t already been written about and most likely to pop up on an AI summary. So we’ve got to be cautious about that. I’ll come back to what I said, but I still see those opportunities, though, with lots of different disciplines, if we focus on letting them see. Now, I want to shift a little bit because thinking about the role of the educator and the talk, I’m going to read apart from your book, see, I’m going to the next level. Look at this, Cindy.

Matthew Worwood:
I’ve got the book up with our video. Let me hold it up. Can see it. The professor engages in a performance of thinking. In other words, they think out loud, but in a carefully designed way that I call studio talk. So I want to hear a little bit about studio talk. And I would love to kind of just see if we can also expand that beyond just the art and design.

Keith Sawyer:
As well a studio pedagogy is involved in. It’s when you give a student a project, and the project almost always is designed to Take two, three or four weeks. But these studio classes meet several times each week and the students are expected to bring in their interim work. You bring in something that’s not the finished product. And then everyone in the classroom, the professor and all of the students, they talk about it and they give they student who created the work, they give feedback. The student is expected to take that feedback and then move forward with what they’ve generated. So what, what you have is many opportunities to, I don’t know if you’d say challenge the student, but to raise issues for the student. It’s a lot easier to see what’s going on in someone else’s work than it is to see what’s going on in your own work.

Keith Sawyer:
So having all the other students comment on your work. Okay, I’ll give you an example. So there was one professor told me this story. And these were first year students, they’re all 18 years old. And one of the women in the class had brought in sculpture, installation art, and she had gotten a bunch of little tiny plastic babies, like toy babies, and she had hung them up on strings like it was a mobile. And she covered them all with red ink so it would look like blood. And this was what she brought in. And everyone said, oh, you know, this work is about abortion.

Keith Sawyer:
You’re trying to make a message about abortion with your work. You’ve got these bloody babies and she is turning beet red and she’s shocked. She says, this doesn’t have anything to do with abortion. I can’t believe you all think that. And all the other students are saying, how could you not see that it’s about abortion? What’s, you know, what, what are you not seeing? So the student who generated the work just never thought it was about abortion and was shocked that other people would see it that way. So it can be hard to see what’s in your own work, but other people see it. And then hopefully, you know, you’re able to respond to what other people are seeing in your work. And then what often happens is, okay, so what would you do? First thing you might do is, dammit, it’s not about abortion.

Keith Sawyer:
It’s about. Actually, I forgot what it was about. And I’m going to modify my work to make sure you can’t think it’s about abortion. So it’s that focus on the initial idea. And if you’re used to focusing on the initial idea, then you’ll just try to drive it through, make sure that’s what pops out at the end. But what you’re being taught is to watch and see and listen to what’s happening. So, okay, about studio talk. Now, let’s say you’re the professor and you see this work come in with bloody babies.

Keith Sawyer:
You could just tell the student, hey, this looks like abortion. You’ve got babies with blood on them. So let’s talk about what’s going on here. What professors usually will do is they will not tell the student what they think. What they’ll do is they’ll guide the student through a process, and they’ll do that by talking through the process they would go through while working on their own work. So they’ll always be asking questions. They’ll say, I’m looking at this work and I’m wondering, you know, why do you have. Why do you have this baby upside down over here? Can you say a little bit more about that? The student will.

Keith Sawyer:
Maybe a lot of times they won’t know why the baby’s upside down. But one of the things we’re trying to teach you is that you should be able to articulate every decision that you make. That’s usually not what happens when people start art school. So, yeah, why did you put this baby upside down? Have you thought about doing this other thing? And why is it red? Why is it red ink on the babies? And so the students. So the professor just keeps asking things, which are the sorts of questions that an artist would ask themselves when they’re engaging in their own work at the studio. This is the nature of the creative process, is that you generate work and then you step back and you ask yourself questions about it. So when the professor asks questions about the students work, what they’re doing is they’re modeling a thought process that they go through themselves when they’re engaged in creativity. So they wouldn’t talk out loud in their studio while they’re doing their own paintings, but they talk out loud.

Keith Sawyer:
It’s like a performance of thought, of thinking of how you look at art.

Cyndi Burnett:
That’s really interesting. And I’m desperately curious to know what she was going after now is the answer in your book?

Keith Sawyer:
I actually went back to the professor later, after our interview. I emailed him a few weeks later and said, so what did she think it was about? And he told me and I put it in the book, but, sorry, I just forgot it right now. She basically just was trying to be dramatic and crazy and make a strong statement. I don’t know, like a punk musician or something. It was one of those cases where she really couldn’t articulate it. Very well.

Matthew Worwood:
And. But this is also important. But this was also fascinating. And I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole either. But, like, there is that kind of, like art you’ve mentioned a few times, me and how I. Or how they. The artists are kind of infusing them into their work. And so from that perspective, you typically are looking at it from how do you think about it, how do you feel about it? And that’s part of studio talk.

Matthew Worwood:
But in this story, what I like about it is also kind of opening up and being open and flexible to consider how other people in your environment are also perceiving your work and the possibility of whether or not you had said this earlier, like, whether or not you’re willing to let go of that idea. So maybe you were going for this, but what you’re starting to see through the interactions with other people, that actually other people are seeing this more strongly than what you thought or what you initially had set out to do. Are you willing, therefore, to change and pivot directions in order to get that? And my gut feeling is it probably does come down a little bit down to the personality, the assignment, the willingness, who you’re designing for. But all of that is also part of that iteration. Iteration. I think that’s the other thing. Being in the class and we spoke about this like, you know, whatever. I’ve always tried to incorporate some type of studio type environment in my work, even if I’m doing, you know, traditional intensive writing.

Matthew Worwood:
Because you facilitate dialogue so other people can share what they’re seeing from it. I think what’s also important to note that you’re bringing out is the fact that through the dialogue of the Creator, they’re also revealing their process and the decisions that they made and why they made those decisions. And I think if I’m a science educator listening to go back to my analogy, if the experiment doesn’t go well, or they’ve seen something that actually isn’t there, or they’ve interpreted something, it’s really important for us. I think as. And I’m acting like I’m a science teacher, I’m not a science teacher, but. But you brought up the connection with science, Cindy. But for us to say, okay, that’s not what I thought. Can you tell me a little bit more about why you did that or why that was your takeaway? And that can facilitate a little bit of the conversation, I think, that you’re talking about with studio talk and also bring it out into other disciplines as well.

Keith Sawyer:
Right. In the chapter where I really talk about studio talk. I call it thinking. I think it’s chapter eight. There’s a professor named Heather Corcoran who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, and she has given students an assignment in a communication design class. Each student has to design two posters. And the posters are based on a novel that Heather gives them.

Keith Sawyer:
And the constraint is that the two posters have to be in dialogue with each other visually in some way. But both posters are about the same quotations from the same book. So at one class where I videotaped, she had the two posters up on the wall, and the student and Heather are standing there, both looking. So this is a typical studio format critique. And the professor, Heather is doing all the talking. And she points out in the poster, typically starts by identifying some tension or some conflict where visually, these two things are not going together on the poster. Like this thing here. This typeface doesn’t work with that typeface.

Keith Sawyer:
And the student. Students don’t see these things because they haven’t learned to see yet. So the first thing is the professor points it out, says, you know, there’s a visual tension here that’s not working. This typeface here has this issue with this typeface down here. And then she’ll turn to the student, say, see what I mean? See what I mean? Once she points it out, usually the student gets it. So then what Heather does, she doesn’t say, here’s what I think you should do to fix it. No professor ever does that. What she does is she looks at the work and she thinks through what might be going on.

Keith Sawyer:
So she’ll look at these two words and these two types. She’ll say, well, maybe what’s going on is that they’re too close together. Maybe if we move this one over here, maybe that would work. But what if we move this one down here? And what do you think would happen in that case? Or maybe what we should do, I don’t know, maybe what we should do is make this one a little more pink. I’m not sure, but maybe a little more pink would work. So there’s a lot of this tentative talk, a lot of hesitation, a lot of thinking out loud. Clearly, Heather is thinking out loud. She has not decided what the solution is to fixing this visual problem.

Keith Sawyer:
And that’s not the point. If she wanted to tell the student what to do, she would stand there quietly and study the poster for a few. For a minute. And then she’d say, okay, I figured it out. Here’s what you need to do. But professors don’t do that. What they do is they lead the student through a demonstration of their process of thinking. By using this tentative talk, they make it pretty clear that they’re thinking out loud.

Keith Sawyer:
And that’s why I call it, well, thinking out loud. And studio talk is talk where the professional artist, like Heather, professional communication designer, she is demonstrating to the student by talking out loud the way she thinks about her own work when she’s working in the studio. And it demonstrates to the student that, you know, even a successful professional is facing the same challenges and going through these same problems. Students don’t, you know, make mistakes because. Because their worst artist, even the most professional, successful artist, will make these mistakes. But then they can see what they’ve done, and they perceive those not really mistakes, but they perceive something unexpected as an opportunity. So, oh, this is interesting. Now I’ve done this thing where these two typefaces aren’t working together.

Keith Sawyer:
Why is that? Why aren’t they working together? And they’ll look at it and think about it, and, you know, what? What would I have to do to fix this? So what is the work? They’ll say things like, what does the work need? What is the work asking for? So they project agency into the painting or into the poster. They talk as if the artwork has its own desires and needs.

Cyndi Burnett:
And this just brings me back to an episode we did with Dr. Joe Bowler, who’s a professor of math at Stanford, because she talks about the same sort of process. But what I find fascinating is you’re talking about it in the artistic process, and she talked about it in terms of decoding math and really thinking out loud and sharing your. Your process of how you solve the problem. So, again, looking at that difference between, you know, math and math and the arts, there’s so many similarities. And what I loved about our conversation today, Keith, is how we were able to really hear about this process and looking at the process of creation, even if people don’t want to call it creativity, it is about new ideas and new thinking and how we can think through that to arrive at wherever we’re meant to arrive, I suppose. But you did. I just want to mention also.

Cyndi Burnett:
And our time is running out, but before we ask you our final question, you did drop a hint that you’re already on to writing the next book. So I would love to, Matt, and I would love to know what you’re working on next and what we can.

Keith Sawyer:
Stay tuned for this book, Learning to See is really. I wrote it for artists and designers, and I hope it’s going to reach these people that I’m telling their stories. It’s not an academic book. I don’t have citations. I don’t, you know, have parentheses with last name and date or whatever that you have in the academic works. Really, I’m just telling stories. And almost half of the book is quotations from what these professors tell me about how they generate their own work and how they teach students how to do it. And then I have a lot of images of assignments that professors will give to students.

Keith Sawyer:
So I see that as being a pretty focused. My book, Learning to See. But then while I’m talking to these people, I begin to realize that there’s a bigger lesson. What they’re really talking about is a kind of personal transformation. They are guiding students how to see and think in a different way. And that really is about becoming a different kind of person. When you learn to see yourself. I mentioned that the hardest thing is to see yourself, to understand you and what it is you’re doing.

Keith Sawyer:
How do you think in a different way about how to move forward in your life? So this is really what’s going on as a kind of personal transformation. And I thought, you know, there’s a book in this, which would be for everyone, which would be a book about personal development and personal transformation and how that process of growth really is a creative process. Big idea book. It’s a challenging book to write. I think it could have potential to help a lot of new people. Right now, I’m calling it the Creative Way, but that name is probably going to change. Last month it was another name. But I’m excited.

Keith Sawyer:
I find it very compelling what these professors tell me about personal development and personal transformation. And the messages are there for all of us, not just painters and designers.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, Keith, we are getting extremely close for time. So our final closing question is this. What was your most creative educational experience, either formal or informal, and why?

Keith Sawyer:
I’ve had a lot. I think I’ve had good educational experiences, but I’ll mention as a jazz pianist, I had an experience here in Chapel Hill. Up in Durham. There’s an organization called the Durham Jazz Workshop. And what they’ll do is they’re very experienced, professional jazz musicians, and they’ll put together ensembles, jazz groups of four or five musicians that are fairly talented already and have the technical skills to perform, but don’t have that experience interacting with other people in a musical ensemble. So this was a phenomenal experience where I’m together with other musicians as if we’re in a band on stage. But I’m not good enough yet to actually go be with a professional jazz band. So I’m together with other musicians who are like me, ready to go to the next level.

Keith Sawyer:
And then we have a coach who is a professional jazz performer, and the coach is guiding us in how to play better together. So nobody is getting lessons on how to play piano better, how to play a scale better. All of the lessons are listening. And how can you contribute to what’s going on in the ensemble? How can you listen better to what this other person is doing? How can you think about the group as a collective creating unit? That was an incredible experience. And I keep going back. It’s called the Durham Jazz Workshop. If there’s anything like that in your area. People who are listening.

Keith Sawyer:
Yeah, just getting together with other people and having that experience of going through collaborative creative process in jazz.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed Today’s episode with Dr. Keith Sawyer, share it with a friend or colleague who’s interested in teaching creativity. And check out his book, Learning to See, and his podcast, the Science of Creativity. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Extra Fuel newsletter and join our weekly discussions on LinkedIn. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

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

Cyndi Burnett:
This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew Worwood. Our podcast assistant is Ann Fernando and our editor is Sheikh Ah.