A lot of people have asked about my recent audition for TEDxChilliwack, a TED-sanctioned speaking seminar being held in Chilliwack, BC. This year’s theme is “Future Shapers: The Minds of the Next Generation.” My talk is about fostering imagination and creativity in young people, and my audition focused on the systemic deprioritization of creativity and imagination in North America.
As we prepare for the official TEDxChilliwack event (at which I will be speaking), I thought I would share my four-minute audition with you. So, without further delay, here it is.
Deprioritization of Creativity and Imagination
Good evening, everyone. My name is Kyle Wierks. I am talking to you tonight about something that is very important to me: fostering imagination in young people.
Fostering imagination and creativity is a hugely important topic, and one that is very important to me, especially as it concerns the shaping of the minds of future generations.
Not only am I a millennial, but I also run my own leadership blog called “Great North Dynamics,” and I have self-published three works of fiction over the last 18 months. In my day job, I work for a local public figure, but I have also spent the last eight years volunteering in a youth mentorship program working with teenagers and young adults.
There are many ways to measure the priority given to imagination and creativity, but one factor that I want to highlight tonight is public spending on the arts. The National Endowment for the Arts is an American government organization that funds arts programs. In 1980, the National Endowment had a budget of just over $154 million. In 2017 dollars, that’s almost half a billion dollars. The Endowment’s budget for 2017 is less than $150 million. That is a 70% decrease over 37 years.
There is much more to imagination and creativity than public spending on the arts, but this is a crucial indicator in the habitual deprioritization of imagination and creativity over the last 30+ years. This is a huge problem. Why? Because at the same time that the US has been deprioritizing imagination, the American business environment has been deteriorating.
Since 1980, the National Endowment for the Arts has seen its funding levels drop by 70%. Over that same period of time, according the US Census Bureau, the number of new businesses started in the USA has dropped by 50%. Even more troubling is that 86% of all new businesses started in the USA today are started by people aged 36 and up.
I do not think that it is a coincidence that while America has deprioritized creativity as a society, fewer businesses are being started and fewer millennials – MY GENERATION – are becoming entrepreneurs.
I want to shape the minds of our future generation to be thought leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, community leaders. And I firmly believe that the way to do that is to foster imagination in them at a young age. This is what I hope to bring to TEDxChilliwack. Thank you.
