Imagination First
by Scott Noppe-Brandon and Eric Liu

The best companies know that innovative thinking is the only competitive advantage that cannot be outsourced. The best schools are those with deep cultures of creative problem-solving. But both innovation and creativity depend on imagination first: the ability to conceive of what is not. Fortunately, it's something we can cultivate—with practice.

Imagination First shows us how. At the heart of it is a set of universal practices for opening minds at work, home, and play. This enhanced paperback edition offers bonus content including three winning "practices" submitted by the public, guidelines for educators who want to cultivate creativity in their classrooms, and an expanded resource section.

With stories drawn from the lives of leaders, teachers, scientists, artists, and other professionals, Imagination First is an essential guide for practitioners of possibility at any scale and in any sector. Playful, provocative, useful and inspirational, this book transforms the way we see—so that we can change the way we live.

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Variations on a Blue Guitar
by Maxine Greene

A collection of lectures that Maxine Greene gave at Lincoln Center Institute, in the course of her first twenty-five years as the Institute’s Philosopher-in-Residence. The lectures, focused on arts in education, deal with the definition and purpose of aesthetic education; the transformative power of imagination; standards and cultural diversity; and more. The lectures read like introspective essays and represent, in Dr. Greene’s words, a journey “of self-discovery and continuing efforts to move a diversity of teachers to discover new dimensions of themselves.” That journey, beginning in the 1980s, is clearly evidenced as Ms. Greene reflects on current events and, over the years, builds her own language the better to convey her ideas. While philosophical in tone, the essays remain grounded in the concrete needs of education and offer ideas that have found their application in the classroom.

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Community in the Making
edited by Lincoln Center Institute

Community in the Making is a compendium of essays by teaching artists, professors and deans, a museum arts advisor, and other professionals affiliated with Lincoln Center Institute. Writers talk about LCI’s impact on their institutions’ practice, and in the sphere of education in general. The essays range from a description of an LCI-guided lesson to personal musings on the state of education past and present, to strong positions on education (and the need for the arts therein), to stories of professional development workshops in which some participants start as skeptics and end up as partisans of LCI’s methodology.

The book acts as a multi-perspective testimony of LCI’s value as a provider of innovative ideas for arts-in-education pedagogy.

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Lending the Work Your Life (DVD)

For years, the words of Maxine Greene have brought inspiration to educators, philosophers, and artists. Lincoln Center Institute presents four of Dr. Greene’s lectures in Lending the Work Your Life, a DVD released exclusively through LCI. The lectures span 1994 to 1998 and represent a range of themes that are central to Dr. Greene’s work. These include the centrality of the imagination in education, the importance of experiential encounters with works of art to open new possibilities, and the importance of the arts in valuing cultural diversity. The endlessly energetic philosopher presents her ideas as indispensable elements of a world that might be transformed by creativity and compassion.

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