Archives for November 2013

Imagine living in the South Pacific, but rather than soaking up the sun and sipping tropical drinks, you spend your time studying the culture and how it fosters creativity and innovation. That’s exactly how Katherine Giuffre prefers to spend her time. A sociology professor at Colorado College, Katherine analyzes social networks to gain a deeper understanding of social life and the relationships that build communities.

Katherine’s studies have taken her to the far corners of the earth. We recently caught up with her to ask about her research pursuits and how her findings translate to success in the business world. She’ll also give a talk on November 16^th at TEDxMileHigh—a not-to-miss event.

Tell us a little about your background.
Well, I grew up in Arkansas and then went to Harvard. After college, I spent some time traveling in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific before going to graduate school to get my Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’ve been at Colorado College for 17 years now in the Sociology Department, where I am Chair.

Arkansas – Harvard – S.E. Asia – Chapel Hill. Quite an interesting path! So what sparked in you an academic interest in creativity and creative networks?
Between getting my Master’s degree and my Ph.D., I spent 18 months on the staff of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where I was also taking classes. One of the things that I noticed there was that there seemed to me to be no correlation between “talent” and “success” in the art world. So I started thinking about other things that might be driving success — like social networks — and when I went back to graduate school to complete my Ph.D., I did research for my dissertation on how people become successful in the art world. That work looked at particular types of career success — getting reviewed in art journals and getting collected in museums. But, of course, there are other ways to be successful, too — such as being creative. So I’ve spent the past two decades looking at a variety of ways in which social networks work in the fields of creativity (artistic and otherwise) and innovation.

You’ve done work in the South Pacific, specifically with various Polynesian societies. Could you describe your work there in a bit more detail?
I do my research on the island of Rarotonga, which is the main island of the Cook Islands in Central Polynesia. It’s a former British colony that is now an independent nation and is in the same location south of the equator that Hawaii is north of the equator, so a very similar climate and culture, but much, much smaller and more remote. But it has an amazing art scene and I was really intrigued to go there and see why that place at that time was having this explosion of artistic creativity. And it fit with a long-standing interest I’ve had in Polynesian society — going back to when I was a sixth grader and first read Margaret Mead’s work on Samoa, actually.

Are there any other regions of the world that you are interested in studying at a more in depth level?
I’ve lived for a year in Italy and a year and a half in Switzerland, which were both very interesting in that they had completely different ways of organizing their societies around issues of innovation and breaking with traditions, but for me, the most interesting countries are the ones in Asia and the Pacific. Sociologically speaking, there is so much going on with regard to creativity and innovation. But I don’t feel like I’m in any way finished with the South Pacific, yet. Polynesian culture is so rich. And it certainly is no hardship to have to live on a beautiful tropical island to do my research. Somerset Maugham said that if you ever go to the South Pacific, you shouldn’t leave — because if you leave, you will spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to get back. He was right!

What can we do to help foster creativity on all levels of society? Are we doing enough to drive creative education?
Boy, we are certainly not doing enough currently in the United States. We are going absolutely in the wrong direction, in fact — especially with an educational system that focuses more and more on standardized testing. We are trying our best as a society to squash all creativity and innovation out of our children and once it is squashed, it will be very difficult to get it back. So the first thing we have to do is dump the emphasis on standardized testing and on children being exactly the same, and replace it with a model that values children as individual thinkers. Tragically, this model of standardization invades our workplaces, too.

Who is, in your opinion, the most creative person you know?
I know too many to pick just one!

What do you personally do to get the creative juices flowing?
I was talking to Keith Sawyer, who is a psychologist who studies creativity, and he told me that psychologists often talk about the “Three B’s” — bath, bed, and bus. Those are three places where people often report getting their best ideas. I laughed, because it’s the bath for me! When I’m stuck for an idea, I take a nice hot bath and it works like magic.

Fill in the blank. If I wasn’t a professor at CC, I’d be….
A midwife in Polynesia.

What’s something very few people know about you?
I completely do not believe in ghosts, BUT — when we lived on Rarotonga, our house was haunted and we had several encounters with the ghosts of the ancestors of the woman whose house we lived in. All very friendly, I’m happy to say.

Stringing together sentences that make a statement—a statement that moves people to take action—comes effortlessly to Ashlynn Damers. Referred to by some as a poetry genius, Ashlynn is a member of the internationally top-ranked slam poetry team. She’s all about making an impact, particularly when it comes to women’s issues and social equality.

Ashlynn’s performances are amazingly poetic, so we suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that her answers to our burning questions (below) are too. She will again have her way with words on November 16^th when she shares the stage at TEDxMileHigh.

You’re from Denver, right? Tell us a bit about why you live here.
I love living here, it is the best place to live in my opinion. You’ve got the city, with the mountains and a small-town feel because everyone knows someone in Colorado.

How did you initially get involved with slam poetry?
This story is actually really funny. My mom brought me to the Mercury Café on Valentine’s Day in 2010. After kicking and screaming, telling her I would much rather be out with my significant other than with my mom on Valentine’s Day, I fell in love with the style and the beauty of the poetry that night. From that day on poetry has been my life. The following month on a youth slam night I went and slammed for my first time ever and qualified for the competition that decides our team for the international competition. Even though I finished dead last in that competition, I’ve never stopped writing and performing.

In your opinion, who’s the best slam poet in the world?
There is never a best poet, no matter how many titles you have won. The point is never the points, but the ideology. The best poet is the one who never stops growing, evolving, and pushing themselves to new limits in their writing.

Outside of poetry, who influences you?
The world influences me. It is constantly changing and there are always new issues that arise. Whenever you let yourself become stagnant, and you stop having things to say about current events and issues, is the day you stop being a poet and become just another uninformed citizen.

You’ve written that you eventually want to be involved in working towards social equality. What does this look like to you?
Social equality is something that is attainable, but not everyone can look beyond their own biases to achieve. Equality means that there is no separator, whether it be race, gender, color, sexual orientation or preference. Equality means that we are only one thing… human.

What makes a great performance poet?
A great performance poet is one who can connect with every single person in the audience, whether it be with their words, their body language, or their tone. Like I’ve said it’s not about the points, but the ideology. Everyone has a story, and most people don’t have the courage, or the opportunity, to share theirs. It is our job as poets to make sure that we carry the weight of those people too.

If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Performing anywhere is an honor. If I had to choose one place, though, it would be the Sydney Opera House.

What are you most excited about? Like, right. now?
Right now I’m looking forward to hopefully making this year’s team to go compete internationally. It is one of the best experiences you could ever have. Being completely submerged in nothing but poetry and thousands of poets for usually five days, there is nothing better.

What does the future hold for Ashlynn Damers?
The future for me I hope is very bright. Public speaking is my life, it is what I hope to do for the  rest of my life. I live by one quote: ” if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. “

Stringing together sentences that make a statement—a statement that moves people to take action—comes effortlessly to Ashlynn Damers. Referred to by some as a poetry genius, Ashlynn is a member of the internationally top-ranked slam poetry team. She’s all about making an impact, particularly when it comes to women’s issues and social equality.

Ashlynn’s performances are amazingly poetic, so we suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that her answers to our burning questions (below) are too. She will again have her way with words on November 16^th when she shares the stage at TEDxMileHigh.

You’re from Denver, right? Tell us a bit about why you live here.
I love living here, it is the best place to live in my opinion. You’ve got the city, with the mountains and a small-town feel because everyone knows someone in Colorado.

How did you initially get involved with slam poetry?
This story is actually really funny. My mom brought me to the Mercury Café on Valentine’s Day in 2010. After kicking and screaming, telling her I would much rather be out with my significant other than with my mom on Valentine’s Day, I fell in love with the style and the beauty of the poetry that night. From that day on poetry has been my life. The following month on a youth slam night I went and slammed for my first time ever and qualified for the competition that decides our team for the international competition. Even though I finished dead last in that competition, I’ve never stopped writing and performing.

In your opinion, who’s the best slam poet in the world?
There is never a best poet, no matter how many titles you have won. The point is never the points, but the ideology. The best poet is the one who never stops growing, evolving, and pushing themselves to new limits in their writing.

Outside of poetry, who influences you?
The world influences me. It is constantly changing and there are always new issues that arise. Whenever you let yourself become stagnant, and you stop having things to say about current events and issues, is the day you stop being a poet and become just another uninformed citizen.

You’ve written that you eventually want to be involved in working towards social equality. What does this look like to you?
Social equality is something that is attainable, but not everyone can look beyond their own biases to achieve. Equality means that there is no separator, whether it be race, gender, color, sexual orientation or preference. Equality means that we are only one thing… human.

What makes a great performance poet?
A great performance poet is one who can connect with every single person in the audience, whether it be with their words, their body language, or their tone. Like I’ve said it’s not about the points, but the ideology. Everyone has a story, and most people don’t have the courage, or the opportunity, to share theirs. It is our job as poets to make sure that we carry the weight of those people too.

If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Performing anywhere is an honor. If I had to choose one place, though, it would be the Sydney Opera House.

What are you most excited about? Like, right. now?
Right now I’m looking forward to hopefully making this year’s team to go compete internationally. It is one of the best experiences you could ever have. Being completely submerged in nothing but poetry and thousands of poets for usually five days, there is nothing better.

What does the future hold for Ashlynn Damers?
The future for me I hope is very bright. Public speaking is my life, it is what I hope to do for the  rest of my life. I live by one quote: ” if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. “