Learning to write

I wrote a year or so ago (22 November 2012) about the dedication of the great Bohemian violin pedagogue, Otakar Ševčík, to teaching not so much how to play, but  how to practise.

I see that the recently departed novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard extends the same point in her memoir, Slipstream. In it she credited her piano teacher at the Royal Academy of Music, Harold Craxton, in the same way, adding that he taught “… how to learn; how to take the trouble and go on taking it; and above all how to listen to what I was doing.”

And she continued: “Although I never emerged as a serious pianist, his lessons have been useful to me in learning to write.”

Ševčík would have been proud of her.

Creativity and teamwork at Bletchley Park

For years I’ve been meaning to visit the British code-breaking centre from the Second World War, Bletchley Park, finally making it there this last long weekend.

Just so interesting, even exciting, to learn about the extraordinary achievements of creative thinking and teamwork. And the consequences for achieving sustained success – the shortening of the war, perhaps by years, and the saving of innumerable lives.

I had not realised how extensive it was, nor how much of it still exists. Nearly 10,000 people worked there at its peak, just a few of them still celebrated, Alan Turing the most.

It had me thinking about whether the German military machine enjoyed similar successes.

The Germans certainly poured similar resources into code-breaking, but with significantly less success. Why was that? My understanding is that while the British had one centre dedicated to all the services, the Germans had something like a dozen separate departments working in secrecy and isolation from each other. So there was very limited opportunity for one branch to benefit from the breakthroughs of another.

They did, of course, have successes. The most significant of these was that, in the early part of the war, their Naval code-breaking team were able to know the positions of all British ships – naval and merchant. 

I believe there are learnings here for R&D functions everywhere?

Get started then start learning

Last week I did a sort of lecture at City University London for the students on their Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership degree course. I was founding director there of the Centre for Creativity – and the MICL (as in “Taking the MICL”) was and is the best fruit from that time.

In reality the “lecture” took the form of a conversation between Marshall Marcus and myself (and the students), and Marshall talked about El Sistema, the project in Venezuela where kids from all backgrounds get involved in playing music in orchestras.

In Venezuela there are now 400,000 children participating, and there are El Sistema-style projects flowering around the world.

“Usually, kids who start to play instruments first spend several years learning before they think about joining an orchestra,” said Marshall. “But in El Sistema they join an orchestra at the beginning and, through that involvement, start the journey of learning how to play.”

How many other areas could that thinking be applied to?

Book-learning

“I learned it from a book,” announces Manuel, hidden behind the moose’s head that is for some reason on the reception desk at Fawlty Towers.

“Did you? Did you really?” responds the Major, impressed.

I read books all the time, but most of the really useful stuff that I’ve learned in life simply cannot be learned from them.

How to be creative, for example, as and when it’s needed.

Unlearning

My colleague from City University, Kristine Karlson/Pitt, has written recently about the need to unlearn some things, making room for the new.

And, when I was looking for the right place to do my doctorate studies, a distinguished professor suggested that I would have to unlearn everything I knew about the subject. Since I had been studying it for several decades, this sounded pretty daunting to me – and not a bit enticing.

The question is: how do we unlearn things? Is it possible?

Certainly the human brain does not have a delete function in the way that computers do. Of course, we seem very able to delete data efficiently with the onset of dementia, but in that situation the learn function seems to be impaired equally.

So presumably what we do in reality is overlay old learning with new learning. The problem being that the old stuff can be hooked in there more tenaciously.

Getting to grips with Art

Walking through the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris (with its fabulous collection of Monets (above), Renoirs, Cézannes, Matisses, Derains, Picassos etc) together with a friend some years ago, I was astonished when he completed his inspection in less than five minutes. “Oh, yes,” he announced. “Seen 'em all.”

Recent research confirms that visitors to art museums spend just a few seconds looking at each painting. Most people then take considerably longer reading the information labels. Not my friend.

I wonder why it is that people really don’t take the time to look at the works of art themselves.

The process that I use started when I began to teach myself something about art history some four decades ago. I was working at the time at Saatchi & Saatchi in Charlotte Street and could interrupt my twenty minute walk back to Charing Cross Station (on my way home) by dropping into the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. This I did most working days.

Each visit I would look at just three paintings: the one I had studied yesterday, the one which was to be the main focus for today, and the one that I would turn to tomorrow. So, over time, each painting presented three substantial opportunities for me to look (and to think) – about composition, colour, light, brushwork, subject, idea, intention, context and so on.

It gave me the possibility of beginning to understand, accompanied (it goes without saying) by one of the finest collections of Western art in the world. And it was the start of a lifetime of looking at paintings.

Not sure one can achieve that with just a glance.