The Global Institute for the Arts and Leadership (TGIAL), a Non-profit 501c3 Organization, Published First Book This Spring—Can Art Save Us? by Fred Mandell, Ph.D.
Boston, MA (PRWEB) April 09, 2015 -- According to Nancy J. Adler, PhD., Professor of Management at McGill University, “With his unique fusion of executive experience, artistic creativity, and profound humanity, Mandell…challenges us to believe in the power of art and art-making to transform the maker, the viewer and the broader community.”
Mandell’s book, Can Art Save Us? serves as part of a larger effort by TGIAL to raise awareness of the impact the arts and the art making process can have on solving large social problems.
In a recent conversation Mandell tells how he often hears the question: What age are we in? The answers run all over the place. The Post Industrial Age? The Information Age? The Digital Age? The Creative Age?
As CEO of TGIAL, Mandell has been asking business and civic leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, artists from around the world this very question. His conclusion? “The truth is we are in the Age of Change.”
This new age is also fraught with myriad challenges that range from political upheaval, climate change, poverty, disease pandemics, on and on. One thing is clear: this new age of change calls for fresh approaches, a new set of eyes and new modes of thinking.
In response to this need, Mandell and a group of other leaders, educators, scientists and artists have recently launched The Global Institute for the Arts and Leadership (TGIAL).
What makes TGIAL unusual is that it promotes the power of the art making process and artists as keys to the very new kind of thinking we need to deal with our current conditions.
For one thing, artists are Thomas Edison with a paint brush or violin. Artists are good at taking things apart and putting them together in really unusual ways. Artists know how to tap into our imaginations and continuously reinvent new models. At a time when unconventional solutions are necessary the creative process as practiced by artists is what the world needs.
Mandell is excited about the worldwide network of diverse professionals who are affiliating with TGIAL. Mandell, who teaches a program entitled “The Leader as Artist” at MIT Sloan of Management, suggests that it is important to recognize that the old ways of thinking are no longer adequate to solving contemporary problems. “It’s like trying to fix a computer with a flint stone. A clear mismatch between tool and problem. Art has been around for a few millennia,” Mandell noted. “It’s time to take the art making process out of the studio and into the street and board room. That’s why we created The Global Institute for the Arts and Leadership and that’s why I wrote Can Art Save Us?”
To learn more about The Global Institute for the Arts and Leadership, please visit ArtsChangeLeadership.com to discover its unusual initiatives. To order or learn more about Can Art Save Us? go to: Amazon.com.
Kristin Chester, Creative Development Agency, +1 (917) 355-2225, [email protected]
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