Dr Howard Gardner, a world leading authoritative scholar in the fields of intelligence, creativity and human potential, gave a lecture on creativity and arts to some 300 people from academic, arts and business sectors at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 27 January 2002. The event was organised by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

In his presentation, Dr Gardner outlined a cognitive approach to arts and creativity; analysed the similarities and differences between arts and sciences; and illustrated how creativity involves the mind of the creator and the audience, giving audiences a new perspective and understanding of the relationship of arts and creativity. Dr Gardner also pointed out an example of students having drawing lesson that he saw in his visit to China in 80s. He found that teachers in China put much emphasis on the fundamental techniques in drawing rather than giving opportunities for students to develop creativity. However, he found that the students were able to draw a nice picture of a new thing even they not saw it before with their learned drawing skills. Therefore, Dr Gardner believes that skills and creativity are equally important in teaching.

During the talk, audiences were also given an opportunity to raise questions to the renowned scholar directly. A book autograph session was held after the lecture, further allowing the audiences to have a closer contact with the leading scholar. Dr Gardner's publications were also available at the venue for sale.

Besides the some 300 audiences, also attending the lecture were Dr Patrick Ho, ADC's Chairman; Mr Darwin Chen, ADC's Vice Chairman; Mrs Fanny Law, Secretary for Education and Manpower; Mr Matthew Cheung, Director of Education; Mr Irving Koo, Ms Ada Wong and Ms Lo Kai-yin, Members of Culture and Heritage Commission.

Introduction of Dr Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner, world-renowned authority on intelligence, creativity and human potential, is Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, and Chairman of the Steering Committee of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also Adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Boston University's School of Medicine.

A prolific author, Dr. Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, first published in the work Frames of Mind in 1983. This theory, which challenges the widely held notion that intelligence is a single general capacity that can be assessed through I.Q. testing, posits the existence of nine different types of intelligence including linguistic, musical and spatial intelligences. Hailed by educators around the world since its establishment almost twenty years ago, the theory of multiple intelligences has been applied in hundreds of classrooms and school districts, including some in Hong Kong.

Dr. Gardner's research on multiple intelligences eventually led him to study creators and leaders in different realms. In 1993, he published the work Creating Minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham and Gandhi. This study was followed in 1995 by Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership which presents portraits of a wide range of leaders including Martin Luther King, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John XXIII.

Howard Gardner has long been a champion of arts education who sees the arts as an effective way of nurturing creative thinking in other disciplines. Earlier publications in this area include The Arts and Human Development (1973), Artful Scribbles (1980) and Art, Mind and Brain (1982). From 1982 to 1985, he supervised a research project which compared the fields of arts education in China and the U.S. and which he writes about in his 1989 work To Open Minds: Chinese Clues to the Dilemma of Contemporary Education.

Dr. Gardner's most recent publication, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, co-authored with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, reveals how professionals, in relentlessly market-driven times, can succeed in carrying out work that is both expert and socially responsible.

In 1981 he was awarded a MacArthur Prize and in 1990 became the first American to receive the Louisville Grawmeyer Award in Education. A father of four children, Dr. Gardner lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife Ellen Winner who is an authority on gifted children.