Speech for the Festival of Vision Berlin-Hong Kong
Dr Patrick Ho, Chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council
Date: November 04, 2000
Time: 11:20 a.m. - 11:40 a.m.
Venue: Former Urban Council Conference Chamber (building next to the City Hall)

Creativity and Humanity in Education

Dear friends,

I have been to this place for some time, but the title of the festival "Berlin in Hong Kong" still puzzles me. Twenty years ago, I think few will believe that the divided Berlin will be one and Hong Kong will re-unify with Mainland China, in so short a time. And right now, people from the two autonomous cities meet together to share some visions. Berlin and Hong Kong, though oceans away, has a shared fate to some extent: both of our recent history were marked by the Second World War and had been the focal point of the post-war East-West confrontation. The fact that we can come together in a friendly conversation is because of two things: one is peace, the other is imagination. It is peace and passion that brings the two Berlins together; it is imagination that Hong Kong re-unified with the Mainland in "one country, two systems." It is both peace and imagination that brings us together. And in this juncture I want to speak on creativity and humanity in our future education.

The Knowledge-Based Economy

You may wonder why, ladies and gentlemen, as the chairman of an arts council, I speak like a historian, and in a quite "non-professional" manner. Well, my friends, we have to think big, not in terms of money but also in terms of humanity. Ich bin kein Berliner (I am not a Berliner), but I think both Berliners or non-Berliners, Hongkongers or non-Hongkongers face the same global issues of today. And an open and creative mind is vital for our survival. We are facing a society with longer life expectancy but ageing population; ever-expanding world trade but ecological crisis and limited growth in the economy for wealth sharing.

In the knowledge-based economy, value innovation will very much depend on the creativity of the talented population. And besides, even more creativity is needed for governments and the civil society to deal with the problems of a knowledge-based economy in order to maintain a harmonious and humanistic society. We need creativity on the one hand and humanity on the other.

Education and the Arts

It is never complete to talk about education as a means to sustain economic growth or to talk about the arts as a means to support creative industries. Though the arts sector can fit well into this argument and may gain some more public money, it's not the only thing we should pursue. We have to think bigger. There are things bigger than money and there are things bigger than the arts.

Education is to past our values to our youth and to prepare our next generation to meet future challenges. And above all, to enable our youth to deal with life creatively so that they can realize their own potentials by themselves. A good education is an education that enables one to create and imagine. When individuals finds their creative strengths, it can have an enormous impact on self-esteem and on overall achievement. Creativity is not just letting the mind go astray. The creative processes can be seen with four characteristics. First they always involve thinking or behaving imaginatively. Second, overall this imaginative activity is purposeful; that is it is directed to achieving an objective. Third, these processes must generate something original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value in relation to the objective. We may therefore define creativity as:

Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value.¹

Serious creative achievement relies on knowledge, self-discipline, control of materials and command of ideas. You can see this in creative people like Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin.

Creativity for All

We judge our achievement by the things we create, be it a warm family, a well-done project, a painting or a hearty exchange of ideas between close friends. The arts are not the only media for creativity but it is in the arts that humans' creativity can easily be accommodated and displayed. To bring the joy of the arts to the people we need more than arts education as a discipline in the school. We need to advocate the spirit of the arts to the education, to the workplace and in our daily life. To make a convenient start, I think we should advocate "Creativity Education", that is, allow our kids to learn about creativity and experience the joy and satisfaction of being creative in their school life. We need to devise an overall, global strategy in creativity education: starting from a school environment conducive to the students' creativities, to the teaching of knowledge and skills, to the self-control in the process of creating, and to ability to evaluate of the end-product of creation. This is only a mind-plan. The details have to be worked out by us in Hong Kong.

Through creativity education, we may not just yield a lot of artists, but a lot of da Vincis and Benjamin Franklins, big and small ones. If we look back on our life in terms of our creative experience, I think most people should feel that all humans are equal: we are all able to create and we all made our achievements according to our ability and efforts. Being able to imagine and create and appreciate others' creation is actually what attribute to human beings: creatures capable of creating. As the Book of Changes of China says, "To be re-born and re-born" ². In the West, we call this the idea of Renaissance. So the East and the West are not really far away.

To end, let me quote the old Confucian text on the ideal of education:

The ideal of Great Learning lies in the enlightenment of one's virtues, in bringing innovation to the people, and in knowing how to stay with the best form.³ From it, we may realize that people in the past and people now pursue actually the same thing in education, which is creativity.

Thank you.

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1) Definition taken from All our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. Report to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment and the Seretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. London. 1999 P.29.

2) Original Chinese phrase: "生生不已"

3) Free translation from the original Chinese phrase: "大學之道，在明明德，在新民，在止於至善。《大學章句》"