TED Community » Jess Pillmore

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Arts education, innovation, failing gloriously, developing community, and discovering the power of the individual inside a strong ensemble

An idea worth spreading

The arts are a necessity in progressive education allowing us to feel, tap into experiential learning, empathy, vulnerability, risk taking, and self observation.

Talk to me about

Creative solutions, Arts Education and Tapping into our Intuition

Comments

• TEDCred score: +2.30 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +4

  A comment on Talk: Amanda Palmer: The art of asking

  Mar 2 2013: The vulnerability to ask for help is quite powerful. I loved her point about the connection, the thank you, as being worthy work.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

  Oct 12 2012: "the absence of disease is not health." This was a wonderful talk. It shows how backwards our system is with the tools of happiness and humor to switch our gears. "Cultural ADHD" is a perfect phrase. We can change our ways of seeing and experiencing and Shawn showed that we don't have to take epic steps to make epic change.

• A comment on Conversation: Are there other presenters of the arts who find TED a complete inspiration?

  Oct 1 2012: TEDTalks have become a ritual in our company. We actively search out ones that interest us, in varying fields, and then share them with the other members. Then the community discussions online became an extension of that.
  
  I'm in the arts and have been inspired by the artists chosen for the talks. I have not 'discovered' an artist yet via TEDTalks that I had not already experienced. But what really intrigues me is what the artists chose to speak of about their art and process. The constraint of 20 minutes (or 3 in Derek Silvers' case) is wonderfully revealing.
  
  I am also inspired by those that use the arts to express complex materials - like John Bohannon & Balck Label Movement in the Dance Your PhD TEDxBrussels.
• +3

  A comment on Talk: John Bohannon: Dance vs. powerpoint, a modest proposal

  Oct 1 2012: This talk showed why Arts & Sciences are linked. We need the metaphor and humanity of the arts to work symbiotically with the theory and discovery of science. Without science, the arts lose their context, necessity and import. And without the arts, science loses its passion, heart and impact.
  
  This is absolutely stunning on many levels. And like some have commented earlier, it is more challenging to watch - some described it as distracting. I would like to applaud Bohannon & Black Label Movement for the challenge to active the brain and senses on many levels, to connect thinking with feeling. That is a powerful combination that can induce long-term learning, inspiration and change.
  
  As both an artist, educator and science enthusiast, I support the modest proposal. I think it is a potential answer to the standardization of the arts in schools, the feeling of its 'irrelevance' in our society and the need to spark us in the exponentially expanding fields of science.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: How can we build a better educational system?

  Aug 14 2012: The students' desires are key in long-term education. I feel it's a balance of education (to draw out that which is latent in someone) and training. Education is based in the moment, the unknown, because the teacher can't know for certain what is needed in the classroom until the student(s) initiate a need, a desire. It might be a subtle initiation, but it must come from the student for the information to stick.
  
  Training is based in the past "these are the steps, this is how it works and how it'll always work". Factual. Most schooling is really training, not education, unfortunately.
  
  But we, and I say we because I believe it's important to be life-long learners, need a mixture of both to explore the world and how we want to shape it. You can teach me how to cut vegetable with a knife (training) and I may or may not really remember it, even after drilling and testing, unless I originally came to you with the desire or curiosity about cooking. Then the knife skill is needed... wanted. It supports my exploration in to my curiosity about cooking.
  
  School can and should be like that. Math is important... to those that want to use it. The arts are important... to those that want to use it.
  
  There are universal skills that can be taught and/or supported to help us all recognize our interests: empathy, vulnerability, failing gloriously, ownership, awareness, self-observation, group dynamics, collective leadership, intention, commitment and play. The last skill, play, is vitally important. It's the work of children, how they original explore the world and they're place in it. So, it doesn't need to be taught, it needs to be supported and extended into every day activities. Play is curiosity. Play is creativity. Play is the key to joyful learning, which has no end-date.
  
  I'm excited to hear your passion to start a new school. Do it! Clear intentions addressing a solid need... we need more of that. Do it now. :)

• A comment on Conversation: If you had a legacy, what would it be?

  Aug 14 2012: My legacy, my passion is to show myself and the world the power of becoming creatively independent.
  
  I believe we are all highly capable of overcoming that which holds us all back - fear. That is the independence worth striving for because we can only truly change ourselves. And the change we make from within becomes contagious.
  
  How we keep our independence is where the creativity comes in - flexibility, joy, vulnerability, failing gloriously, self-observation, intention, commitment and ownership.
  
  I feel education, the act of drawing out that which is latent in someone, is the creative act of independence. And as a teaching artist and creative consultant, my hope is that I can do that for myself and thus for others.
  
  Thank you for opening this discussion. What a wonderful question for us all to think about.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Working children: should we prohibit, permit or promote it.

  Jul 12 2012: Thank you, Said and Debra. This is one of my first conversations at TED. Thank you for such an interesting proposal and supportive responses.
• +5

  A comment on Conversation: Working children: should we prohibit, permit or promote it.

  Jul 9 2012: I think children should be free to work if they want to.
  
  But the roadblock here is, in this day and age, children are not looked at a full citizens capable of paving their own paths.
  
  Many, if not most, children are dependent on their guardians to have their best interests in mind. And for many guardians, what the child wants is not what the guardian feels is in the child's best interest... and the guardians are speaking from their own interests.
  
  I think strengthening and redefining children's rights is a necessity and deeply intertwined with your question... because currently, the majority of the world values consumerism above all else. So, if children and adolescents can't work for themselves then they are seen as less than in society.
  
  I was lucky to have parents that asked, and asked often, what I wanted as a child and were helpful when I started working in my early teens. I worked as a choreographer and teaching assistant. Jobs that fully informed who I am today, how I learn and how I now advocate for my son.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: What can we do and what do we do about bullying?

  Jul 9 2012: I'm curious if bullying could be seen as an extension of modeling behavior through play, like pre-schoolers playing house, or your video game.
  
  If we know that play is the work of children, how they learn about the world around them, then is it possible to extend this type of learning into teens?
  
  Could bullying be a dramatic (meaning played with higher stakes and more drastic consequences) way for young adults to try and understand how it looks like adults verbally and emotionally, sometimes physically, treat each other? Maybe this is why bullies have a tendency to not think or care about the after-effect of their actions, if in a way it's all a game.
  
  Bully tend to pick on those that don't blend in; those that are vulnerable; those that are 'other' than the bullying group, like LatinLupe752. I believe that exercising and teaching/showing empathy and more truth telling about vulnerability and failure leading to individuality and strength could help rectify bullying in young adults and adults.
  
  This needs to happen through skills: about listening, being vulnerable, speaking for yourself, community/ensemble, action and reaction, metaphor, empathy, articulating fears and emotions, buoyancy and breathing (a highly underrated tool that many don't do well - breathing deep, controlled breathing for specific emotional, mental and physical responses).
  
  Children don't come to this world hating. They have to learn it. And I believe we all learn from what we experience and observe more than what we are told.
• +4

  A comment on Talk: Usman Riaz and Preston Reed: A young guitarist meets his hero

  Jul 9 2012: Just shows the power of the free exchange of information... to put one's art form out there to be learn, interpreted and then shaped into the newness of the next generation.
  
  The internet has become the modern equivalent of the traditional handing down of an art form from teacher to student... but now the student actively finds the teacher... and wildly enough, the teacher may never know they're someone's teacher!
  
  This was a beautiful example of that and the high-wire jam at the end - a perfectly flawed and vibrant meeting of the minds.