CCTNetwork27Feb09

CCT Community Open House
=Our Lives and Other Worlds III: Reflections on Music from Graduates of the Critical & Creative Thinking Program=

Friday, February 27, 6:30-9pm, Wheatley 4-148 (at very end of corridor)

Please join us as we hear presentations from alums who have focused on music in their work.

6:00-6:30: Welcome and socializing, with refreshments 6:30-7:10: Suzanne Clark, presentation (without embedded video & audio) 7:15-7:55: Kathleen Walsh Wooten, presentation 8:00-8:45: whole-group discussion, with introduction and reflection by Ben Schwendener, and wider dialogue about the relationships of creativity, thinking, teaching, music, and the CCT program.

> Suzanne Clark

> //Suzanne, a 2002 CCT graduate, teaches at the Berklee College of Music and also has been the instructor for the CCT online version of the course Seminar in Creativity (CCT 612) for the past few years. Her presentation will include background of how the CCT program in combination with interest in music has developed her thinking about teaching. Further, she will discuss how this development has influenced her approaches to various courses at Berklee, ranging from topics of "Qigong for Musicians" to "The Music of the Beatles". Suzanne will present some audio-visual examples of her work as well.//

> Kathleen Walsh Wooten

> //Kathleen, a 2004 CCT graduate, is an elementary school instrumental music teacher at Wampatuck Elementary School in Scituate, MA. She has been recently working on a project to develop an educational unit on how composers write music for children which culminated with a performance by the band on this past Wednesday, February 25th. Kathleen will be speaking about her work with this and other projects and will present some pieces of the related performances as well as discuss how her CCT experience has inspired her to explore further areas of music education involving the promotion and organization of her projects in addition to teaching.//

> Ben Schwendener

> //Ben is a performer and composer active for several years in the Boston music scene in addition to being an educator of creative thinking and music, and is the founder and Artistic Director of Gravity Arts, an arts education non-profit organization. He has taught the CCT course Creativity and Criticism in Literature and Art (CCT 630) with a focus on the relationships between creativity and imagination as one develops creatively and teaches others to do so.//

Prospectus for the event
Each presenter will have 30-40 minutes to discuss their work and ask us to listen to/view work from recent projects and then reflect on how this has developed in relation to their CCT experiences. This will be followed by a whole-group discussion assisted by our commentators drawn from the wider CCT community and/or the UMB faculty. The event will be audio-taped and available (after cleanup, and with presenters' permission) as a podcast linked to the CCT wiki and social network site.

The event is part of the CCT Network's effort to acquaint alums who have overlapping interests with each other and thereby provide a model for current students of a wider and more sustained network of support for their endeavors during and after their studies. After all, the CCT faculty can remember students from various years, but these graduates may never have met --and they form a network of contacts, inspiration, and expertise far more extensive than the faculty can provide.

//Audio recording can be listened to at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/16894. If you use the download option instead of the listen option you'll be able to fastforward when you want. Use of headphones to listen is recommended, especially during the first talk, which was given by speakerphone and is quite crackly. View the accompanying visuals by clicking on the links above, where available.//