How can an understanding of the creative process benefit not only our time in graduate school but also the work we produce?

This episode features Ed Sarath, professor of music in the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation and founder and co-director of the Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies. Listen in and explore how the problems of our time can be seen as problems of creativity. We also discuss how a disconnect from consciousness harms our mental health and how expanding our understanding of where we can be creative can allow us to tap into our fullest potential.

Resources

• Sara Ramshaw — Improvisation and Law
• Karl Weick — Improvisation and Firefighting
• Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies
• Ann Arbor Meditation Centers
• Institute of Noetic Sciences
• California Institute of Integral Studies
• Maharishi International University
• California Institute for Human Science
• Society of Consciousness Studies
• Creative Process Strategies – Michigan School of Art and Design

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Guest Bio

Ed Sarath is a composer, performer (flugelhornist), author/scholar, and change visionary whose work traverses wide-ranging areas within and beyond music. His compositions for large and small ensembles have been performed worldwide and interweave diverse genres and approaches to the improvisation/composition interface. His books include Music Theory Through Improvisation (Routledge, 2010), Black Music Matters (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), Music Studies and Its Moment of Truth: Leading Change Through America’s Black Music Roots (Routledge, 2023), and Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness (SUNY Albany, 2012) – the first book to apply principles of an emergent, consciousness-based worldview called Integral Theory to music theory.