The Wonder Wall: Leading Creative Schools and Organizations in an Age of Complexity

by Peter Gamwell, Jane Daly

Overview

Learn the four conditions most effective for fostering creativity

Sometimes our attempts to foster creativity can stifle it. Gamwell, a former teacher and superintendent who has spent more than three decades studying creativity, shares a fresh perspective on how to nurture creativity, innovation, leadership, and engagement in a variety of settings.

You’ll learn how to:

• Tap the creative and leadership potential in everyone
• Think bigger by moving from a deficit model of thinking to a strengths-based approach
• Develop the lost arts of listening and storytelling to optimize learning
• Handle the inevitable pushback and fear that transformational change can bring

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506357379
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	06/15/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Born in Liverpool, England, Peter is the co-author, with Jane Daly, of The Wonder Wall: Leading Creative Schools and Organizations in an Age of Complexity, 2017, Corwin, foreword by Sir Ken Robinson; and Thinker, Learner, Dreamer, Doer: Innovative Pedagogies for Cultivating Every Student’s Potential, April, 2022, Corwin, fore­word by Yong Zhao.

An insightful, entertaining, and knowledgeable speaker, presenter, and consultant, Peter brings decades of academic research, experience, and insightful knowledge, gleaned from his award-winning career as a teacher and administrator at all levels of the education system. Through his presentations, workshops, books, You Tube channel, and website, he explores learning, leadership, and innovation and their impact on individual and organizational health and culture. Peter has worked across Canada and throughout many parts of the world, showing students, educators, administrators, schools, districts, com­panies, and policy makers how to foster that vibrancy in their own organizations.

Through the course of his work and research, Peter has captured the voices of hundreds of students and adults alike, video clips that provide unique and insightful glimpses into the lived world of our classrooms, schools, and organizations. These clips also provide criti­cal insight as to how we might imagine our learning cultures in a way that reawakens the brilliance that lies in all of us, with a central focus on individual, group, and organizational well-being.

An adjunct professor with the University of Ottawa, Peter has been the recipient of many awards throughout his forty-year career. In 2013, he was awarded the Distinguished Leadership Award by the Ontario Public Supervisory Officers’ Association for the work he led in Learning, Leadership and Creativity with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. In 2015, he was awarded the Global Distinguished Leadership Award by the Alberta Teachers’ Association.

In 2020, he cofounded the Canadian Network for Imagination and Creativity, @CNIC, which holds monthly Idea Jams on a wide range of topics—and which evoke lots of lively interactive conversation.

Although Jane’s career took her into the marketing and communications world, she was always fascinated by the field of education and the seeds of potential in every individual—especially when one of her own sons had difficulty reading and thus became “a problem to be solved.” She has worked on numerous communications projects for educational institutions and has taught at the college level. She has often observed the chal­lenges and opportunities that both educational organizations and businesses share when it comes to organizational learning.

Jane was happy to join Peter Gamwell as coauthor for The Wonder Wall: Leading Creative Schools and Organizations in an Age of Complexity and again with Thinker, Learner, Dreamer, Doer: Innovative Pedagogies for Cultivating Every Student’s Potential.

Jane freelances as a communications strategist and commercial writer by day and enjoys fiction writing by night, as well as spending time with her husband John, and their kids and grandkids, at the small Mac Laren’s Landing beach community outside of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Prologue: The Wonder Wall
1. The Start of Something Extraordinary
2. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: The Connection Between Change and Creativity
3. The Imperatives for Creativity: Getting There Is a Three-Way Street
4. Lead the Way: Leadership Development
5. Condition #1: Storytelling and Listening
6. Condition #2: Moving Beyond Diversity to Inclusivity
7. Condition #3: Making It Personal
8. Condition #4: Celebrating
9. Assessing the Culture of Creativity: How to Get Buy-In and Fellow Travelers for Your Journey to the Extraordinary
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Peter Gamwell understands creativity like few people on this planet and now, thanks to this stirring, entertaining, and illuminating book, we’ll all understand it much more. If you’re at all concerned with making the extraordinary happen in your organization, you need to read The Wonder Wall . "

Lou Aronica

All of my life I have been enthused by two things; creativity and simplicity. I'm proud that I got in on the creativity thing before it became uber trendy amongst adults. It's always been at the heart of our children's agenda. As time has gone by, I have become increasingly concerned that something as primal and elegantly human as creativity has been stripped of its simplicity by so many, and as a result, turned into something almost mystical and increasingly complex. That's why, from the day I first met Peter Gamwell, I knew we'd get on. First, because he got it long before I did and second, because he is one of the gifted few who can strip back the nonsense and help us all to rediscover the joy of our natural creative state. This book is Peter bottled; I love it!”

Richard Gerver

"This book will inspire educators who may be stuck in their current context and encourage them to think out of the box. "

Karen L Tichy

"In The Wonder Wall Peter Gamwell and Jane Daly speak with honesty, integrity, and insight about ‘Leading Creative Organizations in Times of Complexity’ and express it all with wit, clarity, and humanity. A delight to read and a read that delights and informs - both clever and entertaining! This book is a must for anyone involved in leadership roles or with ambition to find a more successful model for management. "

Derek Brown

"The Wonder Wall has so many important and creative ideas, I suggest everyone read it more than once. "

Ellen J. Langer

Take everything you know about learning and turn it upside down. It is there that you will find Peter Gamwell, Jane Daly and their Wonder Wall of creativity wallowing in wisdom. Yes, we have three imperatives, and four conditions, and therein you will find a treasure trove of ideas for creativity. You don’t have to leave the school system to upend it. Just read Wonder Wall and you will be swept along into doing things that engage all students and teachers. You will even get ideas about how to evaluate creativity. The timing is perfect. Go beyond skills and knowledge, light the sparks that lead to learning. Be excited about the limitless possibilities of education. "

Michael Fullan

"Be brilliant at what you're best at. Build on your strengths. Belong to something. These are the three imperatives that this great book sets out for young people and those who teach them. It does so with wit, wisdom, up-close experience and a magnificent capacity to tell a good tale of why all people in schools really matter. This book is its own Wonder Wall. When you've closed your Ken Robinson book, open this next. You'll not be disappointed. "

Andy Hargreaves

"Peter Gamwell and Jane Daly have written an alternative manifesto for boldness, innovation and risk in education. They do so with respect and regard for the enormous expectations communities already place on educators. This is an essential read that holds a code as the global community commits to attain the UN's Sustainable Development Goal #4 "Quality Education for All. "

Kathryn White

"Effective and memorable anecdotes will stay in the reader’s mind long after the conclusion of the book. The book acknowledges the drive toward innovative and transformative practices and provides a framework to foster creativity in complex organizations. A strong theory of action, the text highlights creativity, structure, change, and inclusive practices. "

Jill Gildea

"The Wonder Wall focuses on tapping into the creativity within ourselves to instill fundamental changes in the way people lead organizations and schools. Peter and Jane capture the pragmatic ways in which creativity and innovation can be stimulated and harnessed by bringing the best out of people in every sort of organization. This book isn’t just another bag of tricks for managing organizational change. It is a heartfelt, deeply grounded manifesto for the more visionary and creative styles of servant leadership. "

Sir Ken Robinson

At last, a book which stands courageous at the crossroads where creative theory and practice meet; that Shangri-La where innovation and imagination thrive. Packed with suggestions and practical ideas, it draws a map for all those who believe there is always a better way. It gives leaders the confidence and the strategies to develop those conditions in which individual and group potential can be released. A must-read for all threshold adventurers. I have only one criticism – I wish I’d written it.”

Sir John Jones

"This important book lays out a journey leading to improvement that is strengths-based, and focuses on talent and inclusivity, with the outcome of a creative, innovative, and engaged organization. For engaging students in school, this book is essential."

Lynn Lisy-Macan

I love this book. I am a huge fan of storytelling, and this book is one great story blended with cutting-edge academic work in the field of human mind and creativity. In The Wonder Wall Peter Gamwell and Jane Daly bring together decades of firsthand experience in creativity, leadership and learning into this volume that I indeed will, as the authors suggest, read twice. I would urge you to do the same if you want to be in the frontline of finding ways to improve your schools.

Pasi Sahlberg

"The authors present a compelling and refreshing narrative that transcends much of the pedestrian nature of education dialogue. The focus on learning is wonderful. "

Peter Dillon

"Inspiring and insightful, The Wonder Wall shows that educational organizations can change, for the better, with the "right" leadership: leadership that sees brilliance in everyone and encourages creativity in all. "

Yong Zhao