I love exploring creativity with students in my Mass Communication classes.
This semester I offered extra credit to students who had missed out on an assignment. They were asked to read The Helsinki Bus Station Theory: Finding Your Own Vision in Photography. They were asked to write an essay about how the ideas presented about being persistent with their creative voice applied to them as content producers in today's information age.
Later in the semester we continued the exploration into creativity. I assigned the four part Remix series produced by Kirby Ferguson with assistance from Participant Media.
Our class discussions about copyright and fair use led me to an exploration of these concepts in the remix that is touching as it is beautiful. The rapper, Darryl McDaniels started the ball rolling with a full-on emotional depression from which he climbed out from after years of painful self-discovery. He tells his story in a Moth segment released in 2014.
The collaboration "remix" 1970's singer-song writer Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle is a powerful example of music doing "what it's supposed to do."
