On July 10, Creative Leaps President and CEO John Cimino offered a daylong workshop, “Leadership Development, Knowledge Integration, and the Mind Processes of the Arts,” at the Mid-Hudson Leadership Academy. The Academy is a yearly renewal opportunity for higher officials in the field of education, and this year’s session brought approximately 200 attendees from the surrounding Hudson Valley area.

Cimino and pianist Tom McCoy also collaborated with consultant and educator Meg Wheatley on her keynote presentation for the 3-day event. Wheatley addressed the severity of the challenges facing public educational institutions today – and the responsibility of professionals, parents, and communities to own these challenges and to start addressing them together.
Weaving music through Wheatley’s address, Cimino and McCoy’s performances served as invitation and convocation – soulful catalysts to bring conversations, meditations, and new themes into the room. Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” for example, helped celebrate the exploratory process and that place in ourselves (as the song goes) where we “come round right.” This led directly to Wheatley’s primary theme, that only within ourselves – as caring people and as members of a larger community – can the tough issues be dealt with and resolved.

Wheatley has spent years as a consultant and instructor on organization and social management in uncertain times. Her latest book, Turning to One Another, addresses the importance of community and simple conversation in engaging true change in the world around us. The artists of Creative Leaps first collaborated with Wheatley at the European Conference on Arts and Business in Slovenia in 2002. They were thrilled to work with her again, raising awareness and conversation on these issues of leadership and education.