“A bit of madness is key
To give us new colors to see...”
- La La Land
Are schools killing our dreamers?
There’s something deeply human about our need to dream. Not in the surface-level sense of wishful thinking. But in the disruptive, generative act of envisioning what doesn’t yet exist.
While we debate test scores and college readiness, we systematically tame the very humans our species needs most: the ones who see what doesn't yet exist and then make it real.
The Artist's Cycle as the Pulse of Progress
Art, in all its forms, is how we metabolize the human experience. It's how we grieve, rejoice, protest and imagine.
And yet, society routinely marginalizes the artist. Dreamers get dismissed as unrealistic. In our schools today, art happens after "real" learning. Imagination and creativity are nice-to-have's, not essential.
But here’s the paradox... While we downplay their importance, we subconsciously rely on artists to guide us. This is especially the case today as the world shifts beneath our feet with rapid social changes, worldwide power struggles and the arrival of AI.
The cycle of dreamers and artists is a summary of human progress. They push outward in every direction, ensuring that we don't just survive change, but make meaning through it.
- They're the dreamers, who imagine what could be.
- They're explorers, who chart new territories of experience.
- They're storytellers, who help us make sense of what we've discovered.
This isn't linear. It's cyclical. And it's how we evolve.
The Dreamers: Imagining What Could Be
Artists are future-builders. They dream first. Then reality catches up.
Leonardo da Vinci sketched helicopters before physics could explain how they would fly. Science fiction authors envisioned the internet before it had a name.
Right now, somewhere, a dreamer is sketching the school your grandchildren will attend. Another is writing the story that will reshape how we think about intelligence. A third is dancing movements that will become tomorrow's therapy.
They do not just create images of the future. They create desire for that future. They're feeling forward into possibilities that don't exist yet - creating the emotional base for changes we can't name today.
Their visions plant the seeds that will one day bloom into scientific discoveries or social movements.
The Explorers: Charting New Human Experience
Every time humanity enters uncharted territory, artists become essential.
Whether it’s a new technology, a new social structure or a new physical environment, someone must translate the unknown into something we can identify and feel.
Take virtual reality. Technology will provide the tools, but artists will determine how we eventually move and express. When humans populate space, supplying oxygen will not be sufficient. We will need to reflect on our new conditions with poetry, images and storytelling.
I once improvised a dance in water - exploring movement in that unfamiliar environment. It required slowing down and focusing intently on the new dynamics of gravity, density and balance. That act became more than art. It became research. My body was learning what my mind couldn't yet understand. And that formed a bridge between my mind and an uncharted realm. A new form of awareness.
Artists do this instinctively. They translate the unknown into something we can feel and eventually inhabit.
As we enter the metaverse, Mars or our new world with AI, we need explorers to make these spaces human.
The Storytellers: Making Meaning of What We've Lived
In times of chaos - whether global or personal - we turn instinctively to storytellers. Not for answers, but for understanding.
Music gives us a way to grieve. Film surfaces the quiet tensions of a generation. Dance, painting and theater express what language often fails to capture. Stories help us metabolize slow shifts in culture or experiences too complex to explain. Take the Black Mirror series. They don't just entertain, but amplify and warn us about what we are going through before either policy or science catches up.
In this way, storytellers are humanity's emotional processing system. They transform raw experience and emotion into shared understanding. They help us look at the world and understand where we are, how we got here and what it might mean.
We then feed that wisdom back into the next round of dreaming, exploring and processing. This is the cycle.
AI vs. the Dreamer: Can AI Replace the Artist?
In the age of generative AI, everyone's asking: can machines get creative?
AI can surely remix and repackage creative work. It can even generate material that looks creative. Such creative work will be fun to consume and may even become very popular.
But AI doesn't wake up in grief after an earthquake. It doesn't dream of life on Mars.
Machines can replicate styles and mix them in new ways. But they cannot originate direction. They do not intend or make authentic meaning.
Art made by humans isn't about efficiency - it's about risk, vulnerability, presence. It reflects the consciousness behind it. Until machines have desires, contradictions and existential crises, they cannot dream new futures into being.
Machines can only recombine the dreams we've already had. It may be beautiful and popular. But without the artist’s spark - without the lived experience - it remains derivative.
We need dreamers not because they are efficient, but because they set direction. Because they remind us what it means to feel, to wonder and to be fully, irreducibly human.
Education Needs a Creative Spark
Our schools have forgotten the dreamers.
Art and creative expression get treated as decoration. They're electives, a break from "real" learning. Something nice, but non-essential.
But creative exploration isn't luxury. It's how we learn to make sense of ourselves and the world.
When it's woven into education, it serves as a process of reflection, connection and meaning-making. It offers students alternative ways to digest, metabolize and revisit what they've learned. It allows for ambiguity and gives us tools to meet uncertainty with curiosity rather than fear.
Creative work therefore does not compete with academic work. It becomes a valuable companion to knowledge, transforming how it is held and understood.
Key skills of the knowledge age - curiosity, adaptability, creativity, self-awareness, sense of purpose - all relate to the capacity for imagination and creative exploration. Explore our guide on the 21st century skills to learn more on these.
That's why we need more than art classes in the learning environment. We need dedicated spaces and ateliers that are accessible and inviting. We need a wide variety of tools and material, arousing curiosity. We need artists embedded in education - not to decorate learning, but to expand it.
The Atelierista: Nurturing Creative Voices
Every child has a hundred languages. Most of our schools teach in only one.
There's a unique role for the artist in education. Not only as an instructor, but also as a "creativity scout." This is the spirit behind the "atelierista" in the Reggio Emilia approach.
The atelierista is a practicing artist, who helps students discover, nurture and protect their expressive voice. Someone who catches the flicker of original thought, protects it from being shut down and feeds it until it becomes flame.
The atelierista sets an example for the learner as an artist and a craftsman. She observes, provokes and amplifies. When a child begins to express something authentic - through paint, movement, digital media, stories or other forms of art - the artist is there to catch it, hold it and invite more of it. This kind of presence and support creates the conditions for deep exploration and growth.
With this spirit, schools transform from information delivery factories into studios of experimentation. They transform into creative laboratories, where identity, inquiry and imagination are nurtured as part of everyday learning. Art does not sit on the sidelines. It threads through math, science and language, offering multiple entry points into understanding.
We need to raise creative meaning-makers, who can adapt to today's tech-dominated world and lead humanity to its future. That's why we need to make room for artists within our schools.
Here’s to the Mess We Need…
There's no clean path to the future. No perfect roadmap.
What we need most are those willing to imagine messier, wilder possibilities. Those ready to give us new colors to see.
Whether as dreamers, explorers or storytellers, artists make chaos meaningful. They hold the scattered pieces and shape them into stories that help us understand where we've been and imagine where we might go.
Artists will help our children as they're learning to be human in a world that doesn't yet exist - and to dream that world into being.
So here’s to the rebels! The crazy fools who dream!
The ones who see the invisible and give it form.
