My name is Nadia Abouraya and I am 25 years old. I live in Silver Spring and volunteer once a week at Imagination Stage.

The gift shop at Imagination Stage is one place where I volunteer by putting price tag stickers on items or bagging new purchases.  It can be a very noisy place but it’s lots of fun. There can be lots of kids banging around or just two of us making noise while we straighten things up.

I am also an usher. I like handing out the programs and watching the kids react to the show. I love the shows so much myself. It’s fun to see the kids clapping and enjoying themselves. They are so into it. Kids seem to be moving all parts of their bodies even while they are sitting in their seats for a show like Wind in the Willows. I know Aladdin’s Luck is going to be great because I saw a model of the set before the show opened and it’s amazing.

I also do office work like photocopying, setting up for activities, and working with different things at the office. Once I even ran the light board for a student show. That was the very first show I did at Imagination Stage and I’ve been volunteering there ever since. I have always liked live plays. It’s also good to meet new volunteers and the people you work with.

Outside Imagination Stage, I am driving and taking classes at Montgomery College. Mostly I like to see movies with my friends and family, read, or walk around my neighborhood. I also usher at Shakespeare Theater and I have a few other part-time jobs.

- Nadia Abouraya

As the sole speaker at a gathering held at Imagination Stage on March 10^th, Pink revisited the arguments he presented in his seminal texts, A WHOLE NEW MIND and DRIVE.  He clearly demonstrated that the United States economy is shifting to one with creativity at its center.  He cited Fortune 500 corporations who hire not according to a gathered skill set, but an adaptive creative mind – literally hiring musicians not engineers.  As he explained, as he does in his texts, the reason the United States MUST turn to creativity comes down to the 3 A’s – Asia (outsourcing), automation, and abundance. All of these directly affect not blue collar manufacturing, but the white collar workforce.

Outsourcing: If it is something that can come down to a formula, script or recipe, it will be done by wherever it can be done the cheapest.  Customer service and computer support are the most obvious examples of this phenomena.

Automation: If a computer can do it, it makes economic sense to let the computer, not the more expensive a human being do it. Who did (or is doing) your 2010 taxes this year? Turbotax or your friend Bob the accountant?  30 million people are using turbotax, that results in 30 million fewer clients in accounting firms.

Finally, what do we value in our economy – Abundance.  Assumptions about our quality of life are exponentially greater than they were 70 years ago.  Cars, televisions – luxury items of the 50s — are now assumed as a basic in our world.  There are more registered automobiles than licensed drivers. A similar argument was made for the expansion of accessibility in mobile phones.  

Finally, he asked – how many of you have an ipad?  (a third of the audience raised their hand).  He then asked – how many of you knew 18 months ago that you needed an ipad?  (laughter followed) For him, that is the core of the future of the US economy – in a world of abundance, to be on the forefront, one must be able to conceive of the items that we need, but are items we didn’t know we needed until we have them.  

His point: This is what artists do – they give the world something they didn’t know they were missing. “This is what is the most cognitive skill today in economic terms – the ability to iterate something completely new, make new connections” Thus, creativity is a necessity and arts education feeds the core for the future. 

How do we ensure that the US economy remains a leader – encourage creativity in our next generation.  How do we encourage creativity?  It must be done often and done early through arts education. He pointed out that our competitors have already figured this out. Singapore already recognizes the need for less training in ‘skills’ and more training in the arts.  They just built a public highschool, SODA, School of the Dramatic Arts; it is ten stories tall completely focused on the performing arts.  This is the next generation of ideas waiting to come out. China is also making a headlong effort to get out of automation and manufacturing and increasing arts education in order to be a source of idea generation.

Arts education in schools and in after school programs is the fulcrum we must support if the US wants to remain a leader in our ever expanding global economy.  It isn’t about doing things faster (computers do that now), it is about creating the new and solving the impossible.  SOMETHING ARTISTS DO EVERYDAY.  “The skills of artists are actually the cognitive that are most necessary in the economy today.”  Our business leaders are figuring it out, but the policy makers have not figured it out.

Pink noted that he saw one of his favorite shows, PLAYING FROM THE HEART, staged in the spot from which he lectured.  To him, expanding children’s minds through the participation in the arts allows them to develop the brains and interpersonal skills they need to succeed in the new economy.

–Brett Ashley Crawford, Managing Director, Imagination Stage

IQ helps teachers develop skill sets that place the arts and experiential learning at the center of English Language Arts and other content areas. It is documented that children with diverse learning styles thrive in school when they engage in the arts as an entry point to learning. IQ helps teachers and students find the pathways that allow each student to achieve her full potential, and we are committed to the value and importance of the arts and imagination as catalysts in the process of education. We see positive results on a daily basis, and DCPS teachers we work with are enthusiastic about the skills they gain. We are cheered by the measurable success of DCPS students and say, “go team!”

–David Markey,  Director of Education

After the performance of The Dancing Princesses, families participated in a Sensory Seminar which included a tour of the stage which provided additional tactile and spatial information. Finally, our participants attended a reception where they enjoyed refreshments, and provided our staff with valuable feedback.  One child shared her thoughts on Audio Description: “I liked it a lot. It gives you a chance to know what’s going on. I think it would be a good idea to continue audio description.”   Her mother added: “It gives me, the parent a chance to enjoy the show myself.”

Special thanks to Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind who helped make our Audio Description pilot project a huge success!  We are also extremely grateful to the LEGO Children’s Fund for their support of this initiative.

Since 1996, The Daily Record has recognized more than 800 high-achieving Maryland women who are making an impact in the state. “The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women recognizes women who not only have achieved success professionally, but also have made significant contributions to their communities through their volunteer and mentoring activities,” says Christopher Eddings, publisher of The Daily Record. “We applaud the successes of Bonnie Fogel and acknowledge her as one of only a handful of women to make such a significant mark on her community and her profession.”

Below is a letter to Diane Nutting, Imagination Stage’s Director of Access and Outreach, from the mother of a 14 year-old boy with Asperger Syndrome:

“Social interactions and group activities are very difficult for my son. Although enormously interested in a variety of topics…he has little opportunity to share his interests with others. He doesn’t really have friends. At Imagination Stage he got a taste of something different. At your suggestion, he took a class on a topic he know a lot about (Shakespeare), which gave him a sense of security. You provided him with a wonderful dedicated aide, who quietly guided him through any difficult situations that arose, coaching him toward more appropriate interactions…To see him play Feste in the final scene of Twelfth Night on the last day of camp, singing a song with half a dozen children dancing around him, was a dream come true. He breaks out in a grin whenever I remind him of the experience.

Saying people with disabilities are welcome is one thing, but making that commitment meaningful by putting substance behind it is another. What sets Imagination Stage apart, in my experience, is that you and your staff put so much intelligence, enthusiasm, creativity and STAFFING behind your words. From the first conversations I had with you, the questions I asked and the suggestions that were made reflected a real understanding of autism spectrum disorders and the strategies that work to support a student.”