Grace Hawthorne: Creative Agency

How can we harness our infinite creative potential in everyday life?

What role does failure play in building creative capacity?

Grace Hawthorne is an entrepreneur, designer, educator, author, and artist. She's the founder and CEO of Paperpunk, an award-winning origami and Lego mashup. Grace is also an adjunct professor at the Stanford D School, where she teaches courses on creativity and failure, and leads groundbreaking research on creative capacity building.

In this episode, Grace Hawthorne discusses the transformative power of creativity and how to make possibilities happen. She shares insights from her new book, highlighting the importance of starting, doing, and finishing projects. The conversation delves into the biases that prevent us from acting on our ideas and the value of experiential learning in cultivating creativity. Grace also touches on the impact of technology on creativity and the importance of maintaining agency in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

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Louka Parry (00:00.142)
 it. Congrats on the book. It's so dynamic. I mean, I love the design, of course, but like, I love the fact it's like a really clear process. You know, I think sometimes as, as you know, our friend John, at the back says, sometimes it's just like, be creative, but you've just been really clear in terms of how to, how to prepare, how to see how to start, do and finish. Like, I think it's just such a really tangible way to think about.

our lives as projects, every part of it. Yeah. No, thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. I feel like there's a lot of books and material out there kind of about similar things, right? Achieve your goals, make, you know, design your life, et cetera. I tried to write something a little different. And I mean, everything that we all create comes from our own unique provenance and perspective. And I'm hoping that...

that little something different will resonate with, you know, like a handful of people who will, somehow it'll like light them up and spur them in. I feel like, you know what I love about it? It's actually, this is the process of living. Like I really think that's true. You know, like, and I think you could probably, you sound very humble, but I would actually say like, this is a fairly universal like guide.

for how to create in your life and be a creator rather than be a shaper instead of being shaped. Do you know, like there's this big theme on agency, I feel, just how do you understand your own mind? You nailed it. Well, I think you nailed it. I can't even. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about that all day long. I can't put it.

exclamation marks after that, that we are all creators. And I want people to realize that, to wake up and take full control of their agency and the power that they have. I think what also makes a book different is the D school. Like this, I've taught creative gym for 15 years now.

Louka Parry (02:24.846)
And kind of like what you say to me, it's like a life 101 course in many ways. Because regardless what discipline you practice or what interests you might have, I think how we behave and move in the world applies to everything and anything. And just one thing, just on the creative, if I, and I said this recently,

Lee and Sarah was like, I love that. That's a great way of describing it. But if we said to people, my goodness, you never have to pay gas. You never have to buy gas for the rest of your life. I am giving you free gasoline for your vehicle or electricity or whatever it is that you can use to power your transportation, assuming you have a vehicle. People would be so excited. They'd be like, my goodness, really? That's amazing. I have this fuel to move myself from place to place.

And this idea of creativity, that's like a underused resource we all have a limitless, endless supply of. And we don't know that. And so what I'm hoping that I can help do is show people like, okay, this is how you're wired to think normally, but if you are aware of that, you can bypass that and actually access this limitless well and resource of yours. That's...

Yours for the taking. Braised as great to have you on the learning future podcast. We're going to have a fantastic conversation. this idea of like creativity as almost a life force, like a limitless resource. And yet one of the things you say in your wonderful book is, you know, that it's a toolkit to snap you out of zombie mode so you can scheme the impossible and bring your projects, potential and promises to life.

Now it seems like to me, we're in this moment, I'm always in a moment, but in this moment, kind of with the meta crisis and like education systems and technology and emerging, there's all this stuff. I feel like we're so often we become consumers and enter that zombie mode. And so take us through kind of your, the practices, the suggestions you would have for how we remember that we have this infinite source of creative energy, but somehow we end up forgetting.

Louka Parry (04:47.919)
and just consuming, you know, be it through social media or be it through whatever the case, whatever the case might be. You're asking like the billion dollar question. What's going on, Grace? I mean, is there a one sentence answer for that? I mean, I think about, I think about this a lot and especially with regards to, to me, it's about taking action, right? When you say like, when I say zombie mode, I am talking about,

we get waylaid by the minutiae of our everyday life. I have to take the kids to school. I have to make dinner. I have to pay my bills. I have to go here. I mean, there's obligations that are part of living that we cannot bypass or sidestep. And occasionally we get caught up in the things that we have to do. But the things that we have to do and want to do,

are not mutually exclusive. And I've always looked at, you know, like time is to me the most precious resource, infinite resource that isn't limitless if you look at that way, but I look at my computer and there's virtual memory. And in many ways we can make in my mind, virtual time. So I'm overly optimistic with time. And for me, the way you snap yourself out of zombie mode,

it really is about having a bias to action. It's about doing, not just thinking. And I'm not saying bypass the thinking and the consideration and the planning. But I mean, really, I think people are afraid to take action and they don't begin because of their fear of failure and fear of judgment. And somehow we have to eliminate that. I don't know how we do that, because that is a lifelong...

I don't know if I've ever met a single person who is free of other people's judgment or free of their own judgment. I mean, have you? That's a hard one, right? Yeah, that's the hardest one. You know, and when we think about how often, and you speak about this, of course, in the book too, like, you know, how do we see differently? You know, how do we see in some ways the matrix or the culturescape that's around us and how conscious are we to our behaviors of what's, of our beliefs?

Louka Parry (07:09.326)
and how they might limit us. And I think that you're so right. I mean, this, this, this bias towards action seems to be to go right to the end of our lives, which I find is kind of helpful. It's, it's one of the things that is written about in the five regrets of the does of the dying. Like the number one regret is I wish I'd lived a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. There's this kind of realization at the end that, I had this potential all along to kind of choose, but I still,

like played out these roles based on the assumption and the internal narratives and sometimes the internal self judgment. So there seems to be this real power to like when you see someone in their life, you know, not just kind of trying to balance all the responsibilities of how, like using time or having time, but almost, and this is something I've been reflecting on a lot, Grace, which is a bit philosophical from Heidegger, which is that we don't, we don't have time. We are time.

No, time is a false, not false construct, but it's an artificial construct to give meaning to our temporal presence of now, right? So, and it's funny, like as a parent, I mean, this will resonate with your educators, but I used to measure time by my kids' school breaks, you know, like, there's, you know, Thanksgiving here in the US, the holidays, there's so many holidays.

And then I thought, like, I just shipped my youngest off to college and I thought like, well, time's gonna feel really long because I thought the breaks made time feels short. And in fact, without the breaks, time feels faster. So this whole time is our perception of time. And I feel like I wanna go back to this idea of how we think things work. And I'm not saying that,

there isn't an infrastructure in place like for stoplights. And I talk about this in the book of how things work to keep us safe. But this idea of possibilities is about not being boxed into how we think things work now, right? Cause like, I think of my daughter, like she's like, well that's not how it works. Like in getting classes, she can't get classes. You know, she's, I'm like, my goodness. Like you're listening to this.

Louka Parry (09:28.238)
story you're making up of I can't get this because of X but it's like that X that might be there but there's a hundred other ways to get that done and it's up to you to figure out those ways but yes if you just sit there and say I can't do it because they told me no then you're right that's not going to happen for you I don't know is that is that crude and too direct? I don't

I don't think so. Not when we think about like, as you say, how do you take an idea and transform it into reality? Right. That's kind of the subtitle of the body of work that you've created. How do you make possibilities happen? Because I think we all understand there are possibilities, but so often they seem to be outside ourselves instead of ones that we are constantly co -creating. And I think you're on time. You're so right. Most as a classroom teacher, formally, I

There was, it was always like, I didn't know what week of the year it was, but it was term two week five. I definitely knew that. And this way of segmenting time, I think it's such a fascinating way to think about even how we create within those limitations. Grace, it's wonderful to be talking to you. I'd love you to take us through kind of the high level process because I feel like there isn't a human being alive really that wouldn't say.

I'd love to be more creative. I'd love to be able to take my ideas and make them real, you know? so what is kind of the process that you have over, over your work as a adjunct professor at the D school, of course, and as someone that's been working in this creative space, for quite a long time around creativity and supporting young people in that, what, what, what's the high level process where you're like, okay. And a lot of it's not just about the doing, it's about the seeing and then the.

starting the doing and the finishing. Like, you know, there's so much in that. Give us a bit of a lay of the process that you would say, this is what you see kind of enables us to create vehicles for contribution.

Louka Parry (11:43.118)
Okay. I'm going to look like that in four steps because that's how the book breaks it down. But I want to share some proof that we created at Stanford that backs this process. Okay. So in the book, what holds us back from us and our possibilities to me is fundamentally starting and finishing. And as we said a moment ago, we don't start because we fear failure and we fear judgment.

In a nutshell, the reason why we fear those things, those things that we fear are programmed cellularly, like in our DNA, because we are wired, our brain is wired for certainty and safety, right? And certainty and safety. So if you're trying something new, it feels a little uncomfortable. So your mind wants to keep you safe. So it holds you back. And that's a subconscious behavior.

And so once you're aware that that is happening, you'll be like, well, I shouldn't be afraid. It feels uncomfortable. I'm going to try that anyway. So you step outside of that. You step into the discomfort. You lean into that. And that's where you make progress. And you do it in little bits and pieces. So when you start by seeing, you have to see the outcome. You want to see.

what it is that you want to create or achieve. And to me, that's a lighthouse. And we actually do an activity, like we have all the students actually do a, it's kind of like, you know how corporations have mission statements. It's like a personal mission statement. And that's like your life, but you could also do that with your project. So I'll use an example. When I was creating paper punk, like what was it that I was trying to achieve? It was a new business. And the idea came about because students,

in Creative Gym couldn't complete a simple dimensional thinking exercise. And in Creative Gym, we run a lot of, in our building section, a lot of activities with everyday office supplies. But there's a facilitator, aka the team who's literally just pushing people through a timed activity with constraints of time and material and a prescribed outcome. But if you're not at the D school, if you don't have the...

Louka Parry (14:05.87)
the privilege or luck or whatever it is to be a student at Stanford, how can people still have that experience? And I was like, okay, I'm gonna create an experience where people are going to toggle dimension by building things with their hands, but what does that look like? And I imagined something that was not plastic, that was friendly before the environment, that mimicked building, like we do like an activity, like build a hollow ball with post -its.

It's like if you said, hey, do that at home, nobody could give two beaks about doing that. If it was like build this robot that looks out of geometric paper blocks, like that sounds fun, right? So this idea of like, okay, so you have to have this vision of what it is you want to create, and then you lead with your curiosity. Did I know how to do that? No. Did I know where to start? No. And it's like, I'm going to make that. I feel like,

all artists, musicians, or painters. But you don't even have to be an artist. We do that with the dinner we make. I imagine, I have a roast chicken from Costco. What am I making tonight? I picture something with spit. I see what I want to eat, and I'm like, OK, what do I have? What ingredients do I need? And if you lead by not knowing, because you have a vision of what it could be, that's going to magnetically

I don't want to say it's not pulling you. You're taking the steps forward to get there. And so you have to begin. And I'm telling you, there's never a good time to begin. There is a perfect first step to begin. Like people always say, I'll do this when this happens. It's like, no, start now in any shape or form, even if it's looking up a word on Google to figure out like paper blocks or

origami, dimensional, I don't know. Like what would you Google to figure out the concept of that idea that you're curious about? And then you take the next step and the next step and that's the doing part. And I feel like the headline for doing is if I said, I'm gonna lose 50 pounds, it's like, my God, like that's gonna take five years if I'm gonna do it the right way. But what if I lost one pound every two weeks? And I could achieve that.

Louka Parry (16:27.918)
And that's like the ladder principle. And that's just an easy visual. Like if you climb up and down a ladder, do you skip rungs? No, because you compromise your safety and your balance. And your project can be broken down into little bits. What are those little bits? I guarantee you, if you have some big hairbrained idea, there's something you can do in the next 10 seconds to begin that project. And then the last part is like.

Okay, see, we started and you're doing and you're breaking up in a little bit, it's just finishing. And when the going gets tough, people give up because it's hard, because it is hard. Nothing good comes easy. I think the only wonderful things that are easy in life are things in nature, like that sunset or the sky or the ocean. Those things are free and those come just by directing your attention to them. But getting any project done, that takes heavy lifting and you gotta persist.

But if you don't have a vision for it and you don't get those little wins or those little, if you aren't seeing progression, it's hard to persist through the difficult times. And I'll tell you, I've been in that trough. Life is a rollercoaster. Your project is a rollercoaster. I've been in that bottom pit and it's hard to climb. The climb is hard. And even though I've been there like infinite number of times, it doesn't get.

any less uncomfortable. It doesn't, that's life. So there you have it. You said so many things there. I wrote a whole bunch of them down and I want to kind of zoom in on a few of them. Cause like this, how to begin, isn't that just such an interesting kind of frame? How to begin. Cause of course the answer is simple by beginning, but then there's so much resistance and the resistance of in some ways like,

reptilian brain, right? Which is seeking safety and, you know, wants to know what certainty and all that's kind of gone in this VUCA world, right? Which we always talk about in our work. And the other thing I think, when we think about even the process of education, being a teacher is that I think we're seeing this really interesting shift in the role. And I'd love your commentary on this, cause you said we lead by not knowing. And that's such an interesting reflection. Cause I feel like in even at universities,

Louka Parry (18:49.614)
You know, grace like staff, you know, these are kind of towers of knowledge. And then you have these kinds of exceptions sometimes like the D school, which is all about design and questioning and not knowing. And so this is interesting kind of juxtaposition, I would suppose between a classroom teacher who has been for so long, the Noah and the best Noah transitioning to the best learner. And I would state actually the best educators have always been incredible learners across their entire career slash lifespan.

because they're deeply curious and they ask questions that, you know, they kind of, they, we see ourselves as part of the learning experience in a classroom rather than of doing something like, and this is why I kind of get a bit, I think we need to be cautious about like just program or interventions. I always just, we do the thing instead of like, well, we're, we're part of it. We're human being. We're actually evolving as we, we teach, you know, so, so tell us.

Just to a reflection on this idea of like not knowing, because there's this arrival fallacy as well, which Alan Watts talks about, which is, you know, the, when then linguistic construction and I'm a languages teacher by training grace. So it's when we get to this thing, then we will start or then we will have enough thing. you know, then we'll be worthy even sometimes, you know, they'll be ready to teach the lesson. It's like, I mean, there's a lot of,

facets to what you're asking. So I'm gonna just address, I wanna say one through like, okay, just so for like, it's sort of like a preface, like, this isn't the answer that, you know, but I think it's worthy of discussion because, okay, I've been teaching for 15 years and I've been teaching, I've taught multiple courses, but let's talk about the one I've been teaching for 15 years. It's like we improve on the curriculum, right? And we design, first we design the curriculum,

I designed it with Scott Dorley and Charliss Burgess -Auburn who've been like long time schoolers. And since then I've taught it with a few other instructors and the lesson plan generally doesn't change. So you think you'd be like, wow, like you just probably phone in an ingrace. I'll tell you, every student, every class is a new experience. It makes that...

Louka Parry (21:14.99)
content a new experience because the students are at varying levels of their life, like different places in their lives. And that might be untrue for third graders. But even then, like I look at my, you know, I have a brother, an older brother with younger kids. And I'm like, they read when they read, they walk when they walk. It's like people blossom and they kind of, you know, like their minds open up in different ways at different times. And you don't know the context of where somebody came from or what they've been exposed to.

So, I feel as an educator, when I'm in that classroom, it's our job and duty. We're facilitating a learning experience for them. So, Seamus and I are acutely aware. We're reading the room, even though we have this program, this is what we're planning today. We are constantly micro adjusting what we say, how fast we go, how we deliver it. What

what we ask them to do, we might completely change it based on like a debrief, you know, like a reflection that we do after they complete an activity. And so I feel like that's what like I view my role as an educator, as kind of a coach and a facilitator. It's not imparting like, this is a piece of knowledge here, right? Because knowledge,

I can share information, but like me, information is not knowledge. So here's information. That's all the crap that's on. You can go on social media, you can go on the internet and you could be drowned by information, right? But how you like apply it becomes knowledge. And when you actually experience it, that's when it's like wisdom. That's when it's embodied part of you, right? So specifically with Creative Gym, it's experiential on purpose and by design because,

I know if you experience X, that is going to be a part of the fabric of who you are. Right. And, and, and then this is a perfect segue. There was the backbone to make possibilities happen is this concept of creativity that we defined very specifically at the D school. We spent six months defining. It's about synthesizing novel connections because information and information, there's no new idea. Let's just make that as an assumption.

Louka Parry (23:42.286)
novel connections to a meaningful outcome, right? And so that's like the purpose and the delivery.

We did an almost decade long academic research study that was published by Scientific America or in Science. And the two questions we asked were, can you teach creativity, number one? And two, is it something like acquired knowledge? Like once you know how to ride a bike, you forever know how to ride a bike. Or is it like doing sit -ups? Like you have that six pack, you earn that six pack,

Now do you forever have a six pack? And so the two answers quickly just to get to the point is, yes, you can teach creativity. We scientifically prove that. And two, no, creativity is not acquired knowledge. Once you have that six pack, if you sit on the sofa and eat Doritos and do not exercise, your six pack is going to atrophy and go away. That's the same thing with our brains. So we had...

I had this brain surgeon visiting from Taiwan in like in year five or six of the, you know, this is like eight or almost 10 years ago. And after the class, he came up to me and he said, Grace, am I different? I was like, of course you are, Daniel. Dr. Daniel, you Hong, you are different. You just take 10 weeks of this Stanford amazing class at the D school. And he's like, no, Grace, is my brain different? And I'm like, okay, you're the brain surgeon, not me. You tell me.

And that simple question purely out of curiosity ended up being almost a decade long research study about creativity. And what we proved were the two things that yes, once you can teach creativity, it's not like you're creative and you're not, or you're born with this much and I'm born with this. It doesn't matter. We have our own ability.

Louka Parry (25:42.83)
to build our own creative capacity. And that's the free gas for the rest of your life that we were talking about earlier. That's just up to us. We take possession of that with our own agency through our own work, period. So. Well, crazy, that was brilliant. I've always wanted someone just to lay that out. Because I feel like, especially your expression of information to knowledge to wisdom, I feel like we are,

So in the legacy, like mental models that dominate some of the traditional teaching methodologies and systems, right. School systems in particular, but not exclusively. You could say that in the university sector, you know, it is a, it's a ladder of knowledge. Do you know it's kind of like it, and we're not really getting to the wisdom part of that. And sometimes it's not even knowledge, just information perhaps. Whereas the great educators working every day, they fully understand it's like.

The most powerful learning is experiential. It's the convergence of the social, emotional and cognitive, the cognitive dimensions where you feel connected to while you feel emotion, you know, like imagine that the heart's involved. And then of course the mind and cognition is active as well. I just feel like there's this piece around. It's a tall order. I feel like for an educator who is depending on the school just

know, district or demands of what they want the student to walk away with. And being of Asian descent and being kind of a tiger mom, I will say that people always say, think outside the box. And I just laugh at that. I think that's the most annoying statement ever. But I will say in order to know what's outside of the box, you have to know what the box is, like what's inside the what, what.

When you say think outside the box, what do you mean by box? Like what's inside the box and.

Louka Parry (27:47.918)
you would probably, it's like a linguistics philosophy. It's, it's, she kins it to geometry, but verbal geometry, which I was, and she's telling my husband and I were like, we have no idea what you're talking about. Like we took philosophy in college and that does not sound like Descartes or anything that we ever studied. But, but I told her like geometry isn't about solving the proof. It's about teaching a way of.

problem solving. It's not about that answer or that proof, but it's showing you a way of thinking. Take that for whatever it is. Grain of salt. And corporates don't use it. But that's the intention behind it, right? So, I feel like there's a lot of mixed things. Like when we teach, sometimes we want to share information, like a way of doing something, as a step to the next

wrong that might be, you know, the next level or the next progression of whatever it is that the person is trying to learn. Trying to learn and trying to apply. I guess as someone that's worked in the kind of creative space, right? And the developmental continuum of creativity, I want to ask you around about technology because of course we're in this moment now where we have...

All this incredible exponentially, you know, accelerating emerging and converging technology. And it's, you know, generative AI, for example, and we're starting in the, like the era of the kind of a moving out of the prompt era into the AI agent era. It seems like we've just entered the prompt. So there's all this kind of stuff going on. I really wonder around your thinking of like human creativity and the role of like augmenting that now that we have.

you know, texts to video, which is almost indistinguishable and will be. And so we're entering this real world where we won't know what is created by who or what. Like what is your, what is your reflection? Grace? Someone's been in this world. I know I'm so curious because teachers are my, my, my, my reaction to that is like, Holy shit. Like what are we getting ourselves into? Yeah. So, okay. So let me preface this.

Louka Parry (30:04.75)
I'm semi -Luddite, I'm a torchbearer for the analog. I deeply and dearly hold that we are human beings. We interact in real space. We touch each other. Our experience with the world is very physical and we solve the world's messy problems by interacting with our built environment. So knowing that, and obviously that's not an absolute, that's kind of a generalization, but knowing that's where I come from,

I'm going to say that I'm really frightened about this era of chat GPT and AI and all this stuff. While I do think technological tools are wonderful in so many ways, they are just that tools, but if they're misused, I think there's a danger zone that we will not be able to find our way back. And I think of like social media, like I think everything, and I actually taught a class,

during COVID, which was a kind of an error and that's more like of a sidebar discussion we can have later, but it was analog versus digital human interactions. And we kind of proposed this class before social dilemma came out. And so it was kind of like, and what we intended it to be kind of ended up not playing out, because this whole analog versus digital was related to this,

to the kind of the tail of the creativity study. Like I believe writing with a pen creates different neural synthesis, you know, like synapses than if you are writing on an iPad or if you're, you know, drawing, you know, it's sort of like playing a piano. Like when you play a real piano, I know there's sensitive keyboards where you push it and you can push it harder and it will be louder. But like this idea of, you know, whatever, physics and action.

There's a lot of that embedded. And that was the intention of the class, but it ended up being about agency and who controls information and what's real and what's not. And I taught the class with Dr. Alan Reese, who was the PI on our creativity study from, he has his interdisciplinary brain sciences research at Stanford and also Jacob Ward, who is an NBC correspondent, but he just wrote a book.

Louka Parry (32:25.454)
on AI. So this is before his, when AI came out. And what we realized was that there's, we talk about zombie, like we are, we are, we are pawns and it sounds conspiratorial. It's not at all, but it's true. It's like, I, I, I, all these computers and technology that capture our moves and our behaviors are owned by the, the,

creators of the device or the technology that we're using. And that's currency that we should have ownership of. Yes. Right. And we don't. And that's where the agency comes from. And so it was wonderful to see the kids like kind of like the light bulbs go on. And I was like, OK, this is amazing, because if these students who are in law or engineering or education or whatever sector they come from, if they realize this, when they go out into the world and, you know,

in whatever practice they do, if they keep that in their hearts and minds, like maybe they'll design and build something that puts, I don't want to say control in the right hands, but I guess that's what I mean when I say - Rebalances sovereignty. Yeah. Yeah. Like our own data. Like why should, who knows basically, you know, the layout of like the blueprint of my house and like what, like,

Why should those companies know that information? Like if they want information, they want to share it. I should get paid for that. That's right. Well, that's, that's an interesting movement. You know, and this is the, this is the web three movement. I think grace, which I'm, I'm really curious about where that takes us, which is the idea that, you know, because those technologies like blockchain or like, credentialing means that we might be able to create data sovereignty in a way that's unbreakable, at least until we get to quantum computing. That's another question.

But, you know, so, and I think, I think you're right. My reflection so often as someone working in this space, it's like the incentives are just misaligned. They're misaligned to true human flourishing. Like that data is, we can commercialize that data. And so it becomes this kind of constant extraction. And I feel like when you're with young people, you think about young people in schools too. These are the most addictive, powerful tools ever created. And it's like, how do we, how do we build like,

Louka Parry (34:50.158)
that ladder from information to knowledge to wisdom, to know when technology should be deployed to enhance connection, enhance the learning experience, as opposed to take us away from ourselves and in some ways disembodied us to get trapped in some other world. Like, are we choosing that? In another world that's false, that is probably untrue, you know, or misrepresenting. But can I take it back to like, I think of like tools like - Yes.

I think of filmmaking just because my brother's a filmmaker and film was part of my former lives. And okay, here comes the iPhone. I don't know if you guys remember the Blair Witch project that was - I'm old enough. Okay, so that for those who are younger, that's like when there's this really inexpensive movie that was a horror movie that literally was a blockbuster hit, but it didn't have the backing of studios. It was like somebody's DIY movie. And -

I think of like the tools, like how amazing, like filmmaking isn't this rarefied art anymore. Anybody with their iPhone can make a movie. But I think what people are fooled into is that just cause you have the tool doesn't mean you have the craft. It takes years unless you're a born savant and some like, I don't know. So like this one in a million, like amazing artists, like it takes years.

to become an amazing screenwriter. It takes a year to become an amazing director and filmmaker. And I feel like technology has shortcut or has created this perception of a shortcut. Like now that I have a tool, I can do it. And I love that people are doing it. Lo -fi, like, you know, like, sure, make a movie. Like it means nothing, you know, like there's nothing to lose. You can test it. You can try it. You can practice and practice. That's amazing. But.

Art, I feel like it is getting lost. Like it is like there's the art, like the, I don't know. It's like all of a sudden, like people don't have to work hard anymore. I don't know. I may get confounding ideas here. I don't think you are. I, I, we think a lot about this, our team in the work that we do with schools and cause schools are grappling with this systems are grappling with this. And the thing is it's the grappling that we've lost, you know, the productive struggle. And so our view like,

Louka Parry (37:17.326)
which we're very passionate about, but we hold lightly until new information emerges is that ultimately learning processes should have at their core grappling, productive struggle. And I think what's happened is this user, like the human  centered design has been co -opted by user centered design, which is really about commercial, a commercial implication, which is I'm going to make your life easier, Grace. So easy that you don't have to do anything difficult anymore. Whereas all of our structure and.

Education is about doing difficult things, you know? And so I just, I wonder, I think there's some wonderful practices  of schools that are really trying to design experiences, not just deliver content, try to design experiences where young people can discover more, can struggle and can, can I get to the other side of that and go like, wow, look at what I did, look at what I made, look at who I'm becoming instead of like the kind of shortcut world to the conv, I'll call it the convenience culture.

I think we need to be very cautious about, or at least, yeah, wary of where it's taking us. Cause I don't, ultimately this could de -skill us completely. and yet this idea of cultivating a craft is so rewarding. I mean, it seems like the whole point of life and education is to cultivate skills, things that mean you can contribute to a marketplace. You can contribute to a community, society in ways where you feel you're.

in your life, your own mission. You're using your time to come back to where we began in a really meaningful way. Yeah. I'm going to say something that might be helpful to the educators who might be listening that I have found really effective. And I'm borrowing it from Creative Gym, which in the study, the participants basically took an abbreviated version of Creative Gym. And in Creative Gym, we have...

experiences. There are 30 seconds that are one minute, three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes. It's not a project driven class. And we, and again, let's like connect it to the earlier in our conversation, like I'm going to lose 50 pounds. Like, well, I'm never going to start if that's really my goal, because that's not going to happen tomorrow. And I'm not going to feel rewarded or like I'm progressing if it doesn't happen. If I don't see something in a day or a week happening, right? It takes a long time.

Louka Parry (39:42.286)
to truly lose weight in a meaningful, healthy manner where it's my lifestyle and I can maintain it, et cetera. In terms of creativity, when we construct, let's say a 30 second or a one minute activity and we say, okay, okay, so I'll just give an example. We used to do this on pitch night at the D school. Everybody has a piece of construction paper and we say, you have 60 seconds and 60 seconds, I want you,

to transform that piece of construction paper into something that covers her face, still allows you to see, and is hands -free. And all you have are hands and that piece of paper. And literally like in the atrium of the D school, because you've been there, there's like 300 people, this is years ago when they used to have pitch night. And then, you know, like everybody would be like tearing their paper, trying to, you know, like make a mask, like, you know, I don't call it a mask, but like make a mask that,

allows you to see, so if you're walking around with it, you're not gonna bump into anything that you don't have to hold up with your hand. And you have 60 seconds. And in that 60 seconds, and I say, when you're done, hold it up, don't put it on. And then at the end of 60 seconds, and I'm like, okay, trade with the person next to you. And everyone's like, shit, like, no, you know, because like, if I have a big nose, I can hang it on my nose. If I have glasses, I can walk in my glasses, right? Like so many, like everyone's like, crap. And I'm like,

No talking, like don't give them instructions on how to put that on, you know? And then obviously like the main takeaway like is like, okay, when you solve a problem, it's not for you, but there's also rapid prototyping, there's materiality, there's bias to action. There's like so many other concepts packed in that six seconds. That like that, when they have that experience of making it, like whatever it is, A,

That's the wisdom. Like now it's part of the fabric of their being. And like when I say bias to action, like materiality, like that doesn't mean anything. But if I point to the experience they just had, it means something in some small way. And we do like, obviously like hundreds of these throughout the 10 weeks and varying sizes. But I feel like, you know,

Louka Parry (42:07.214)
when we talk about the latter and we talk about like as educators, how do we get, how do we do our job in a way that brings them like people to this point of I can do this. And if I don't know how to do this, I'm okay. I'm gonna go figure it out. And I'm gonna lean into the uncertainty. Uncertainty is good. That means I have the opportunity to learn something new, right? Like, I mean, there's so much packed into that, right? Like there's just so much like a,

reframing, you know, reflection. Like, I mean, all those things are important. Everyday behaviors. We should all be practicing. Yeah. Right. Like, I mean, when was the last time I kind of do it like once a year around new years, like what happened this year? Like, okay, what do I want to do this coming year? What should we be doing? Or, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Being self -aware. my gosh. So much in that. It strikes me about how powerful 60 seconds can be.

You know, when we really design it well and we design it, not just what we've designed it to cultivate our creative muscle. You know, you spoke about kind of, you know, creative atrophy before, you know, we can, we can learn to be more creative, but we need to continually cultivate that across our lifespan and understanding costs the neuroplasticity and what we know from that as well. It's never too late, but it must be continual. Use it or lose it. It's the old, the old saying, you know, you're, you know, fire together, wire together.

The old, the other thing, we get a bit nerdy, but look, I've got one final question. and it's from our very wide ranging conversation around creativity and education, technology, skill development, design, some of the work of the D school, the creative gym, you know, class you've been teaching now for 15 years, like what is your take home message for a teacher, a principal?

designer and innovator that's listening to our conversation at this point and what aren't you getting to the end if you are listening? Cause it's been a, we've covered some territory. what would you leave them with?

Louka Parry (44:16.718)
Honestly, like there's two things and it sounds so simple, but as, as evidenced by our conversation, like, you know, we say technology that can be that, like there's a million unanswered questions and topics around that. But the two things I would leave, or I want to tell people is just begin, please just begin. You have everything you need in between your two ears to build and create the life and the outcome you want.

There's nothing, I mean, literally nothing in your way. If you really put your mind to it and dare to suck fail it honestly, like find small ways of failing. That is how you're going to learn and progress. If you're not failing, you are not stretching or trying hard enough. Fact. Good grace. For me, the reflection is just be the best learner.

And I think everything you've just spoken about is like our role as people that educate is to continue to step into that learning pit, into the unknown, to be deeply curious and the way that your book finishes. And I love it. It's just four words. It says, go make something happen, which is, is kind of like the gift that we've got is to go and make something happen. We need all of us to make stuff happen.

if we're going to right the ship, you know, to make sure we're on the path that's going to lead us to flourish, you know, we need all of us to take action. Grace, thank you so much for spending time with us today for the Learning Future podcast. my God, such a pleasure. Love talking to you. I really hope we intersect at South by South by. I'll see you at South by. Yeah.

Friends, we've been speaking with Grace Hawthorne. She's an entrepreneur, designer, educator, author, and artist. She's the founder and CEO of Paperpunk, an award -winning origami and Lego mashup. And she's an adjunct professor at the Stanford D School where she teaches courses on creativity and failure, leads groundbreaking research, which we've heard about, on creative capacity building. And that's been covered by some pretty amazing publications like Scientific American and Wired. Do...

Louka Parry (46:39.118)
Feel free to check out her amazing Stanford D School guide that's recently released, Make Possibilities Happen, How to Transform Ideas into Reality.

Grace, wonderful to chat. Really love your energy and your perspective. And, and you know, what's really interesting is like, you get a real sense about somebody, about how much internal inquiry they've done. You know, I think clearly you've done a lot because how does one become creative without really trying to understand who we are structurally, you know, like what, what's our thing to bring to the world? You know, it's really beautiful to fuel you so in your life and on mission.

So I just want to honor you for that. And you too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you the good work that educators do. It's a wonderful thing. So it is, I feel so at home in this, in this community, really with other educators working to try to contribute a little bit to allow people to wake up, you know, to see the world act of seeing and, you know, and again, inspire others to inspire others. Yeah. Great. Cause I can't teach you anything. All I can do is create an experience in which you uncover learning.

You know, like it's kind of the humility of being the designer instead of the instructor is something that I, it's taken me a long time to try to discern. But yeah, look, thanks for going over as well. over time. I really hope we do connect. I'll look forward to it. that'd be great. I'll send you an email with my, my WhatsApp number. but I'll try to, I spoke with Leticia last week as well. And she said, she's going to be there.

Louka Parry (48:45.326)
again for the podcast. Hanging out with Sam. So I'm sure I got a text to catch up with him and Nana as well. I'm catching, I'm having to catch up and see what they're doing with all that stuff. So just such a wonderful community. Thank you. Enjoy Mill Valley. Beautiful part of the world. I look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you again. Thank you. Bye. Bye Grace. Bye.