Guiding Principles
By being part of the Baker's children theater, students of the Integration of Abilities philosophy, participating in Unlimited Potential, and being developers of the Learning About Learning Foundation, Herbert and Jarrell have developed a core of guiding principles that have carried throughout the work that each of these women do.
- All children, indeed all people, have creative potential.
- Each person has a unique “creative fingerprint”, which we can identify through a sensory vocabulary, and accessed and developed through the arts.
- Each of us is the expert of our own experiences, shaped by the environments, cultures, values and everyday worlds from which we have grown.
- Creative thinking and learning is a part of being human. It is a necessity for growth and a center for personal power, generating fulfillment and self knowledge for contributing positively to a rapidly changing world of problems and possibilities.
- Creative work demands time, tools, materials, and processes for investigation to explore, generate and play around with ideas. These creative tools enable us to make connections and find meaning in our world.
- Diversity and collaboration are essential values. A collaborative creative process is a necessary experience for working with and respecting different human strengths and perspectives, resulting in creations larger than any one person can do alone.
- Creative work needs a reflective component: a continual process of sharing, getting feedback, self and group reflection and ongoing refinement.