By: Natalie Shobana Ambrose
theSun, Malaysia (pg 12)
August 23rd, 2012
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/columns/onpointe
NASA's Mars rover, Curiosity is simply awesome. The intricacy and sophistication of just the first phase of this amazing feat speaks leaps and bounds about human brilliance but it also screams the importance of creativity.
If you’ve
watched the video of experts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the
challenges of Curiosity’s final seven
minutes to landing on Mars, you will see
not just intelligence but passion, imagination and vision all enabled and
empowered by a system that believes in not just narrow fields of study but
combining imagination to hard science. Gobsmacked is how I would describe it.
The whole
idea of Curiosity looks like a sci-fi movie, yet it is real and to add to the
whole jaw-dropping greatness is the fact that the team included a young Bobak
Ferdowsi fondly known as ‘Mauhawk Dude’ who now has probably brought sexy-back
to hard science . Could something like this be emulated in Malaysia?
The reality
of today’s world dictates the necessity to be versatile. The days of ticking
the box of mainstream safe focused occupations of lawyer, doctor, accountant
will get anyone and everyone a career for sure. But what would enhance a career
giving it an edge is combining skill with creativity.
We churn out
too many graduates for available jobs, but perhaps what we need to think about
too is the need to expand minds beyond a glowing report card. Sadly, our
schools are still stuck in striving for academic excellence when play and
creativity is equally important.
We lack
truly creative environments where people are allowed and encouraged to think
outside the box and push frontiers without being restrained by all the
hullaballoo of politics, race, religion and cultural acceptability.
We attach
little value to the arts and cultural heritage is not a high priority and seen
as an appendage of our national life instead of part of it. Yet, the arts in
not just for flamboyant characters or the wealthy but something that has the
potential to feed back into the economy. All the major cities of the world have
a solid theatre scene, Broadway , orchestras, and the likes. Not holiday to
London is complete without a trip to the theatre, and that does not just
include Phantom of the Opera but even
Avenue Q.
World class
cities integrate arts, culture and entertainment, and Kuala Lumpur is supposed
to be headed in that direction with a 2020 deadline. Yet juxtaposed against
these goals is the fact that, earlier in the year the Singapore Ballet was
banned from performing in Malaysia because tutus and tights are deemed
‘indecent’ and recently the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra debacle has
sparked a call to boycott its New York auditions. Not only do we not know how
to maintain good talent we disregard the immense local talent available.
Perhaps these events might warrant an increase in local talent being hired.
We need to
get away from the mentality that performers are there to entertain at official
functions and weddings while dinner is served. Sadly tis mentality permeates
throughout society. We need to realise
that they are partly keepers of our heritage, our history and our story not
just to the rest of the world but to our future generations. Maybe I am
somewhat biased towards the arts and encouraging creativity because my parents
both saw the importance of it and invested not just in paying but ferrying me
to dance and music lessons for years, but I see how much it has added to my
life, to my work and my world view, so much so that the name of this column is
a play of words stemming from my ballet heritage, my field of study and the
core sentiments of this column. I didn’t become a professional dancer or pianist,
but it was never money or time wasted because the lessons of discipline,
practise and performance have been invaluable.
There is so
much talent in this country, so much potential and so many who have given
themselves to increase the profile of arts, culture and inculcate creativity in
the future of Malaysia. As a country trying to make its mark, we have to
realise that academic accolades in today’s world means combining creativity and
diversity far deeper into our education systems but also in our research and
development goals. It means the ability to creatively translate the complicated
into something the masses understand – as did the NASA experts. Maybe then we
might be able to channel our curiosity into creating far more than we currently
do.
Natalie
hopes we will start including creativity and performing arts into our school
curriculums and encourage diversity.
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