Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

By the Dodge program staff

(Part two of a three-part series)

Last Monday we started to bring you the voices of our grantees as we explore how the themes of creativity and sustainability relate to each other. We provided you with the following context: 1) We sent essay questions to a sampling of 40 arts, education, environmental and place-based nonprofit organizations, asking them to help us define creativity and sustainability and offer their thoughts about systems-thinking, connections, values, design and “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAGs); 2) We identified several orientations that described the relationship between creativity and sustainability; and 3) We are considering these stimulating, seasoned and (at times) provocative answers as we frame a set of guidelines and philanthropic strategies that will have as powerful and positive an impact as possible.

Today we explore with you the following orientation:
Creativity = Sustainability

A key New Jersey education figure said, “Creativity is an essential ingredient in developing sustainable communities, in part because people will need new models to learn from and to inspire them…I would suggest that creativity and sustainability… are powerfully and inexorably connected in that each is the servant… and the master… of the other.” (more…)