Our Playful unlearning exploration continues with a second round of articles, films, and talks! Playful unlearning is a reboot of the brain (read more about our Playful unlearning theme here) — and we can all use some help figuring out how to do that! We’ve gathered up more of our favorite creative rabble-rousers, artists, filmmakers, and even neurologists who have inspired us about why it’s so important to shake things up. Have you stumbled into anything around these topics that you’d like to share? Leave it in the comments! Finally, check out our first round here.
1. Bounce
This film crosses time, languages, and continents to discover how the ball (yes, that simple spherical object) has staked its claim on our lives and fueled our passion to compete. Equal parts science, history and cultural essay, Bounce removes us from the scandals and commercialism of today’s sports world to uncover the true reasons we play ball, helping us rethink our universal connection to games we love.
2. The Happy Film
Renowned Austrian graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister turns himself into a design project: Can he make himself happier? Can he train his mind in the same way he can train his body? With meditation, cognitive therapy, and drugs he devotes three months to each technique to see which works best. The result is a beautiful documentary co-produced with Ben Nabors.
3. Top 10 tips to keep your brain young
Elizabeth Amini, CEO of Anti-AgingGames.com, presents a TED Talk about the changes we can make to keep our brain in shape. Want to know how to reduce the risk of Alzheimers by 33%? Walk for 30 minutes a day, 5x a day, 5x a week. Amini’s knowledge around brain health reinforces for viewers the truth that any aerobic activity that pushes blood and oxygens into your brain will help keep you sharp. Interactive games and social activities grow neurons, while smoking in mid-life doubles risk of dementia. Take care of your noggin!
4. Why Learning is as Vital as Unlearning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is happening now, and organizations are going to have to embrace change to stay relevant.” So writes Deb Geyer, Chief Responsibility Officer of Stanley Black & Decker, on the World Economic Forum’s blog. “Today, even as 10 million global manufacturing jobs remain unfilled due to gaps in skills and education — gaps that will only widen as Industry 4.0 technologies advance — the 4IR future requires all of us to unlearn and relearn in order to create new paths forward.” Check it out, and get to know the 4IR.
5. Building Cities of Lifelong Learning
The Drucker Institute has spearheaded a digital open-source learning center network of “Cities of Lifelong Learning.” South Bend, Indiana- what mayor Pete calls “the Beta City’’ — has launched the first phase of the project. The system was designed, above all, to help the working-age population obtain and retain better jobs. It’s aimed primarily at lifting up the most under-served and economically vulnerable. Be inspired by this new lifelong learning system — one that begins in early childhood and carries through humans’ entire working lives and into their senior years.
6. Where Joy Hides, and Where to Find It: A TED Talk by Ingrid Fetell Lee
The self-proclaimed “Nancy Drew of joy”, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee, reflects on joy, and how we can integrate it into our work. Intense positivity can be technically linked to science- joy, she says, can be measured. “Happiness is about how good we feel measured over time, but joy is in the moment.” So where does joy come from? For Lee, it’s cherry blossoms, tree houses, googly eyes, fireworks, and ice cream cones… how about for you? Where can joy take your designs?
7. The Default Mode Network of Aesthetics and Creativity
The default mode network (DMN) is a network of interacting brain regions that are active when a person isn’t focused on the outside world. In other words, it’s the area of our brains that are active during times when we’re more inwardly-focused. In this discussion, Felicity Callard and Daniel Margulies present a discussion about the DMN at a 2-day symposium of world-renowned neurologists from around the globe. The DMN has been hypothesized to generate spontaneous thoughts during daydreaming, and may be crucial for self-referential mental processing, social interactions, and, ultimately, the understanding of many neurological disorders.
