Why are the arts valuable as a tool for professionals?

The arts provide a time-honored method to express and communicate information and perspectives in ways that are both personal and shared. Through the arts, experience can be represented, conveyed, and re-experienced anew, in rich and non-linear ways. The commonly heard suggestion that "a picture paints a thousand words" expresses one aspect of this perspective.

In John Dewey and the Lessons of Art, Philip W. Jackson offers a powerful statement of arts' value and import: "...The arts refresh our sensibilities. They aid in the reconstruction of old habits. They teach us new ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving."

What art forms does Working-Arts use?

Working-Arts uses art forms which already pervade the way we live and work and think. It uses diverse imagery collected from our culture, ranging from fine art to clip art; it also uses simple imagery of participants' own creation. It uses poetry in its most basic form, as this reminds us to listen to words for both their surface and their deeper meanings. It uses character, a very human construct for representing any point of view; character also has profound quality of humanizing a position while at the same time de-personalizing it. Working-Arts uses story, which is how the human brain organizes information and gives it meaning. Finally, it uses "dialogue", as artfully defined by physicist David Bohm. Other art forms are sometimes incorporated, and all art forms are welcome. Working-Arts is careful to focus, however, on art forms which can be incorporated into problem-solving tasks fairly readily, require no special skills, and will keep Working-Arts practitioners clean and ready for their next meeting or presentation.

How can Working-Arts be justified in today's economy?

Working-Arts is designed to be pragmatic and organic. All activities are oriented toward real situations and challenges being faced by the professionals in your workplace. The primary objective of Working-Arts is to increase professional effectiveness. Along the way, it aims to deepen the professional experience.