Caine's Arcade: a Beautiful Story About a Boy and His Creativity

Caine's Arcade: a Beautiful Story About a Boy and His Creativity

Education April 14, 2012 / By Ben Weinlick
Caine's Arcade: a Beautiful Story About a Boy and His Creativity
SYNOPSIS

Caine’s arcade is an inspiring 10 min documentary about a 9 year old boy (Caine) and how he built a cardboard arcade in East LA.

This mini doc has much to teach us about creativity. One thing creativity experts often advise is to cultivate child-like curiosity. Cultivating child-like curiosity is about seeing things from a fresh perspective.  It’s about  exploring ideas without fear, and to turn off our inner naysayer for awhile.  We can learn about this kind of fresh thinking and  exploration from Caine.  Caine’s story and how it was captured also reminds me of how badly we need some innovation in our education system. We need to find ways to nurture creativity in kids before it is squeezed out of them by the time they finish high school.  As Ken Robinson, a leading creativity expert and critic of current education systems says,

“Our communities, our economies, our nations depend upon diversity… not conformity in the strict way our schools are being forced to promote… I think we underestimate our creativity, because of the way we’ve been educated. I don’t speak in criticism of teachers, but I think that we have to recognize that “this” system of education came about to meet the needs of a very different world; to meet the needs of the industrial economies of 19th and 20th centuries. The heart of the change is to have a different view of what people are capable of achieving.”

Caine’s story is for sure an example of a different view of what people are capable of achieving. So glad a person like Nirvan (the film maker) noticed the boy’s creativity and found a cool way to support him and let him know his ideas are awesome and worth spending time exploring.  Watch out for this kid, if he keeps receiving this kind of support to explore his ideas fearlessly, he will be a great innovator one day.

As of April 13th, and in only 4 days since the video came out, $143,000 has been raised for Caine's future education.  

Enjoy... Warning: Known to bring grown men to tears.

www.thinkjarcollective.com

comments powered by Disqus
RECOMMENDED
FOR YOU