A white sheet of paper lays on the desk in front of the high school student. She carefully folds the edges, creasing the paper to make it into something else. A couple of folds later, the sheet has been transformed into a paper airplane. She picks it up and aims it at the wall. She refolds and throws it over and over, trying to modify the plane so it will get nearer to a spot on the wall. Eventually, the plane loses its shape and she crumples up the plane and throws the ball. It hits the mark. This exercise was attempted over and over by students around the world, in the U.S., India, and Canada, in Aparna Katre’s Creativity Workshop.
Allyson Hilgeman, a senior, was one of the UMD students who used a virtual format to help the participants with the course. Hilgeman will graduate in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in cultural entrepreneurship, but she is interested and proficient in so much more: psychology, Spanish, French, international relations, public relations, and communication.
Hilgeman says, “This assignment was designed to demonstrate stereotypes. The airplane was the stereotype and hitting the target on the wall was the goal the students wished to achieve.” When several students took an unexpected route and crumpled up their paper airplane into a ball, they were rewarded with success.
Workshop Sessions
The four-week workshop, entitled Creativity for Entrepreneurship, focused on helping students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. These were not just Midwest students. These high school age students came from across the planet. They hailed from a high school in India; tribal nations near Winnipeg, Canada; a high school in Two Harbors, Minnesota; and the Family Freedom Center in Duluth, where Hilgeman led the class.
UMD students helped high school students apply creative thinking by performing activities. They played games in a 3D virtual world and at home in their physical space. They reflected on the outcomes with their class and their teachers. All the exercises were aimed at thinking creatively, which is a necessary skill for entrepreneurship.
The Creativity for Entrepreneurship program was developed by Aparna Katre, an associate professor and director of the Cultural Entrepreneurship degree program at UMD. Katre and other faculty members reach out to a huge range of audiences and a variety of populations, in addition to the students at UMD.
In spring 2021, not only did Katre lead the Creativity for Entrepreneurship sessions that Hilgeman was involved with, she taught a similar class for adults. She aspires to work through her students to transform communities; to use creative ideas to “make cities attractive, build up their populations and energize economies.”
Katre’s classes pay special attention to the things that inhibit all creativity, for high schoolers as well as adults. They learn to look outside of their own culture and environment. They are challenged to take different viewpoints of a problem and use experiences to learn.
Lessons for All
Hilgeman found the workshop valuable for the high schoolers. “It was really cool because the students I worked with were a little standoffish at first, but they got more and more engaged the further we got.” She said the students gained confidence. “It was kind of funny because they didn't believe that they had good ideas, but when they realized their ideas met goals, you could see that built a lot of confidence.”
This journey, for these four classrooms, helped students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. It helped Hilgeman too. “It's the passion that you could see building within the students that was the most rewarding,” she says.
About the Cultural Entrepreneurship program
UMD student Sara Guymon, who is a journalism student, co-wrote this article. Sara works with Cheryl Reitan in University Marketing and Public Relations.