Interview with with Maruja Gutierrez-Diaz

Below is the full dialogue from the video interview with Ms. Gutierrez-Diaz on the 2009 European Year of Creativity and Innovation.

Watch the video interview (in EN): LINK

• Why did you choose “Creativity and Innovation” as the theme for this year?

Two years ago, the Austrian Presidency proposed to do a European Year on music education. Apart from that, art education was also suggested, which is directly linked to creativity. When our Commissioner, Commissioner Figel’, met President Barroso, he said, “oh, creativity? But it is also linked to innovation!” And so like that, we came out with the theme of “Creativity and Innovation”.

• It’s an interesting topic…but not easy to define.
  

It’s a very huge topic. And it’s also complicated. What we found out is that everyone talks about creativity and innovation, but refer to different things. If you talk to a musician and a physician, their ideas of creativity are really different. So there’s a debate that is going on: what do we mean with creativity and innovation? We think that discussing it is already something positive, in particular when you are in a European context, because there are many cultures, many languages, many meanings of similar words…

The official working definition we referred to was produced in the UK in 1999: “Creativity is an imaginative activity fashioned to produce outcomes that are both original and valuable”.

You may ask, “value for whom?”, because art is art. We do not mean economic values, we mean cultural and personal values, and so even in a general definition we still have a lot to discuss and define.

• What are some examples of creative events taking place this year?

Many Directorate Generals are cooperating with us and organising events. To give some general ideas, we have a set of activities that relate, from one side, to political debate; and from the other, to “communication activities” which raise the awareness of Europeans about the importance of creativity and innovation.

The communication activities are taking place in different shapes and forms. The website (http://create2009.europa.eu/) is a very important tool, that now is what in the past was printed, as the core communication tool. It is accessible to everyone and allows for a closer communication in Europe but also in other countries of the world. We are talking about multimedia, culture, e-learning.

• What is the role of eTwinning in regards to creativity and e-learning?

eTwinning is about connecting people beyond frontiers, and the web provides a way to do this. It was born five years ago in the context of the e-learning programme and although we were very optimistic, it has actually worked even better that we imagined as there are now over 50,000 schools using it. It comes from the wish of teachers to work together.

So eTwinning is an innovative approach to European cooperation; it uses ICT tools, which we already use intensively in our daily lives to share and get information. eTwinning promotes projects between schools in different languages, to permit pupils to  discuss with people from different countries, from different cultures, and about different subjects.

• Which kind of teachers join eTwinning?

The creative ones! This is why we think that eTwinning is a platform that reflects how to foster creativity and innovation at school.

• Have you planned some other activities connected to creativity and innovation, specifically for teachers and schools?

There’s an initiative of the year that is called Eurocreator (www.eurocreator.eu) and it’s about teachers producing, with their pupils, very short videos of about one minute on creativity and innovation. It’s a fresh way to look at life, and at what they do. We hope at the end of the year to have a good library!

• Any words of wisdom for eTwinners?

Words of wisdom, no; but words of encouragment: you're doing great, keep it up! As we say in Spanish, “eTwinning va de miedo!”

Web Editor: Maddalena Monge Published: 29.05.2009 Last changed: 12.10.2011