The Art Studio: Leadership Through Art

Innovation Statement

Students, corporate clients, and ISM staff use art to spark innovative solutions to business issues. This interdisciplinary approach relies on partnerships with other higher education institutions and the community.

Call to Action

Lithuania needs leaders who are able to face uncertainties and manage change during societal and economic transitions. This means that students, staff, and corporate clients need support to develop their creativity and visioning skills, and to start thinking “outside of the box” to gain new insights and perspectives. This will improve their ability to solve problems and design new products, processes, and practices.

Developing an awareness of fundamental art principles in students, executives, and staff enables them to build new practices and methods and to manage real-life managerial cases and environmental uncertainties in innovative ways. ISM believes that multidisciplinary education helps people to broaden their views and thinking. Moreover, by bridging business science and art, it is possible to connect business and society in a practical and inspiring way.

Innovation Description

The Art Studio, which is an integral part of ISM University, was established in 2004 and aims to develop connections between social sciences and art by stimulating imagination and fostering individual and group creativity.

During the years of its existence, more than 1,000 works of art have been created, the best 100 of which have been selected and systematically presented in the ISM art book. The ISM Art Studio has also organized more than 30 exhibitions in Lithuania and other countries, closely cooperating with local and international institutions such as Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Mykolas Riomeris University, Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, and Irena Mikuliciute Art gallery.

Exhibition presentations are usually accompanied by lectures, where techniques and concepts are introduced to the audience. They are delivered by the head of the ISM Art Studio, Edmundas Brazauskas, who also organizes seminars and in-company training for the companies willing to participate and who experiments in the process of creating art.

Impact

Students, corporate clients, and ISM staff use creativity in a tangible and artistic way and are able to address complexity with creativity and solve business issues in an innovative way that has been difficult or impossible to solve with the systems that created them, as Albert Einstein is famous for observing.

Using an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning, ISM establishes new partnerships with other higher education institutions and creates new learning experiences. ISM also strengthens links with the local community. For example, every year there is an exhibition of the paintings created by participants, and many people are able to admire the art created by the participating students, business executives, and staff.

Artistic process has proved that people are born creative if leaders provide an opportunity to develop talent in a safe and supportive environment. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.