James Haywood Rolling, Jr.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, I am a former elementary school art teacher, yet I have always viewed myself as a “creativity educator.” I am a full, tenured professor in arts education at Syracuse University, just completing six years of service as the 37th President of the National Art Education Association (NAEA). Founded in 1947, the NAEA is the leading professional membership organization for visual art + design, media arts, and museum educators, with net assets of approximately 5 million dollars and an operational budget of about 4 million dollars. Our 16,000 members include elementary, middle, and high school visual arts educators; college and university professors; university students preparing to be visual and media art educators; researchers and scholars; teaching artists; administrators and supervisors; art museum educators; and over 50,000 students who are members of the National Art Honor Society.
I was the primary architect and served as the inaugural Chair of the NAEA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) Commission which was convened in December 2019 as a critical step toward NAEA becoming a more antiracist organization. As Chair of the ED&I Commission, I led the effort to operationalize the 16 final recommendations of a specially convened ED&I Task Force I had served on charged with developing enduring strategic interventions toward enhancing and sustaining dynamic and inclusive professional communities across our diverse membership.
A recent Co-Director of Syracuse University’s Lender Center for Social Justice, I earned my BFA in fine arts from The Cooper Union, my MFA in studio research from Syracuse University, and my doctorate in art education from Teachers College, Columbia University. I am currently a member of the Board of Trustees at both The Cooper Union in NYC and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY.
In my role as the Interim Chair of the Department of African American Studies in the oldest and largest college at Syracuse University, I oversee nine full-time faculty members, two direct reports as departmental staff, the Martin Luther King Memorial Library and its librarian, and one ancillary unit known as the Community Folk Art Center, a vibrant, community-based cultural and artistic hub committed to the promotion and development of artists of the African Diaspora, led by one of our faculty with the support of four additional staff members.
Beyond my work in higher education, I’m excitedly working on my forthcoming book, titled "The Next Dawn: Humanity’s Creative Resilience in the Wake of Catastrophe," an exploration of human social history for models to be adapted here in our post-pandemic era from communities and cultures around the globe that came to the brink of disintegration—whether because of a plague, a devastating earthquake, an environmental catastrophe, an invasion, or a disastrous social collapse—but instead took their next creative leap.
In my earlier education, I earned an MFA in studio arts research from the Experimental Studios department that once existed at Syracuse University, having earned a fully funded Graduate Fellowship in the Department of African American Studies. I completed his doctoral studies in art education in 2003 under the mentorship of Drs. Graeme Sullivan and Judith Burton at Teachers College, Columbia University.
I am also the author of "Swarm Intelligence: What Nature Teaches Us About Shaping Creative Leadership," a surprising look at the social origins of creativity (Palgrave Macmillan); the "Arts-based Research Primer" (Peter Lang); "Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook About Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff That Matters" (AltaMira Press) and "Come Look With Me: Discovering African American Art for Children" (Charlesbridge); in addition to more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and commentaries, sixteen book chapters, and five encyclopedia entries on the subjects of the arts, education, creativity, and human identity. In 2020, I published "Growing Up Ugly: Memoirs of a Black Boy Daydreaming" (Simple Word Publications), an inspirational coming-of-age narrative tracing my own emergence as a painfully shy child raised in a struggling inner-city New York neighborhood who learned to rewrite the trajectory of my life story through the development of my own creative superpowers.
I was the primary architect and served as the inaugural Chair of the NAEA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) Commission which was convened in December 2019 as a critical step toward NAEA becoming a more antiracist organization. As Chair of the ED&I Commission, I led the effort to operationalize the 16 final recommendations of a specially convened ED&I Task Force I had served on charged with developing enduring strategic interventions toward enhancing and sustaining dynamic and inclusive professional communities across our diverse membership.
A recent Co-Director of Syracuse University’s Lender Center for Social Justice, I earned my BFA in fine arts from The Cooper Union, my MFA in studio research from Syracuse University, and my doctorate in art education from Teachers College, Columbia University. I am currently a member of the Board of Trustees at both The Cooper Union in NYC and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY.
In my role as the Interim Chair of the Department of African American Studies in the oldest and largest college at Syracuse University, I oversee nine full-time faculty members, two direct reports as departmental staff, the Martin Luther King Memorial Library and its librarian, and one ancillary unit known as the Community Folk Art Center, a vibrant, community-based cultural and artistic hub committed to the promotion and development of artists of the African Diaspora, led by one of our faculty with the support of four additional staff members.
Beyond my work in higher education, I’m excitedly working on my forthcoming book, titled "The Next Dawn: Humanity’s Creative Resilience in the Wake of Catastrophe," an exploration of human social history for models to be adapted here in our post-pandemic era from communities and cultures around the globe that came to the brink of disintegration—whether because of a plague, a devastating earthquake, an environmental catastrophe, an invasion, or a disastrous social collapse—but instead took their next creative leap.
In my earlier education, I earned an MFA in studio arts research from the Experimental Studios department that once existed at Syracuse University, having earned a fully funded Graduate Fellowship in the Department of African American Studies. I completed his doctoral studies in art education in 2003 under the mentorship of Drs. Graeme Sullivan and Judith Burton at Teachers College, Columbia University.
I am also the author of "Swarm Intelligence: What Nature Teaches Us About Shaping Creative Leadership," a surprising look at the social origins of creativity (Palgrave Macmillan); the "Arts-based Research Primer" (Peter Lang); "Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook About Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff That Matters" (AltaMira Press) and "Come Look With Me: Discovering African American Art for Children" (Charlesbridge); in addition to more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and commentaries, sixteen book chapters, and five encyclopedia entries on the subjects of the arts, education, creativity, and human identity. In 2020, I published "Growing Up Ugly: Memoirs of a Black Boy Daydreaming" (Simple Word Publications), an inspirational coming-of-age narrative tracing my own emergence as a painfully shy child raised in a struggling inner-city New York neighborhood who learned to rewrite the trajectory of my life story through the development of my own creative superpowers.
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Books and Chapters by James Haywood Rolling, Jr.
Companies and organizations everywhere cite creativity as the most desirable – and elusive – leadership quality of the future. Yet scores measuring creativity among American children have been on the wane for decades. A specialist in creative leadership, professor James Haywood Rolling, Jr. knows firsthand that the classroom is a key to either unlocking or blocking the critical imagination. He argues that today’s schools, with their focus on rote learning and test-taking, work to stymie creativity, leaving children cut off from their natural impulses and boxed in by low expectations. Drawing on cutting-edge research in the realms of biological swarm theory, systems theory, and complexity theory, Rolling shows why group collaboration and adaptive social networking make us both smarter and more creative, and how we can design education and workplace practices around these natural principles, instead of pushing a limited focus on individual achievement that serves neither children nor their future colleagues, managers and mentors. The surprising truth is that the future will be pioneered by the collective problem-solvers, making this a must-read for business leaders, educators, and anyone else concerned with nurturing creative intelligence and innovative habits in today’s youth.
This new book does not present yet another narrative of the pathology of being Black in America. In fact, the story of being Black in America has always been a story of transformation; as such, this book should be considered a Cinderella Story and is so titled. Blacks are not stricken with a social malady—we have been changing at so fast a rate, we are still awkwardly learning to adjust to our new collective body. Some of the data capturing this transformation stares back at us in the mirror—our own physical bodies, with variations of hue that are astounding if we were to be contained within the single signifier that identifies one as being Black. And that is the point. We are more than we are expected to be. Usually darker-skinned than most but not always, our hair usually more curly, but not always, our noses and lips usually more broad, but not always. Our bodies are still as varied as always—that much has not changed. Yet, the signifier—being Black in America—has been entirely transformed. The data is right in front of us.
In this work I have struggled to depict identity as a continuing and episodic work of art, and the arts as a continuing work of identity—a network of aesthetic organizing systems capturing all we hope for, need, feed upon and desire. Cinderella, who once worked amongst the cinders, was saved from monstrous caricature just as I was, just as any spoiled identity may be overwritten, through a series of episodes, a constellation of reinterpretations."
Articles by James Haywood Rolling, Jr.
Companies and organizations everywhere cite creativity as the most desirable – and elusive – leadership quality of the future. Yet scores measuring creativity among American children have been on the wane for decades. A specialist in creative leadership, professor James Haywood Rolling, Jr. knows firsthand that the classroom is a key to either unlocking or blocking the critical imagination. He argues that today’s schools, with their focus on rote learning and test-taking, work to stymie creativity, leaving children cut off from their natural impulses and boxed in by low expectations. Drawing on cutting-edge research in the realms of biological swarm theory, systems theory, and complexity theory, Rolling shows why group collaboration and adaptive social networking make us both smarter and more creative, and how we can design education and workplace practices around these natural principles, instead of pushing a limited focus on individual achievement that serves neither children nor their future colleagues, managers and mentors. The surprising truth is that the future will be pioneered by the collective problem-solvers, making this a must-read for business leaders, educators, and anyone else concerned with nurturing creative intelligence and innovative habits in today’s youth.
This new book does not present yet another narrative of the pathology of being Black in America. In fact, the story of being Black in America has always been a story of transformation; as such, this book should be considered a Cinderella Story and is so titled. Blacks are not stricken with a social malady—we have been changing at so fast a rate, we are still awkwardly learning to adjust to our new collective body. Some of the data capturing this transformation stares back at us in the mirror—our own physical bodies, with variations of hue that are astounding if we were to be contained within the single signifier that identifies one as being Black. And that is the point. We are more than we are expected to be. Usually darker-skinned than most but not always, our hair usually more curly, but not always, our noses and lips usually more broad, but not always. Our bodies are still as varied as always—that much has not changed. Yet, the signifier—being Black in America—has been entirely transformed. The data is right in front of us.
In this work I have struggled to depict identity as a continuing and episodic work of art, and the arts as a continuing work of identity—a network of aesthetic organizing systems capturing all we hope for, need, feed upon and desire. Cinderella, who once worked amongst the cinders, was saved from monstrous caricature just as I was, just as any spoiled identity may be overwritten, through a series of episodes, a constellation of reinterpretations."
-Historical Frameworks of Leadership and Advocacy within Arts Education
-The Role of Research and Practice in Arts Leadership
-Curriculum, Arts Integration as an Agency of Change
-Collaborative Practices in Creative Leadership
-Public Policy and Institutional Practices
This article begins with the questions posed by John M. Wilson in his 1998 article, "Art-Making Behavior: Why and How Arts Education is Central to Learning." Wilson asks: The cultural behavior that has most piqued social biologists’ curiosity is altruism. Why does an individual knowingly sacrifice his or her own interest, or even life, for another’s survival?...When survival of the fittest is the law of nature, why would the “fit” on occasions struggle, at their own peril, to preserve the “unfit”?"
My travels were sponsored by the Interfaculty Graduate Program in Aesthetics and Art History of the University of São Paulo, Brazil's largest university and the country's most prestigious educational institution.
During this period I was interviewed on the theme of "Complicated Conversations: Arts and Design Practice as a Species of Research." Sharif joined in. The questions we were asked to respond to, in order of query were:
1. How do you define yourself?
2. Can you share some words about your visit to Brazil?
3. Is "arts-based research" a new methodology for the production of art?
4. In the context of "arts-based research" you could talk a little more about the relationship between art and science? What are the main differences between arts-based research and scientific knowledge producing methodologies?
Follow-up: How did your interest in arts-based research begin? How did you get started; what caught your attention?
5. When your journey began, was the idea to create a new set of methods for asking questions in research?
6. What kinds of knowledge are acquired from artistic practice that informs the practice of "arts-based research?"
7. What has been the reception to this research paradigm?
8. Can you tell us a bit about your book "Cinderella Story?"
9. Has the arts-based research paradigm been used by contemporary artists in their creative processes?
10. How can scientists benefit from a knowledge of arts-based research?