Speeches and Presentations

“The answers are not ‘out there’. They’re already inside of your organization. I will work with you to create a vibrant culture of creativity and learning.”
– Peter Gamwell

Presentations and Workshops

Peter delivers dynamic and relevant keynote presentations on a variety of topics pertaining to leadership, creativity and learning. Whether your organization is involved with education, business, government or not-for-profit, he can work with you to customize a half-day or full-day workshop tailored to your specific needs and organizational goals.

Audiences are delighted and energized by Peter’s unique style. He does not pretend to have all the answers. Instead, he embraces the uncertainty we all feel regarding the complexities of our times, and helps lead us to make sense of our world in positive and yet realistic ways. He draws on the depth of his research and the range of his experiences to engage audiences into informed dialogue about possible pathways forward—and he uses storytelling and humor to wisely illustrate his messages.

Drawing on his research and his wealth of practical experience, Peter will challenge you to consider fundamental questions to foster positive growth, vibrancy and creativity in your organizations:
• What do healthy organizations look like? What have you already done that has started to create this atmosphere?
• What does a creative person look and act like? Why do we consider some people creative and not others?
• What are the conditions needed to draw out people’s unique creative capacities?
• What practical and implementable strategies can we put in place today, next week and in the coming year to foster healthier organizational environments?

By working together to find the answers to these questions and others like them, your organization will find the passion for lifelong and creative learning.

Presentation 1
Fostering Creative Organizations:
Making the Extraordinary Happen in an Age of “Inbetweenity”

With so many experts saying that imagination and innovation are crucial to our future, you might think about emulating creative companies like Zappos, Google, and IDEO. But do you notice what those organizations all have in common? They established their creative cultures as young start-ups, that’s what. What happens if, like most of us, your organization has been around for decades, steeped in traditional processes and rigid roles that put a choke-hold on creativity and beat it senseless every day?

In this lively and engaging presentation built around questions, ideas and stories, you’ll learn easily implemented and practical ways to catalyze and spark dialogue, learning and productive actions specific to your situation. In our complex, bureaucratic age, find out how you can transform your organization to embrace the new creative age.

– How do you set the stage to foster imaginative, creative and innovative organizational cultures? What barriers can you expect to encounter? What strategies can you use to move forward successfully? Peter challenges some common assumptions pertaining to leadership and learning, and provides suggestions and practical ideas to foster truly innovative and vibrant organizational cultures.
– What are the conditions for optimal learning and creativity to flourish? Peter will show you how to think through this crucial question—and suggests ways to move forward when the inevitable pushback occurs to organizational change.
– Learn about organizations that have successfully fostered creative learning cultures and find out we can learn from them.

Presentation 2

Preparing our Children for an Unknown Future – Future LearningCuriosity

The yearning to explore and learn new things—is an integral part of our human DNA. Yet at a time when learning and educational opportunities have never been more abundant, the idea of children disliking school is so common it’s become downright iconic in our society. Likewise, after graduation, our TGIF mentality extends to the workforce.

Why?
Drawing on extensive research, experiences, and intriguing stories, Peter Gamwell discusses how we need to update and energize our ingrained beliefs of human intelligence, human motivation, and human learning. During this thought-provoking presentation, you’ll learn how our schools—as well as other organisations—are structured on outmoded theories and practices that not only literally set students up to fail, but rob them and our society of their true talents.
Peter discusses how we can structure new systems informed and built on emerging and fresh understandings of human intelligence, motivation and learning. In schools, businesses, governments and organizations, it is critical that we recognize, value and tap into the capacities of everyone, rather than valuing certain forms of intelligence over others. This presentation:
– Exposes and challenges underlying assumptions that maintain a status quo delivery of education
– Offers alternative approaches based on emerging and fresh understandings of human intelligence, motivation and learning
– Describes how exciting new discoveries in neuroscience and learning theory can help guide us to reshape learning environments in exciting and dynamic ways
– Explores the connection between the experience of optimal learning, creativity, and well being
This presentation is also easily adapted to learning and optimizing employees’ capacities in the workplace.

More

Better You; Better Me; Better We; Making Creativity Happen.  Waterloo District School Board.

Bridging Creative Change.  Keynote.  Creative Oklahoma, Oklahoma City.

Making Creativity Happen.  Presentation to the International Principals’ Association, Cairns, Australia.

Making the Extraordinary Happen: Leading Creative Change. Presentation to the Canadian Association of School Administrators Annual Conference, Whistler, BC.

Distinguished Leadership Panel – conversation with Simon Breakspear. Canadian Association of School Administrators.

Optimal Learning in our Schools and Classrooms: The Holy Grail of Learning.  Aesthetics Conference, University of Ottawa.

Fostering a Culture of Engagement: Sparking the Conditions for Organizational  Creativity.  Keynote speech to the Engineering and Infrastructure Department, City of Ottawa, Ottawa.

A World of Inbetweenity – A Time Between Times.  Ignite Speech, Creative Alberta, Edmonton.

Leading Creative Organizations in Times of  Complexity. Keynote Speech, Creative Alberta, Edmonton.

Ingenuity – Engineering the Future: Sparking the Conditions for Creative Learning. Keynote Speech, Ontario Public Supervisory Officials Association, Toronto.

Making the Extraordinary Happen:  Leading Creative Organizations.  Keynote Speech to the Parks and Recreation Division, City of Ottawa.

Fostering Creative Organizations.  Presentation to the National Creativity Conference, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Leading Organizational Change:  Creativity and School District Reform.  Presentation to the Edmonton Public School Board.