Kumar, who runs a degree course in product design and is herself an engineer by training, believes students are pigeon-holed into narrow fields instead of being encouraged to pursue scientific and artistic subjects.
“In schools, the barriers between sciences and arts need to be broken down. When I was in school, if you were good at sciences they pushed you into that box because they could not accept that you might also be good at art,” said Kumar.
She said creativity is an important part of all disciplines and it is a fundamental mistake to artificially divide learning into hard sciences and creative arts. “The more cross-disciplinary education you receive, the better you are at problem solving.” Kumar suggests modules in creative thinking would also help bring inventive thinking into every walk of life.
“My strongest subjects were maths, art and physics so I had to decide at a relatively young age whether I wanted to go down the arts route or the sciences route – there was no way I could do both. So I took an evening art course. Giving kids a whole-brained education is essential,” she said.
Stereotypes of men in lab coats have discouraged young people, particularly girls, from studying engineering and science in school and university, according to Kumar. Students tend not to associate engineers with glamorous work, she says, despite the central role of inventors and scientists in finding solutions to everyday problems.
Earlier this year Kumar launched a competition for secondary school students in Ireland to help encourage an inventive spirit. Students were invited to come up with any invention that would make their schooldays easier.
The Creativity Ambassador said the level of inventiveness was encouraging but some students said they had never before been encouraged to be creative. She hopes to roll out the competition, called Imaginate, across Europe and will extend its scope to include primary schools next year.
The Ambassadors of Creativity and Innovation are currently finalising a manifesto which will be published in the autumn. “My contribution has been in the parts related to creativity and innovation in education, and also in the role design has to play in our future,” said Kumar.
