The Imagination Muscle - Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them) | How To Academy

Mon, 24 July 2023

6:30 pm - 7:45 pm GMT

The Imagination Muscle – Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them)

Will Gompertz Meets Albert Read, MD of Condé Nast Britain

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Imagination is our most powerful muscle and our greatest source of fulfilment. Find out how to exercise yours with two of the country’s most influential and creative people.

Conde Nast’s MD Albert Read is on a mission to put the imagination back at the forefront of our lives.

Touching on art, music, film, literature, science and entrepreneurship, Albert joins How To Academy to examine how the imagination has evolved through the millennia, and how you can nurture and cultivate your own creativity.

His interlocutor Will Gompertz was a Director of the Tate Galleries and is now the Artistic Director of the Barbican. A household name from his time as the BBC’s first ever Arts Editor, he’s the internationally bestselling author of books distilling his insights from a lifetime of working with and learning from the world’s most creative people.

Spanning pre-historic times through to the twenty-first century, Albert and Will will explore to explore the genesis of ideas – from Thomas Edison’s serial embracing of failure to Jane Jacobs’ vision of how we should build cities together; from Steve Jobs’ approach to office design to the Japanese concept of Ma. They’ll teach us how to discover where to find ideas, how to foster skill in observation and connection, and how to be more attentive to the fluxes of our own minds.

In the new Age of Technology, it is more pressing than ever to harness the imagination in our day to day lives. Find out how in this one of a kind meeting between two of the most imaginative, influential, and celebrated figures in the creative industries today.

Praise for Albert Read’s The Imagination Muscle:

‘Anyone who has an imagination – that is, everyone – should read this book.’ – Edward Enniful

‘Beautiful, moving, profoundly imaginative in itself – this book is as entertaining as it is relevant and practical.’ – Alain de Botton

‘A sparkling romp through all the sunniest and most positive-feeling corners of the mind. A guidebook to free-thinking … A hymn to the capacity for delight.’ – Adam Nicolson

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Albert Read

Managing Director, Condé Nast Britain

Albert Read has launched and led businesses for Condé Nast in the UK, and across Europe and Asia, overseeing titles such as Vogue, GQ, Wired, Condé Nast Traveller and Vanity Fair. A former journalist, he has written for the Spectator, the TLS, The Times and the Telegraph. He studied Classics at New College, Oxford and has an MBA from INSEAD.

Will Gompertz

Artistic Director, Barbican

Will Gompertz is a world-leading expert in, and champion of, the arts. Having spent seven years as a Director of the Tate Galleries followed by eleven years as the BBC’s Arts Editor, he is now Artistic Director at the Barbican. Will has interviewed and observed many of the world’s leading artists, actors, writers, musicians, directors and designers. Creativity magazine in New York ranked him as one of the 50 most original thinkers in the world. He is the author of the internationally bestselling What Are You Looking At? and Think Like an Artist, both translated into more than 20 languages. See What You’re Missing is his latest book.