Oklahoma Creativity Project (2005-2011)

Perhaps the most well known of the Kirkpatrick Foundation’s initiatives, the Oklahoma Creativity Project coalesced efforts to raise the conversation about creativity across all platforms. Culminating in the World Creativity Form, held in Oklahoma City in November 2010, the creativity initiative spawned Creative Oklahoma, Inc., a nonprofit 501c3 based in Oklahoma City. Conferences, college courses, competitive afterschool programming with ArtScience Prize, and a dynamic conversation about creativity continues today.

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Conservation Education Initiative (2007-2011)

Spearheaded by the Kirkpatrick Foundation, the Conservation Education Initiative convened several leaders in Oklahoma with a mission of teaching children to appreciate, understand, and protect the world around them. The Nature Conservancy took a lead role in facilitating the education outreach. The initiative resulted in a comprehensive website designed to inspire and educate Oklahoma’s children about environmental conservation.

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A+Schools Oklahoma

Through another of its creations, the DaVinci Institute, the Kirkpatrick Foundation gestated the arrival of A+Schools in Oklahoma, now a statewide network of sixty-eight schools that endeavors to help teachers and students think, plan, and behave more creatively. Based at the University of Central Oklahoma, this education reform model was born out of North Carolina and is spreading into several other states.

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The DaVinci Institute

The DaVinci Institute, Oklahoma’s “creativity thinktank,” is a unique private partnership of leaders in higher education. Their goal is to nurture the arts, humanities, sciences, and education in Oklahoma as the fields undergo transformations in the twenty-first century. In 1997, the Kirkpatrick Foundation convened a meeting of several faculty from Oklahoma’s public and private universities. The purpose was to identify resources and possible collaborative opportunities that would ultimately heighten Oklahoma’s cultural education climate.

A strategic planning process led to the formalization of this group in higher education. The DaVinci Institute, established in 1998 as a 501c(3) not-for-profit, functions as an Oklahoma-think tank whose mission is to promote a statewide creative renaissance through lectures, workshops, professional development, research, and advocacy.

In partnership with Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, the Kirkpatrick Foundation, and A+ Schools, in 2004, DaVinci Institute members began discussing the potential impact which would derive from transforming Oklahoma into a state that was noted for its creativity. Shortly thereafter, the Oklahoma Creativity Project was launched.

Visit them at their website.