Guest Speaker: Welby Ings

By Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted:

Creative Cities Southern Hui warmly welcomes WELBY INGS as delegate and guest speaker. Welby’s talk, Disobedient voices, will feature at the Creative Connections event on Thursday 30th November.

'Creativity is disobedient thought…
…Questioning is the very source of creative thought.'

Welby Ings is a Professor in Design at Auckland University of Technology and an elected Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts. He has been a consultant to many international organisations on issues of creativity and learning.

In 2002, he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Tertiary Teaching Excellence and the New Zealand Government Award for Sustained Tertiary Teaching Excellence. Welby believes his greatest commitment is to teaching.

In his view, teaching is not simply dissemination of knowledge, rather, it is creating an environment for learning. Welby believes effective learning involves ongoing, intelligent, disobedient acts that help to move knowledge beyond the constraints of formula. In March this year his book, Disobedient Teaching, was released to wide critical acclaim.

Welby is also a multi-award winning designer, film-maker and playwright. His two short films, Boy and Munted, were selected for numerous international film festivals including Cannes. Boy was shortlisted for the 2006 Academy Awards.

Welby believes there are scholars who write, analyse and contextualize, and then there are scholars who create. He sees himself as the latter, and creativity as part of normal human thought. 

Welby’s talk is titled Disobedient voices: Short film, cultural capital and why it is easier to get your work acknowledged internationally.

Creative Connections aims to explore creativity as the touchstone of healthy, sustainable communities and celebrate the power of collaboration to inspire.

View Welby’s award winning films here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oxUSid2U4I
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/boy-2004