the idea: write Sir Ken Robinson a letter and blog it

Once people become well known, it is much harder to contact them.  But my philosophy for this year is to just try, because the worst thing that happen is nothing.  And the best thing is worth that risk.  I couldn’t find Sir Ken Robinson’s contact information anywhere, not even an email on his website, so instead I’m blogging my letter and vainly hoping that somehow he’ll read it.

So here it is…

Dear Sir Ken Robinson,

My named is Miranda and I’m writing to you with a concern about your wonderful work.  I am currently reading The Element and in the course of my master’s degree I have been exposed to some of your other work as well.  I just read the chapter on it never being too late to find your Element and I loved it.  I’m planning to give it to my mother, who is 53 and just finishing her own masters degree.

But when I ended the chapter I was left unsatisfied.  Your writing spoke directly and incredibly well to my mother and her generation.  The current baby boomers who are watching their parents slowly pass away and debating whether they can do anything else with their own lives.  You told them that it’s never too late.

What about too early?

I am a nineteen year old graduate student.  I’ll complete my M.ed. in Community Art before I turn twenty in July.  I went to college when I was fourteen through the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, I’m sure you can guess how popular that made me with my old middle school classmates.  I graduated with distinction when I was seventeen and moved up to Boston to begin my adult life.  Living on my own, financially supporting myself, and going to graduate school.

I could do all this because I found my Element when I was a sixteen year old junior in college.  The only reason I found it then, or perhaps at all, was because I ignored the people who told me skipping high school was a bad idea.  The same people who, when first hearing about my achievements, didn’t ask about my degree or my education.  They asked how I felt about missing prom.  The same people now who, when hearing that I’m still a teenager (it feels strange to even write that sentence) immediately start taking my work less seriously.

Throughout your book you have wonderful stories from people who found their Element when they were young, even when they were children.  There is so much incredible material there.  But you don’t summarize, for all those people who think teenagers are only good for messing up and for the teenagers themselves lost in the cement walls of high schools, that it is never too early.  Never too early to have high expectations, to push yourself past what everyone else believes you can do, to find your passion in life.

I technically could still be a senior in high school, only thinking about SATs and college acceptance.  Realistically I should be a college sophomore balancing frat parties with finding out who I am.  Instead I’m surrounded by inspired teachers and artists, I’ve sold paintings, written novels, read books, performed music, told stories, and generally lived to the top of what I can.  Inspired by your work, Daniel Pink, Tina Seelig, Scott Belsky, Ellen Winner, and many more incredible people I am writing my own book for my master’s thesis.  Don’t Make Art, Just Make Something.  All while society still tells me I should have my head up my ass, caring more about a fake ID than about my life.

Because it’s never too late or too early to make something incredible happen.

Miranda