When my partners and I created Blue Man Group 19 years ago, we had no idea that our journey would lead us to start a formal educational program. Today, with the partnership of our spouses and the motivation of our own children, plus the children in our expanding community, launching and running The Blue School has become our passion.
Blue Man Group, started as an outrageous idea: We wanted to inspire creativity in both our audiences and ourselves. We wanted to speak "up" to the intelligence of our audience members while reaching "in" to their childlike innocence. We wanted to create a special kind of company, a place where people continually learn and grow and treat each other with just a little more consideration than is usually evident out in the "real world." We wanted to recombine influences to create something new. And we wanted to have a good time doing it.
The basic mission and values of Blue Man Group have transferred remarkably well to an educational setting. Now we have a new outrageous idea: We want to create an educational program where creativity is cherished and encouraged and where children fall in love with the joy of learning. We want to create a healthy, warm, safe, nurturing environment where community is paramount, and where children's interactions between classes is just as important as what happens during classes. We want to create the kind of educational program we wish we'd had for ourselves and dreamed we'd have for our children; a place where people feel like there is genuinely no better place to learn and to grow.
In building our program, we want to remove the kinds of educational practices that we believe are not working so well and amp up the "best practices" and innovations that we believe have great promise. We want to draw from powerful influences, old and new, and recombine these influences with cutting-edge research and a few of our own flourishes to create something the world has never seen. And we want to have a good time doing it.
Since first establishing The Blue Man Creativity Center Early Childhood Program, we have been awed and humbled by the enormity of this project and have been blown away by how far it has come so quickly. In undertaking a project of this magnitude, we realized that we needed to balance our outsider's perspective with that of experts from inside the field. To that end, we assembled a team of inspired teachers and consultants to help us realize our vision.
Our program is not for everyone and we are comfortable with that. But if you find that our approach resonates with you, then please contact us. We need families who believe a new approach to education is within our grasp. It will not be easy, and it will require enormous amounts of resourcefulness, will and commitment from all involved - teachers, parents, children and administrators - but we believe that we can create a special school like no other. If you want to be part of turning this vision into reality, then please come join us.
Matt Goldman
The Blue School Co-Founder, Blue Man Group CEO
(on behalf of Co-Founders Renee Rolleri, Chris Wink & Jen Wink)