LA MIRADA, CALIF. — This weekend, Biola University’s Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts [CCCA] will host their 11th annual art symposium — “Openness to Experience: Rethinking Creativity and Aesthetic Intelligence.” The free, one-day symposium is Saturday, March 5 from 9 to 5 p.m. on Biola’s campus.


Cognitive psychologist and author of Wired to Create, Scott Barry Kaufmann is this year’s keynote speaker. Kaufmann researches intelligence, imagination, and creativity as the scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his master’s degree in experimental psychology from Cambridge University and his doctorate in cognitive psychology from Yale University.


Biola’s CCCA hopes to spark conversations at this year’s symposium surrounding the notion of creativity as “openness to experience” through exploring implications for the artist’s studio, the academy, and communities artists live in.


Other featured speakers include: Pixar Story Supervisor, Matthew Luhn; artist and professor at Wheaton College, Leah Samuelson; artist and graduate of California State University, Long Beach, Kiel Johnson; author of A Profound Weakness: Christians and Kitsch (Piquant Editions, 2005), Betty Spackman; and graduate composer of Biola University and University of Cincinnati, Trevor Gomes (’11).


Multiple Biola professors will be speaking including professors of art Jonathan Anderson and Luke Aleckson, and professor of cinema and media arts Mike Gonzales.


The CCCA believes deeply in the power of art and its capacity to impact human kind. The CCCA hopes to afford the Biola community and greater Los Angeles area with a wide variety of opportunities to experience and think about the arts and about that which artistic expression can teach the world. The center strives to encourage younger artists with visions for the possible and to create a gathering space for accomplished artists to learn from each other and to grow as well as prompt the recognition of the beauty and brokenness of the world to foster within us affection for it while recognizing that it stands in need of the healing that is the promise of God.

No registration is required; lunch will be provided.


For press passes or further information, contact Jenna Loumagne, media relations specialist, at (562) 777-4061 or jenna.loumagne@biola.edu.