Sparking innovation with creativity is essential to ensure community-driven, future-ready libraries. Join us for this special event to hear from Mike Block about creativity, collaboration, and innovation.  Mike Block is a pioneering cello player, singer, composer and educator, passionate about cross-cultural collaboration through music, and committed to inspiring individuals and connecting communities. At this event, Mike Block will share pearls of wisdom about creativity and innovation intertwined with live performance of cello and song. We will also co-compose a new piece of music together during the event.

Learning Outcomes:

• Discuss what it takes to grow a seed of an idea to fruition
• Describe how to work collaboratively and creatively to generate innovation
• Sketch an idea to spark innovation at your library

Will this Workshop be Recorded? Yes, this workshop will be recorded and will be available for viewing on the MLS Vimeo Page.

Intended Audience: This workshop is appropriate for library staff at any level or position.

About the Presenter: Mike Block is on the faculty at the Berklee School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. As an innovator, Mike Block is among the first wave of cellists to adopt a strap in order to stand and move while playing, employing his patented design, The Block Strap.  Mike was the first standing cellist to perform at Carnegie Hall, which the New York Times characterized as “breathless...half dance, half dare.”  Since 2005, Mike has been a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, with which he has been featured as a cello and vocal soloist, contributed arrangements and compositions, and earned a Grammy Award in 2017 for their album Sing Me Home.

Learn more about Mike Block.

Listen to Mike Block perform.