If you only have 10 minutes to spare right now, skip the rest of this blog and go straight to this article. If you have a few more minutes, stay with the blog (I’m not typing for nothing here, folks.) But I’ll keep it brief.
 
The link is to a Newsweek article published this past July (in the vast Webiverse, you never know when you’ll stumble onto things). Its premise is that the US—global engine of innovation on so many fronts—is losing its creative edge: that is, its innate, societal ability to innovate and create.
 
That might seem like potentially good news for the UK. But it is in fact very bad news because the article unpicks, lucidly and in detail, the reasons this may be happening. And many of the wrong turns it reveals are about to be taken here, not least in the proposed scaling back of 'creativity' and creative provision as key focus areas for our schools, not to say society in general. I’ll stop there, the better to allow you to read the article.

Ok, one last comment: this is precisely the kind of case that we need to be making right now to government, whether local or national (it's also the kind of mainstream journalism we need, but that's another blog). The great irony of the Newsweek piece is that it cites the UK as being among the countries doing it right, creativity and innovation-wise. There’s still time to keep it that way: if you like this piece, don't hesitate to forward it to your local MP or if you're feeling bolshy, to the PM or appropriate minister.