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Radio review: Creative thinking a gateway to the future

Playing with Lego bricks today could be a head start in the job market of the future
Playing with Lego bricks today could be a head start in the job market of the future Playing with Lego bricks today could be a head start in the job market of the future

Bringing Up Britain: Creative Kids - BBC Radio 4

Elaine Paige/Johnnie Walker - BBC Radio 2

CREATIVITY will be central to the future of our children - so said presenter Mariella Frostrup in what was a fascinating conversation .

For years, arts subjects have taken second place to Stem subjects - and the cost of a university degree has put students off arts subjects which have no obvious career path.

Goodbye the birth of the novel, women in 19th century literature, Beowulf and Marie de France - hello something with a decent job at the end.

I say this as someone from an arts background who married someone from an arts background and (hooray) gave birth to a computer software type... a kind of relief.

The question this programme asked is: Are we bringing up children creative enough for the future?

The World Economic Forum forecasts that by 2020, creativity will be in the top three most important skills for future jobs.

Many of the children going into school now will grow up to do a job that does not exist yet.

There was a debate about Lego - the new sets offer a specific end result as opposed to supplying the bricks and leaving it to the child's imagination.

Suddenly it makes sense that modern job interviews ask you to list the uses of a paper clip... think creatively, O brave, new world.

Sunday afternoons on Radio 2 are a trip back in time.

Elaine Paige played Marti Webb singing Take That Look Off Your Face and I'm back to the kitchen sink at home doing the Sunday dinner dishes in the days pre-dishwashers.

There was Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and Roy Orbison's Oh, Pretty Woman - follow that up with Johnnie Walker's Sounds of the Seventies with guitarist Elliott Randall, and ain't life in marigolds sweet?