Bravo on the Failure Fair
by Mike Davis, Ph.D.
Head of School
Time for a shout-out to our local Museum of Contemporary Art here in Denver for offering a Failure Fair and a $10,000 scholarship for Colorado high school seniors for, you guessed it, failing bigger and falling harder than anyone else. It is one thing for organizations to talk about the value of failure; it is entirely another to attach your name, a celebration, and a significant monetary award to it.
Head of School
Time for a shout-out to our local Museum of Contemporary Art here in Denver for offering a Failure Fair and a $10,000 scholarship for Colorado high school seniors for, you guessed it, failing bigger and falling harder than anyone else. It is one thing for organizations to talk about the value of failure; it is entirely another to attach your name, a celebration, and a significant monetary award to it.
The Museum is looking to reward “projects that incorporate creative risk-taking.” Says the application, “MCA Denver recognizes that artists put forth something new in the world without knowing if what they create will be embraced or ridiculed; in short, risking failure.”
MCA Denver says it created the Failure Fair to encourage this “artistic spirit among young people. They say they are seeking submissions of projects that demonstrate the courage to go against the grain of the everyday – to risk being ridiculous, impossible, fantastical, or merely impractical. We are looking for students who have found the freedom to create something new in the world.”
Many educators today talk about the value of failure, and many students and parents cringe at the idea. As a society, we are so invested in never failing that we often paralyze the learning process.
Henry Petroski, a professor of engineering at Duke University, researches how failure impacts the progress of design. He says, “From an engineer’s point of view, a failure can contain all sorts of helpful information.” He continues, “The biggest misperception people have about failure is that it is all bad.” Petroski emphasizes how failure offers “lessons in humility.” He the author of 15 books, including To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, as well as the book, Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design. Petroski has also written histories on the design of the pencil, the toothpick, and the bookshelf.
Henry Petroski, a professor of engineering at Duke University, researches how failure impacts the progress of design. He says, “From an engineer’s point of view, a failure can contain all sorts of helpful information.” He continues, “The biggest misperception people have about failure is that it is all bad.” Petroski emphasizes how failure offers “lessons in humility.” He the author of 15 books, including To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, as well as the book, Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design. Petroski has also written histories on the design of the pencil, the toothpick, and the bookshelf.
To my mind, failure can be a bold statement about one’s courage to take risks, to be open to an unexpected outcomes, and to value the journey of learning just as much as the final destination. Much that we have done at Colorado Academy over the past several years has been to create the physical and educational spaces that foster failure and experimentation.
If your calendar is open on April 23, consider a trip to the Museum to see the annual Failure Fair in action when the finalists in the competition will present their projects to the public. And yes, seniors, there is still time to enter. The deadline is March 20. Check it out: http://mcadenver.org/failure.php
© 2023 Colorado Academy
