By admin

Lesson Three: Putting Creativity at the Core of Your Communication When I do creative work, I want to generate something that is not only interesting and engaging, ideally it should move people to contemplate taking action or thinking differently. When I write poetry or fictional prose, I am also charged…

By Richard Landau

Recently, I was listening to a very funny routine that comedienne Wanda Sykes recorded for HBO about her decision to come out. At its core, her presentation is about what I call “self-disclosure.” She talks about how it is more difficult to be identified as gay than it is to be identified…

By admin

Lesson Two: The Power of the Subconscious Mind Really successful creative people have learned to utilize and harness the power of the subconscious mind and they naturally and easily access it. I’ll explain by picking up where I left off last time. So, as an ad agency Creative Director, I…

By admin

Lesson One: No Straitjackets, No Vacuums The first rule of creativity is: create the right conditions for the creative process. Now that has little to do with the room you are in or the mood you are in. The right condition for the creative process is all about giving yourself…

By Richard Landau

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and some of that city’s Somali community are at odds.  Acting on what it thought were the concerns of the Somali population, the TDSB is considering a modified curriculum and services for the children of Canadians of Somali extraction to deal with a dropout…

By Richard Landau

Can we force a minority community to either integrate outsiders into its activities or disperse? These are the questions at the heart of a recent debate in Thornhill, Vaughan – an upper-middle class community north of Toronto. A local Shia Muslim congregation had proposed to erect a 17-storey, 205-unit residence with retail…

By Richard Landau

Responding to public opinion, the City of Edmonton has pulled a controversial bus placard ad campaign that some believe conveyed anti-Muslim sentiment.  The campaign placed on the tail of many Edmonton Transit buses and ostensibly pitched at young Muslim women, included the headline: “Is Your Family Threatening You?  Is There…

By Richard Landau

I grew up in Québec.  We saw nuns in full habit everywhere: in schools, driving cars, the shopping centre.  That Québec … steeped in religion, where penitents mounted the stairs to Montréal’s Oratoire St. Joseph on their knees, has rapidly faded. Under the proposed new charter, a nun in habit,…

By Richard Landau

David Carment (Religious Freedom? This office is about ethnic votes, Feb. 21) has theorized in the Globe and Mail that the federal government’s interest in the establishment of the Office of Religious Freedom is being driven by an agenda of political gain here at home.  I’m not so sure.  It seems many in…

By Richard Landau

Interfaith dialogue, as we have known it, that peaceful, sanguine and polite discourse, is dead.  Yes, dead.  The day of treating everyone like equals with equal truths in the marketplace of ideas is… over.  The day of fascination with the “exotica” of others’ faiths…is done. This is a new era that calls for…