- Speaking and Scholarship
The Future Creative
Exploring the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence, and preparing learners for a world where creative work is fundamentally transformed.
As generative AI reshapes creative industries and processes, we must reimagine what it means to be creative, how we cultivate creative capacities, and what role education plays in preparing the next generation of creative professionals and thinkers.
What is The Future Creative?
The Future Creative is both a concept and a call to action. It represents individuals who can harness the power of AI and emerging technologies while maintaining the uniquely human elements of transformational creativity.
The concept first emerged through Matthew’s speaking engagements and conference presentations and has since become a central focus of a course he teaches at the University of Connecticut.
Developed from his experience in design and technology, along with a synthesis of creativity research and future thinking, The Future Creative is explored in greater depth in the forthcoming book The Future Creative: 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education, co-authored with Matthew’s bestest professional pal, Dr. Cyndi Burnett.
The Future Creative expands beyond traditional creative fields to include anyone who intentionally uses their skills, knowledge, and imagination to advance experience, innovation, and understanding.
It represents an ideal embodied by teachers, scientists, policymakers, and everyday individuals who contribute to the continuous evolution of our digital culture and shared knowledge.
Yet unlike past waves of digital creativity during the rise of the personal computer and the World Wide Web, The Future Creative underscores the shift brought about by AI technologies, ushering in a new era of transformation in how we think, create, and learn.
The challenge before us is to guide AI toward supporting creativity and learning, not toward weakening these skills or limiting the future of high-level human creativity at work.
Four Key Questions
As AI continues to reshape education, Matthew’s thinking is anchored by a set of core questions that have emerged through his writing, research, and presentations on the topic.
Will AI help close the creative divide—or exacerbate it?
This question examines how AI may widen or narrow existing inequities in technology use, particularly between individuals already experiencing first- and second-level digital divides and those who can leverage technology to produce high-level creative outcomes.
What happens when “good” is no longer good enough?
As AI increasingly produces competent, “good-enough” work, this question explores whether all learners—and all adults—will be able to reach the higher levels of creativity, expertise, and originality now required to stand out in an AI-enhanced world.
How can students recognize AI’s limits without the expertise to judge true originality?
This question addresses the challenge of helping students distinguish between ideas that merely sound new—often generated by AI—and the kinds of advanced and transformational creative contributions that high-achieving experts produce in the real world
How do we combat the convenience trap in an age when learning is increasingly transactional?
This question examines how AI’s efficiency can tempt students to bypass the struggle, depth, and iterative processes that build real understanding and creative capacity—and what educators can do to protect the value of authentic learning.
Speaking & Presentations
Matthew’s keynotes, presentations, and workshops bring The Future Creative to life across educational settings, with the flexibility to design additional sessions tailored to your goals.
The Future Creative: Generative AI, Creativity, and the Future of Learning
Keynote: The League of Women Voters 2025
A comprehensive exploration of how generative AI is reshaping creative work and what it means for education. This keynote examines the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence, offering frameworks for how AI can support and not hinder student creativity.
Key Topics:
- Why Process Matters More Than Product
- Understanding the Limits of AI and Creativity
- Escaping the Convenience Trap in Teaching and Learning
- The Power and Promise of Transformational Creativity
Target Audience:
Educators, Administrators, Technology Coordinators
- Duration: 45 minutes
- Format: Keynote
The Future Creative: Nurturing High-Level Creative Competency with AI Technology
Workshop: National Association of Gifted Children 2024
This presentation examines what AI can—and cannot—contribute to the creative process, emphasizing the uniquely human capacities that drive high-level creativity. Matthew explores how experience, empathy, and expertise shape creative intention in ways AI cannot replicate, and how educators and learners can leverage AI as an augmenting tool rather than an automating shortcut. Through this lens, the session highlights the delicate balance between human creativity and technological capability, and what it means to cultivate advanced creative competency in an AI-enhanced world.
Key Topics:
- Why increased productivity isn’t the same as enhanced creativity.
- The uniquely human capacities—experience, empathy, and expertise.
- Balancing automation with meaningful augmentation.
- Ethics and responsible AI use in the creative workplace.
Target Audience:
Industry Professionals, Community Leaders, K-12 Educators, University Faculty
- Duration: 60-90 minutes
- Workshop
The Future Creative: Renewing the Critical Call for Creativity and 21st Century Skills
Keynote': The Big Noise Summit 2024
This presentation uses future thinking to explore the imagined career journey of Aria Novak—a “Future Creative” navigating an AI-driven world. Through Aria’s story, Matthew illustrates how creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, adaptability, and other 21st-century skills remain essential for success in the rapidly evolving landscape of work. By grounding these ideas in a compelling narrative, the session highlights why these human capacities will only grow in importance as technology continues to advance.
Key Topics:
- Why high-level creativity drives transformational innovation.
- How AI supports side-hustle culture for highly creative people.
- Why 21st-century skills remain essential for every Future Creative.
- Navigating ethical and responsible AI practices.
Target Audience:
K-12 teachers, university educators, parents
- Duration: 45 minutes
- Format: Session
- Coming Summer 2026
The Future Creative
10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education
Fueling Creativity in Education: 10 Actionable Strategies for Teaching the Future Creative builds on 100 interviews conducted with world-renowned creativity researchers, highly respected scholar-practitioners, and veteran educators about creativity in education.
Readers of this book will learn about the field of creativity, starting with influential ideas and frameworks that emerged during the middle of the 20th Century before reading how evidence-based practices can inform how teachers can successfully nurture the potential of The Future Creative.
In the book’s second part, chapters provide a detailed overview of each action, incorporating outside voices of teachers and researchers and connecting real-world stories to creativity research. Each chapter then concludes with strategies for fueling creativity in every classroom and grade and for every student and subject.