Study Visual Arts Through The Nine Discoveries
A multi-year professional education in visual arts and creative development for adults, with a founding cohort planned for 2027.
Explore Professional Education
The Nine Discoveries®
A Framework for How Things Emerge, Develop and Take Form
The Nine Discoveries® is a developmental framework, explored today through professional education, publishing, and work with organisations. It began with more than twenty years of direct observation, and now extends across creativity, human development and wider systems.
What The Nine Discoveries Is
A Developmental Framework, at Its True Scope
The Nine Discoveries® is a developmental framework for understanding how things emerge, develop and take form across different scales, from nature and human development to creativity, organisations, societies and eras. It offers a way of observing progression, not a fixed set of rules for any one field.
Why This Matters Now
Understanding Development Matters More Than Ever
As technological and informational change accelerates, the capacity to recognise how things genuinely develop, whether a person, an idea, an organisation or a wider system, becomes increasingly valuable. Observation, curiosity, imagination, intuition, experimentation, judgement and responsiveness remain fundamental human capacities to cultivate.
These are the capacities The Nine Discoveries is concerned with, not simply the creative outcomes they can produce. A finished piece of work does not, on its own, show that these capacities have developed.
This understanding grew from more than twenty years of direct observation of how development takes form, first made visible through creative education, and now understood to extend across other scales of human and organisational life.
The Areas
Four Ways Into The Nine Discoveries
Read Work Shaped by the Framework
Books and educational resources exploring the framework at different scales.
Explore PublishingUnderstand the Framework
The developmental framework itself: its origins, scope and applications.
Explore The FrameworkExplore The Nine Discoveries for Organisations
A developmental lens for organisations, institutions, schools and educational institutions.
Explore For Organisations
Founder & Origin
Built on More Than Twenty Years of Observation
The Nine Discoveries was developed by Hisae Sophia Dias, an author, artist and educator, through more than twenty years of direct observation and creative education practice. Working closely with children over that time, she began to recognise a recurring structure in how development takes form, one that appeared to extend beyond the context in which she first observed it.
That observation grew into a broader framework for understanding how things emerge, develop and take form across creativity, human development and wider systems. She continues to shape this work today through her writing and educational practice, and through its application in different contexts.
Publishing
Published Works from The Nine Discoveries
The Nine Discoveries® is expressed in writing as well as in education. Two published works explore the framework at very different scales.
In Practice
The Framework in Practice: Kids Art Fun
Kids Art Fun is a separate, licensed real-world application of The Nine Discoveries® framework in children's creative education. For more than a decade, Kids Art Fun has brought creative education into direct practice with children and families.
Professional Education
A Professional Education in Visual Arts
The most developed area of The Nine Discoveries today: an indicative three-year professional education in visual arts and creative development for adults. Founding cohort planned for 2027.
For Organisations
Applying The Nine Discoveries at Organisational Scale
Organisations and institutions develop over time, much as people do. The Nine Discoveries® provides a developmental lens for considering how that development is unfolding at organisational and institutional scale, including for schools and educational institutions.
Stay Connected
Stay Connected to The Nine Discoveries
Not ready to choose a specific area yet? You are welcome to stay connected and hear from us as the work develops.
Thank you
You will receive occasional updates as the work of The Nine Discoveries develops.