Fell alone on the Camino de Santiago. Phone lit up mid-fall: a former student replying to a birthday message I’d forgotten sending. Nobody schedules that. The plan was never the point. Being ready when it hit was. Twenty-Two Kilometres, out now: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

SEVEN YEARS. My father never explained Italy to me. He just lived it, quietly, and left me to find it myself. New Substack essay on grief, inheritance, and finally being ready to go back: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph

Alfie Kohn’s 2024 essay on cognitive load theory names it exactly: CLT “offers no recognition of the learner as an autonomous agent.” I didn’t get there from research. I got there from a classroom, and thirty years of watching compliance become voice, agency, advocacy: www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/clt/

We’re hiring: Director of Studies Lead academic quality and shape how the next generation of designers & creatives learns. 📍 Collingwood, Melbourne | Full-time Details → www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/44... Apply by 9am Thu 27 Aug.

My talk is now live: “We are educating imagination out of existence.” Obedience builds replicas. Imagination builds worlds. We’re teaching kids to be more like machines — when what the moment demands is proof they’re not. Watch here: youtu.be/EpmeylRPAJc?... #permissionistriumph

CONTACT IS NOT CONNECTION A friend from my 20s. A former student now running my old school. A woman met once in Johannesburg who still writes weekly. None lasted on feeling. Each lasted because someone kept writing back. New essay: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #permissionistriumph

Named on The Educator’s Most Influential Educators 2026 list. Truth is, influence isn’t a solo act. It’s students who show up and do the work. Colleagues who believe creative education isn’t a nice-to-have. Full list: www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/best-in-...

Six things happen to a person inside an institution: teaching, training, coaching, therapy, socialisation, formation. Only one fails unless you walk away capable of forming someone else. New Substack essay, Formation, live now: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #permissionistriumph

Alexander Stubb answered a question about happiness on Adam Grant's podcast, unscripted. What he said, I'd already written, six years earlier. Horizon is about hearing your own thinking spoken back to you by a stranger. New essay live now: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #permissionistriumph

Honoured to be joining ReimaginED Melbourne 2026 this October — among a galaxy of educators reimagining what’s next. My workshop: BELONGING BUILDS SUCCESS — Designing for Voice, Agency & Advocacy. Register: events.humanitix.com/reimagined-m... #ReimaginED2026

So proud of LCIM alumni Leah Wilkinson & Valentina Barros 👏 Their capstone collection features in @harpersbazaarec’s editorial “The Shape of the Body.” From the studio to the pages of Harper’s Bazaar Ecuador — this is just the beginning. #DifferentByDesign

WE’RE HIRING LCI Melbourne is hiring two Admissions Advisors on a 9-month fixed-term basis — a student-facing role guiding aspiring creatives through their admissions journey. Apply TODAY: jobs.dayforcehcm.com/en-AU/lci/LC... #DifferentByDesign

+ The machine writes the essay, composes the music, drafts the building. On demand, for the price of a prompt. The one thing it cannot counterfeit is a life it was changed by. Creativity was never the dessert. It was always the infrastructure. open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

Can the Real Creative Please Stand Up? A sold-out room, one big question: what does creativity mean when AI can produce more than ever? Thanks Dave King — the busywork is gone, what’s left is the real work. Bold thinking. Gut instinct. Proud to host TEDx Melbourne at LCI Melbourne.

THRESHOLD The tools forming our young are owned, and ownership is never neutral. A harvest grown on enclosed ground is not flourishing. It is yield. Stand at the threshold. Ask whose land it is. New Substack essay: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph

Sitting with the news of Professor Richard Scolyer AO’s passing. He and Georgina Long took melanoma from a death sentence to largely curable — thousands are alive because of it. But it’s his boundless love of life and selflessness I’ll remember. Thank you, Richard. With gratitude. Vale. 💙

Back on Mathew Green's The Art of Teaching after 3+ years. We talked human-centred learning — education shouldn't just inform, it should transform — and the work at LCI Melbourne. 🎧 podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/e... #TheArtofTeaching

He knew it would take him. He fought anyway — not for himself, but for every family who’d face the Beast next. That was Neale Daniher. I had the honour of interviewing him in 2017. Today we lost him. But the army he built marches on. Vale, champ. 💙 #FightMND

A sentence carved into a wooden play structure. Four Marist sisters in gangland Guatemala City. Sixteen years of carrying what I saw there. Essay 21 of #PermissionIsTriumph is the moment I claim it: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod...

Some places do not lift. They shift. Borobudur did that to me. The Great Wall. Florence. The boat pulling from Cinque Terre. My new essay is about what beauty actually does to the person who receives it. 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph

Tonight, my words travelled from Melbourne to Jakarta — English on my lips, Bahasa on the screen. Congratulations to the LaSalle College Jakarta Class of 2026. The world is your classroom. Go create the future. 🎓

Yesterday, Sir David Attenborough turned 100 — eight decades behind the lens, a voice that has carried us from the rainforest canopy to the ocean floor. He has been a beacon for our planet and for every living thing upon it. The greatest ambassador life on Earth has ever known. Thank you, Sir David.

The busywork is gone. What’s left is the real work. TEDxMelbourne x LCI Melbourne, 11 June. Dave King on creativity after AI. Bachelor of Business & Innovation — made for originals 🔗 melbourne.lcieducation.com/en/courses-a...

AN EVENT WORTH HAVING. NPS +85. 10/10 average. 100% promoters. Grateful to the audience, fellow speakers and the TEDx BurleighHeads ED team for an inaugural night that proved education is ready for braver conversations. Listen: youtu.be/EpmeylRPAJc?... #permissionistriumph

Seven years of keynotes. The data is right. The argument is sound. The situation has worsened. We do not have a knowledge crisis. We have a courage crisis. New Substack essay on #PermissionIsTriumph: adrianodiprato.substack.com/p/what-are-y...

21 April. World Creativity and Innovation Day. Creativity is not a luxury sector or a soft skill. It is how we imagine our way forward — across art, design, fashion, business, and every table where the future is being decided. Make something today. #WCID

The obstacle to creative life is almost never a lack of talent. It is a lack of authorisation. And the authorisation we are waiting for almost never comes from outside. My latest Substack essay on what it costs to claim permission. youtu.be/EpmeylRPAJc?... #PermissionIsTriumph

ONE QUESTION. Are we educating imagination out of existence? My #TEDxBurleighHeadsED talk is now live. If it resonates, share it with a teacher, a parent, or a young person who’s been told to stay inside the box: youtu.be/EpmeylRPAJc?...

THE BOX WAS NEVER THE DESTINATION. My TEDx talk is now live. Twelve minutes on why creativity must be treated with the same primacy as literacy and numeracy. The future will not arrive fully formed. It will be authored. By the audacity of human imagination: youtu.be/EpmeylRPAJc?...

POSSIBILITY HAS NO CEILING. Imagination is not a talent. It is an act of refusal. I carried that for years. It took a stage in Burleigh Heads to say it out loud. New Substack on what we lose when we educate imagination out of existence: open.substack.com/pub/adrianod... #PermissionIsTriumph