I'm creative, are you?

There, I've said it.  It's even online, so it must be true.  

The truth is, one of the driving factors of why I even started this class is related to that statement.    As soon as I tell someone I'm an art teacher, I will often hear apologies or regret emanate from their lips. 

"Oh, I wish I were creative!" 

"I can't do any of that crafty stuff!" 

"I'm just one step above finger painting!" 

"I can't even draw a straight line!" 

And I think to myself,  how sad. These are completely competent adults who have let themselves believe that they are unable to access a very vital part of their brain. There are all types of creative thinking. Some people are good with paint, or words, or numbers or figuring out how to keep an old engine running.

"Creativity and innovative thinking are essential life skills that can be developed." 

This is the first Enduring Understanding, (EU),  in the next generation of National Visual Arts Education Standards (to be completed and released Spring, 2014).

This is pretty exciting stuff, "essential life skills".  Everyone is creative, and I can prove it to you if you promise to let go of the stereotype that you have to be able to draw realistically in order to be creative.

Two summers ago, I attended an International Creativity Camp called MindCamp in Orillia, Ontario.  It was the first conference that I had ever gone to that wasn't for educators.  It was for creative professionals.  It had never occurred to me before then that people actually get paid to help other adults access their creative abilities.  I guess when you are the classroom for so long, you tend to get educator tunnel vision.  I attended many sessions on creative problem solving, design thinking and even took a class where I got to mess around on a ukelele.  It was great.  I hope I get the chance again sometime soon.  I picked up some pretty great definitions of creativity although I regret now that I cannot credit the sessions I got them from directly. Here's the summary:

Everyone is creative. Some seem more creative than others.  This is why.

Highly creative people make up stuff at least twice, once for themselves and than once again to put out into the world.

imagination: To conceive of something which is not  (think of a pink giraffe... can you? ok, you have an imagination)

creativity:   To put an imaginative thought out into the world (draw that giraffe badly or write a poem about it, or sew a stuffy one or tell a joke about a pink giraffe, do something with the thought and you have created something!)  Not so tough, right?

innovative:  To put an imaginative thought out into the world that is of use to someone else This is a little more advanced, but you can do it. ( put your crummy giraffe drawing on a t shirt, develop pink hair dye for giraffes, use the giraffe logo as your trademark during breast cancer awareness month).

We all have imaginative ideas, highly creative people just have more practice throwing their ideas out there and have learned how to quiet their inner critic. 

Disclaimer: “Creative Endeavors” is an experiment in helping people recognize their own creative potential. Everybody goes to middle school. I’m catching them here before they grow up. I’m on a mission to change the world, one kid at a time!