Have you ever had your creative side shut down? Told you should forget about (insert whatever creative—but not realistic passion) either by a parent, a teacher, and or friend? I remember when I was in elementary school I had a big passion for dancing, theatre, and singing. For my school’s “air-band” talent show, I choreographed 3 lip-sync dances one year. I always looked forward to these annual events as they were my favourite time of the school year. All classes stopped for 2 days and in rotation students from each grade came took time to watch their peers perform. Not just students watched, parents came too! It was all very fun.
If I were to repeat such an experience at this age, I would be frightened and embarrassed. Recently I have developed a fear for public speaking. I don’t know when exactly this insecurity started but it has become increasingly something I have to work through as I get older. I find that funny because I always imagined getting older equated to being more confident and having the tools to do/be whatever you dream. (yes I am an idealist and big optimist). This is proving to be a slightly less realistic belief. People at my age, don’t want to mess up because they want to find a job/ fit a certain mold in some instances in order to get somewhere else that they may desire. Listening to Ken Robinson’s speech helped me understand some reasons for this impediment of creativity.
“Children have extraordinary capacities to be creative”. Creativity, according to Robinson, is the ability to generate new ideas that have value. For now, forget about looking at the exact value of a child’s creativity because that can also be inhibiting. Watching kids, it is evident that they are far less inhibited to express their ideas, move their bodies and not binding be the conventional boundaries. It could be because they have not been conditioned by society, or that they don’t them yet, but I also believe it is because children are less frightened of being wrong and if they are they usually make something up.
Making something up when you don’t know the exact answer in university or in any form of education or even the workplace is considered very wrong and inacceptable. So people don’t. People would feel very ashamed because it would make them look bad. I once had one job where whenever I suggested some sort of improvement to the boss he got all flustered and would make every possible excuse not to make any changes. I got the message from him to: stop thinking creatively and just do your duties. Unfortunately I noticed that productivity and energy into improving his business decreased. It was painful because I knew if he could be open to being adaptable he would make much more profits because operations could run more smoothly. This is an example of how creativity can directly help in bringing value to a situation.
Ken Robinson’s speech hit on many interesting points but what I got out of listening to him was a validation that creativity should be incorporated throughout our lives.
So I encourage you start painting, dancing, singing, picking up that instrument, or whatever it is that you were told you should forget told to suppress!
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html