Creativity - Never mind thinking outside the box - we need a new box!
Creativity – most certainly not my strong point, certainly not in the artistic sense of the word, the kind were you can look at the inside of a bare room and imagine something of a boutique nature, or look at someone’s overgrown back garden and all of a sudden imagine a sanctuary. For me, this a very special kind of creativity, an artistic kind that is more than just creativity but the ability to replace the emptiness in front of you and transform it entirely with wild imagination.
I’ve always been good at coming up with ideas or somehow they just pop into my head, not even through any tangible endeavour. Ideas that are more inclined to respond to a particular issue or set of needs, and can be delivered in the form of a project.
Over the years, I have developed quite a few ideas and have managed to transfer many of them into physical, tangible projects through hard work, dedication and sheer endeavour not to mention a bit of stubborn never-say-die-attitude. I’m a ‘if I put my mind to it I will make it happen’ kind of person, but then again, ask me transform your back yard with ponds, shrubbery and hedges, I’m almost certain to be stumped.
In order to maximise our creativity we need to be able to imagine, but imagination is not something that is readily nurtured in our lives. Much of our imagination can be found in our natural state of daydreaming, but how often as a child, or even as a young person were we told to stop doing exactly that. Or to even stop dreaming, be realistic, focus, stop your mind wandering sort of thing.
At school, we are conditioned only to remember stuff and then recite it when called upon and being punished when we can’t. The we go onto a college where for maybe the first time, we have to think for ourselves but we’re directed to the library to find answers in books that are usually locked away in someone’s bedroom. Then as a result, if we come up with alternative theories in an effort to show our creative side we are inevitably marked down because we exceeded the remit given to us.
If not college, we go into jobs where we are expected to fulfil a role, and expectation already determined for us - a job with very little space for trial and error. Perhaps we don’t go into that job but rather ‘sign on’ with ‘the dole’ and proceed to slowly fall into a rut, where much of our potential for creativity is lost whilst we wait for our big break. Or we decide, feck it all - we’re gonna be an entrepreneur or innovator, or what’s now often referred to as a disruptor, only to realise that most entrepreneurial efforts don’t succeed. Boom! And before we know it we’re well into our 20s trying to imagine what our future looks like.
It’s hard work to imagine a time in the future where the masses have the necessary acumen to be creative if we don’t radically rethink how we educate our children and young people, or at least nurture, much more effectively, their imagination, and creative side.
Imagination (particularly in Britain and Ireland) is reinforced as something that’s limited to the kitchen and garden, given the number of TV programmes dedicated to it, where if you have a few quid you can create some ‘Grand Design.’ If you find old antiques, belonging to a parent, grandparent or an extended family member you can bring it to an expert who will lovingly restore it for you. Creativity, at least culturally, feels as if it’s in the hands of someone else and limited to a select few.
Therein lies the problem, the challenges of the future, even in the immediate, requires creative and imaginative solutions, yet most of us are ill prepared, which tells you something about our system of education. I might be able to recite Irish history of the twentieth century (which will fade of course with time) but ask me to re-imagine how my battered old kitchen might look before a make-over and you’ve got me.
There is of course a theory, a political school of thought more probably, that our education system does serve a particular purpose in that it keeps the ‘plebs’ in place - we can’t have everyone looking to be presidents, pioneers and prime ministers if you will, or chaos will ensue.
We need to view creativity as not just the domain of innovators, entrepreneurs and disruptors that only takes place after formal schooling is complete.
It has to be something that we nurture in children and young people from an early age, where creativity often comes from mistakes or the unplanned.
It is something that shouldn’t be rushed, it’s a process whereby play is fundamental to it and that it’s vital that kids understand what’s going on around them so they can make sense of the world in order to contribute.
It is not defined, or even confined to where they live, that ‘Brainstorming’ (or whatever the politically correct term is these days) is a very natural part of learning, where all ideas are welcome, and that it can happen not only in groups but also on an individual basis.
It’s essential that daydreaming is indeed understood to be a very natural part of our make-up and is conducive to imagining, and not limited to those who are most vocal or speak most often.
