By Douglas Eby
“There is a myth, common in American culture, that work and play are entirely separate activities. I believe they are more entwined than ever before.”
Laura Seargeant Richardson, a principal designer at global innovation firm frog design, continues: “A playful mind thrives on ambiguity, complexity, and improvisation—the very things needed to innovate and come up with creative solutions to the massive global challenges in economics, the environment, education, and more.”
From my post Creative Development: Actively Caress Wonder. Play.
Creative endeavors often start small.
One of a number of articles about him notes that “Nine-year-old Caine Monroy spent last summer creating an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store in east Los Angeles, armed with little more than packaging tape and whatever materials he could find.
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By Douglas Eby
“I have never been a fan of learning in a classroom. Inside a laboratory or a garage, I always wanted to know more, but never inside a classroom.”
Caltech physicist Caolionn O’Connell, PhD.
“It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions.”
Ken Robinson continues, “Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves.
“To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.” [From his book "Out of Our Minds."]
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By Douglas Eby
“They wondered if that capacity for creativity they remembered from their youth would or could ever return.” Lisa Rivero
How can we successfully hold on to the creative thinking and passions we had earlier in life?
Ken Robinson and many other writers and leaders warn that too many children are having their intellectual and creative abilities eroded by educational institutions.
We may find inspiration to be more creative in art classes and writing workshops – but what if our very sense of being creative has been eroded by ordinary schooling?
In his acclaimed TED conference presentation in 2006, Ken Robinson referred to the “really extraordinary capacity that children have, their capacities for innovation…” – but added, “And my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly… creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
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By Douglas Eby
“Graduates from creative writing programs do not include insecurity, rejection and disappointment in their plans.” Dani Shapiro
“The feeling of frustration is an essential part of the creative process… Before we can find the answer — before we probably even know the question — we must be immersed in disappointment.” Johan Lehrer
We may get all enthused about a creative idea – a section of a novel or play, a dance routine, a concept for a photograph – but then we have to face the often frustrating challenges of making that idea real – while facing inner and outer hurdles.
The photo is Nicolas Cage as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in ‘Adaptation’ (2002).
You can see a brief video clip from the movie in the article Why We Don’t Create, by coach and writer Cynthia Morris, who notes, “The original impulse of an idea is fun, energizing, exciting. The actual path to executing and completing that idea is fraught with our very human fears.”
Creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD warns this is one of our challenges. He says, “Only a small percentage of creative people work as often or as deeply as, by all rights, they might be expected to work.
“What stops them? Anxiety or some face of anxiety like doubt, worry, or fear. Anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person.”
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By Douglas Eby
Definitions of the word “improvise” include “to compose, play, recite, or sing on the spur of the moment, without previous preparation” and “to make, provide, or arrange from whatever materials are readily available.”
One of the elements of creativity tests such as the widely used Torrance Test of Creative Thinking is questions about “unusual uses” – such as, “How many uses can you think of for a tin can?”
That sounds like a cognitive sort of improvisation.
You can see drawings by children and adults who took the Torrance Test, plus evaluations by creativity scholars James C. Kaufman and Kyung Hee Kim, in the post How Creative Are You?
The photo is Keith Jarrett. His Amazon.com page lists his albums and notes he “has come to be recognized as one of the most creative musicians of our times – universally acclaimed as an improviser of unsurpassed genius.”
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By Douglas Eby
“I don’t believe that when you get into a creative place, you’re giving up thinking. You’re super-thinking – better and with more parts of your mind than you do normally.”
That is a comment by social psychologist, teacher and author Susan K. Perry, PhD from our interview.
She added that there is a ‘busy mind’ aspect of our thinking, which “means you’re fragmented, you’re unfocused, distracted, too many things on your mind.
“You want to get to a place which is both loose, relaxed, and focused.
“What I found in my studies of flow are that two things you need to do to get to this place where time stops and you can be most creative, are to loosen up, and focus in. It’s a paradox, obviously, to be loose and focused at the same time. And they overlap, and one may come before the other.”
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By Douglas Eby
“I just thought making movies was something done by geniuses, and I was very clear that I wasn’t one of those.” Jane Campion
When “The Artist’s Way” author and creativity coach Julia Cameron has asked people to list ten traits they think artists have, their responses have included: “Artists are broke,” “Artists are crazy,” “Artists are drug-addicted” and “Artists are drunk.”
Other myths and ideas about being an artist:
“Artists must be poor and sacrifice their well-being for their art.”
“Artists should accept the solitary life and find solutions on their own.”
“You can’t be a mother and a successful artist.”
“Artists are right-brained and aren’t very good at left-brain stuff like running a business.”
As creative people, even after achieving some recognition for our talents, we can experience self-critical thoughts and insecurity, such as impostor feelings – sometimes based on these kinds of myths we have picked up about creative “genius” or artists.
Director, writer and producer Jane Campion, praised for “The Piano” and other films, once commented, “I never have had the confidence to approach film making straight on. I just thought it was something done by geniuses, and I was very clear that I wasn’t one of those.”
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By Douglas Eby
“To assume, then, that such diseases usually promote artistic talent wrongly reinforces simplistic notions of the ‘mad genius.’” Kay Redfield Jamison
In an interview for the NPR radio program Fresh Air with Terry Gross, science writer Jonah Lehrer commented, “One of the surprising things that’s emerged from the study of moods…is that putting [people] in a bad mood — making them a little bit sad or melancholy — comes with some cognitive benefits.
“So sadness, although it is not fun and is not pleasant, it does sharpen the mind a little bit.
“And one of the long-standing mysteries in the field of creativity is this correlation — and this was first identified by Kay Redfield Jamison and others — is people suffering from various kinds of depression and creative output.”
He continued, “People who are successful creators — especially writers — are anywhere between 8 and 40 times more likely to suffer from bipolar depression than the general public. And no one’s known what to make of this.”
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By Douglas Eby
With the upcoming movie The Hunger Games generating so much media attention, I was interested in learning more about the author Suzanne Collins, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
First, though, if you don’t know the plot of her trilogy, a Parade magazine article summarizes:
“The story’s unlikely heroine is 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in Panem, a country that’s risen from the ashes of North America after natural disasters and warfare took their toll.
“Once a year, boy and girl ‘tributes’ are chosen by lottery from each district and forced to compete in the Hunger Games, an event televised throughout the land and manipulated for maximum ratings. The last one left alive is the winner.”
The article notes that despite the violent content, “educators have been among the series’ most ardent proponents. Nicole Mailloux, a seventh-grade teacher in Clark, N.J… persuaded her school to buy enough copies for 60 students so she could base an entire semester on the trilogy, even staging a mock version of the Games.
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By Douglas Eby
As noted in his HuffingtonPost profile, Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD is “a cognitive psychologist specializing in the development of intelligence, creativity, and personality in education, business, and society.”
The British magazine Psychologies has an interview with him in a section titled TWITTER CHAT: Creativity about “kick-starting your creativity including how to cultivate a creative mind-set, dealing with a creative block and how to stretch your imagination.”
Here are some excerpts – with Twitter-submitted questions from a number of people, and Dr. Kaufman’s responses:
[How do I maintain confidence and self-belief in the face of rejections from fairs/festivals/exhibitions?]
Scott Barry Kaufman: Reconceptualise what rejection means. Everyone faces obstacles! Learn what you can from it and move on. Self-belief comes from within.
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