Free to be you and me

My friend John recently posted an article on Facebook (click here to read) about creativity in children and how to harness that as an adult. The article makes some great points about creative energy, but I think that a large part of the creativity that we lose as adults comes from a growing self-consciousness. Kids are genuinely happy just to be creating, they don't worry themselves during the process about how the finished product might turn out.

Kids also don't set boundaries for themselves as they are creating, though that's something that happens to them much too quickly in school. I've noticed in all of the schools that Evie has attended (a private and now two public schools), that they often prescribe "creative" projects for the students. Creative projects are structured in such a way that the teacher might direct, "We're going to make a snow man. Here are the cotton balls, the cut out hats, the paper carrot noses... now go ahead and assemble."

What I've probably loved most about Lucy's school this year is that they don't do that at all. They arrive at the school to find art tables, which are tables set up with recycled material (egg cartons, buttons, fabric, tiles) and then maybe some glue, paint and scissors. There is no expectation that the students will make an airplane or a tree. They make what they wish and all of it is art. Lucy will come home proudly holding onto a cardboard box full of pencil shavings with some stamps on the top and explain to me all about what it is and what it means. That's how art happens in the real world anyway - no one told Van Gogh to put swirls in his starry sky and certainly no one told Picasso to distort proportions and put eyes in random places. That kind of creativity came from a lack of self-consciousness, from having the confidence to be creative and to try something new.

I hope, as the article discusses, to be able to maintain some of that child-like creative freedom myself, but I also really hope that I can keep that alive in my children. I love when they choreograph dances to the Annie soundtrack (Noni's version of "tomowwow, tomowwow!" kills me) or when Evie works on her ongoing pipe cleaner sculpture (pictured above.) It's more than a matter of hoping they have fun with art. With all the challenges the world faces today, we need creative people more than ever. As a mom, I think the best I can do is to keep that thought in mind when the floor is covered in glue, paint and feathers.