Creativity, the talent myth and craft

Creativity, the talent myth and craft

For the purpose of this blog I will be looking into creativity.

I believe that everyone has talent and everyone is creative. Children often look into the sky and make the clouds into everyday things such as sheep and dogs. This suggests that children are born creative but somehow sometimes that is lost somewhere along the way. I feel this must be down to our current education system and that it is hampering our countries ability to roll out more artists than it does. The education system almost frowns upon the arts, music dance drama art, and instead puts maths English and science above these. It’s a shame that we live in this society as I as a student, even though I am aware of this, struggle to believe that I am good enough or my work is better than student x’s. It’s become a constant battle for me and there is nothing like feeling good about your work or feeling confident about the things that you’re creating.

I recently found this interesting website.

Everyone is born creative

I’m reading a new book about creativity called Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist who began doodling on the back of business cards in 1997. Many doodles later, he published Ignore Everybody and continues to publish a great blog called gaping void.

So far my favourite chapter so far is chapter 6

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

So true! Too often I hear people say “I’m not creative,” but is that really true? Everyone is born creative. However sometime between kindergarten and today, perhaps during the tumultuous time called adolescence, doubt creeps in and we may think we aren’t creative. Fear kicks in. Our comparative brain decides that what we created wasn’t as good as what Johnny created. Creativity stops. I find myself doing this – stopping the creative process because I think that I’m not good at something. To combat this thought, I’ve been reading about creativity, writing a blog and dabbling in photography.

We didn’t fear crayons in kindergarten, so why fear them now?

http://becheap.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/everyone-is-born-creative/

I think this summarises a lot of people’s feelings towards whether we are born with or gain creativity.

Further to this I do believe that some people are more suited towards a job with a more artistic title and that they are indeed very apt in whatever field it is that they choose to pursue but generally this is again down to the fact they can see that they are good at something therefore they practice and practice whatever it may be and become better at it. I think the bottom line is that practice makes perfect, failing to prepare is preparing to fail! We all need to try to apply ourselves to whatever path in life we choose to take.