Who are our Creative Geniuses?
Well, we all are.
We just forgot.
Over my 25 years of teaching, there has been one statement repeated, almost verbatim, by curious folks looking for ways to find their inner artist after a long (most since middle school) hiatus:
“I always wanted to paint, but I’m not creative.”
Here is where I dig a little deeper, “Tell me more.” I have heard amazing stories of imaginary realms of fantastical ideas. But the part that breaks my heart every time is the shadow side of the story. It might start like this: “My art teacher in middle school told me I was not doing ‘it’ right.” (”It” being our individual freedom-loving expression)
It’s true that our capacity for creativity dwindles at around eleven years old. One of the main reasons is this is when we begin to compare ourselves with those around us.
An example would be, “Mike in my fifth grade class has better hand-eye coordination than I do. He can make a shoe look just like a shoe and I can’t.” I start believing the narrative- I am not an artist.
But, there is good news.
If you draw that shoe over and over and over - no matter how awkward, it becomes your own mark-making, your own unique style.
This un-learning of creativity has actually been studied. In 1992, Dr. George Land, a general systems scientist, and Dr. Beth Jarman, Ph.D in Cultural Foundations of Education, wanted to better understand the true source of creativity.
They developed a test designed to identify the capacity for divergent thinking and creativity and found that 98% of pre-schoolers were considered creative geniuses. This was a surprisingly high number, so they started to test the same group of children as they grew. By grade school, only 30% of the children were considered creative geniuses. By high school, it was only 12%.
On a broad level, we might begin to restructure our educational system with all the dwindling creative arts. (That topic is so big I will save it for another blog.)
My question to all of us:
As adults, can we flourish “outside the box” again?
I think it might first start with a respect for our right-brain flow of intuitive thinking- a reverence for flexing the muscles that western culture disregards as unimportant. Then, a willingness to experiment wildly, without holding back, no matter what you create at first.
I believe this reclaiming of our creative geniuses might be what saves us on this tiny planet whirling through space.
Thanks for reading,
Your support is greatly appreciated!