Creativity is the ability to see a problem from various angles or perspectives. It's used to realize personal goals, solve problems, generate new ideas and products, or produce unique works of art. This process begins when an individual becomes adept at turning imagination into reality by envisioning a specific desired result in the mind's eye. The process completes itself only when that vision is integrated back into either the current sensual experience or the memory of something previously experienced.
There are many references written about the process of visualization such as Lucia Capacchione's Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams. She is a highly acclaimed art therapist, designer, and consultant with mentors such as Walt Disney, Buckminster Fuller, Corita Kent, and Charles Eames. Ms. Capacchione has designed a 10 step process to assist in the application of creativity to health, relationships, career, home and other areas of life.
Walt Disney referred to the visualization process as "imagineering". A friend of his was quoted to have said "...there were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist, and the spoiler. You never knew which one was coming into your meeting." Disney's strategy is widely used in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming. For a more detailed description on The Disney Strategy please read Robert Dilts' Article entitled WALT DISNEY, Strategies of Genius.
Question 1: What is Creativity?
Creativity is the ability to bring something new into existence, rather than something imitated or already experienced via the senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. This is done by forming mental images and can be used to produce something new or provide effective solutions to a problem. DOES THAT SOUND SO DIFFICULT? Children do it every day! Watch them ... learn from them ... and as Robert Alan Black says "Break Your Crayons and Draw Outside the Lines".
Question 2: Can anyone be Creative?
Naturally! Literally ---- Creativity is a natural instinct, a magical gift given to us at birth. Unfortunately, the educational systems and some homes are inadequate for full development of those inborn talents and over time, our abilities atrophy.
In general, we learn via the ROTE system and much of our artistic ability becomes latent within this system. This has been mentioned in many of the books written on art, music and creative ability ... yet it often falls upon deaf ears in order to eliminate The Chaos of Creativity™.
How many times have you heard (or said to your children) "you can paint, but try not to make a mess!", "don't beat on that pan, it makes too much noise!". Perhaps you're child is coloring for the sake of seeing color or texture, you hear someone refer to it as 'scribbling', or "don't dance in the house, you may knock something over!" These cautions may be justified in some cases, but they are all limiting our sense of natural creativity in some way and etching in our mind that there are consequences to being so.
What then, does this do to our esteem? ... Our natural talent? What we learn ... is NOT to paint, NOT to play music, NOT to see, NOT to dance, NOT to try new things ... but to conform ... to be 'good' (at what may I ask?). Perhaps this child will be good at being like everyone else, following the crowd, instead of growing into the proud leader he could be -- given some reasonable flexibility.
My Message to Educators/Parents:I am NOT in the educational field, nor am I a model parent. This is not, in any way, an effort to criticize the teachers and specialists, or their abilities to teach, or even to say that there should be looser guidelines. It's more of an attempt to question the types of guidelines set forth in educating our children and their children and to raise the question of whether we are encouraging all the best from these children ... encouraging them to be leaders instead of followers ... to give them the tools to make the decision to add something of value to our world, or not! And lastly, to give ourselves the comfort of knowing that they are capable of doing so.
My Message to Artists:I'm sure that most of us understand the benefits of having guidelines to follow and the necessity of fitting into a community of some sort. There are countries, nationalities, tribes, organizations, businesses and families to consider ... all a very important part of the ecological system of humanity. Not only humans live within communities, but animals and other forms of life as well. There is much to be learned from 'form' as well as 'freedom' as we well know. There is a balance of nature within a community and guidelines help to promote that balance. But as artists, craftsmen/craftswomen, musicians, dancers, business and community leaders, we understand that if the butterfly in us becomes cocooned, the end result is a lifetime search for meaning and 'something' to fulfill our lives. We try our hand at crafts, play instruments, paint pictures just as we did as children ... it has meaning to us as it does for them ... get in touch with it, open your views, refine it, and integrate it into your daily life. THIS IS THE TRUE MEANING OF BEING CREATIVE!
How do you know if you are Creative?
How do I improve my Artistic Abilities
How can I use Creativity?