I love creativity. I’m the person who will stand and stare at a painting for hours, who stops mid-read to appreciate a beautiful sentence, and who cries when I see heartache portrayed through dance. But creativity doesn’t just come bursting out of an unplanted field. You need to feed your creativity. You have to play in order to be creative.
Why is Creativity Important?
Creativity isn’t just in the arts. It’s in science, it’s in math, it’s in your everyday world. Think about how many times you’ve come up with a solution to fix anything. I know someone who was playing softball and ripped his pants from crotch to calf. He didn’t have anything to change into and couldn’t play like that so we tried to find something to fix it. We found duct tape. What doesn’t it fix? He taped up the rip and went on to help us win the game. That was creativity at work.
A long time ago, I worked for a bank and we changed computer systems. One of our major accounts was out of balance and we had three days to bring it into balance. Everyone was working on it but couldn’t figure out what was causing it to be out of balance. On the third day, I got a picture in my head of the way the account would look if it was balanced. Once I got that image, I was able to work backward from it and figure out how to balance the account. That was creativity at work.
But to come up with creative solutions, you have to have fuel, which is where play comes in.
Why Play Is Important
According to Tanner Christensen who is the author of The Creativity Challenge, studies show that playing affects us psychologically allowing us to be able to ask why or what if. It allows us to explore the unknown. Being willing to explore the unknown is very important in creativity. It allows you to put together things that wouldn’t normally go together. Play also loosens up our inhibitions, puts fear on the backburner, and allows our defenses to relax a bit so that real creativity can take place. In other words, play puts us in a place where we can take a spoon and a paintbrush and come up with a creative solution…..and not be afraid to come up with it.
I previously wrote about using play to stimulate your creativity in a series called How to Tap Into Your Creativity. The first post gave a lot of suggestions for play such as getting outside and playing non-competitive games or even doing something that’s the opposite of what your need to do. For instance, if you’re a writer then try reading or if you’re a scientist, then go to a paint night. It’s often when we are doing something completely different, that we have our breakthroughs.
The second post in that series was called Use Your Imagination. This time, instead of playing to forget about your creativity or the projects you’re working on, you specifically use your imagination to train it for when you need it. One suggestion was to look at a spoon and come up with creative ideas to use it. But don’t stop there, now hand the spoon to a child and ask her to come up with as many ways as possible to use the spoon. You might be surprised to see how many more ideas she gets and how much more imaginative they are.
Take your cue from a child and don’t be afraid to use your imagination to come up with creative ideas.
I know many of us as we get older think that we aren’t creative anymore. But I believe it can be learned and nurtured too!!
Don’t you just look at kids and think how fun their imagination is??
We need that again!!
Jodie
http://www.jtouchofstyle.com
I remember running around and pretending that air was the horse I was riding, making beautiful mud pies and talking to stuffed animals. And I just did that yesterday….oh wait, it just feels like yesterday.
I remember playing Swallows & Amazons as a child in the 1970s – our carpet was a teal green colour so that was the river; an upturned table was our boat and an old sheet was our sail…. ?
You just reminded me that we would turn over a card table and use it as a raft in the living room. Such great imaginations and then somewhere along the line we forget or get embarrassed and stop.
I agree on the need for play. I love to do it still and do believe it feeds us in many ways..
What a mind opening post. This is something I push on my kids and less on myself. It is when I’m out exploring and trying new things that my mind begins to wander one what could be.
We need to play as much as our kids in order to stay creative. It fuels the fires.
I shared on my FB page a while back a school that is in China (I think) that has the kindergarten classes outside. All day the kids run, jump and play games. They say it has proved very successful in the future grades. Play is so important!
And here we just keep reducing​ the amount of play time and the access to music and art classes. We are a nation that is becoming more stupid with each passing minute, as evidenced by the election.
You are so right that creativity is not limited to artistic pursuits. It’s a way of thinking, of looking at problems and seeing solutions that go beyond the obvious. And I think play is so important because there is no pressure there–our minds are free to wander and pursue what may seem fantastic or unrealistic avenues that may turn out to be not so unrealistic after all! As I get older, a lot of my most creative thinking in teaching is forced on me because I often forget to bring the materials I need to class and have to improvise on the spot to cover my aging and expanding butt!
You are so right about play, Jennifer. When I get to play with my grandsons creativity flows. The other day we got something delivered in a big box and my husband was about to break it down for the recycle bin. I stopped him and said, “Are you kidding? The boys and I can make a whole city out of that box!” The next project I want to do with them is create a fairy garden in the edge of our woods using rocks and twigs. I can’t wait!
The fairy garden sounds wonderful. I used to do that. I recently saw a wonderful story of parents that created a small Secret Garden in the corner of their yard. They included a tub garden where they created a fairy home.
I am all about creativity! I drive my first graders nuts when I get into those moods especially during writers workshop time.
I’m sure your first graders actually love it!
Walking is like play to me. My feet hitting the ground stimulates new ideas. Good reminder to keep moving (physically or mentally) for the best creativity!
I love this! And I need some creativity, so I’m off to play!
What? You mean you’re not playing every day? I’m disappointed.