What is creative confidence...and why should we care?
Okay, so I laid it out in my first post. I want to teach creative confidence. But what is creative confidence? And why is it important?
Creative confidence, as I see it, is the understanding within ourselves that we are capable of creativity. It is the ability to take that understanding and transform it into any number of creative pursuits and thinking. It’s the power to recognize that we have something unique to offer, that we can approach a problem or a project from a new perspective.
If we were to ask the average child at the end of elementary school whether they consider themselves creative, I suspect most would say no. The number of adults who believe themselves lacking in creativity is most definitely higher. Somewhere along the way, from early childhood to adulthood, creative confidence erodes. In some cases, it disappears entirely.
To illustrate this point, let me tell you a little about myself and my creative journey. A typically introverted child, I had friends, but I could easily spend hours alone in my room. I enjoyed writing and drawing pictures. Though I had no special talent, I loved to create. I have fond memories of pouring white glue out onto my desk, mixing food coloring into it and creating fantastic colored-glue sculptures and paintings.
By high school, though, I had largely lost touch with my creativity. I tried to sketch, never managing to produce a decent likeness of the subject. My lack of technical skill began to eat away at my confidence. For years, I shied away from creative pursuits, believing I had nothing to offer.
In my twenties, while studying for a degree in political science, I began quilting and I allowed myself to put pencil to paper and draw again. These creative outlets helped me escape from the drudgery of my academic pursuits. My drawing instinct had improved, my output much better than the last time I had tried. I designed my own quilts, mixing and matching colors and shapes. Still, if someone had asked, I would have insisted that I lacked basic creativity.
When I met my husband, not long after graduating from university and heading out into the workplace, he noted my framed sketches, my sewing and my penchant for photography. He called me creative. I scoffed. Where’s the creativity in snapping a few photographs, I’d argue, or sketching from a photo that already exists? Nothing original came from my own mind, I’d say. Undeterred, he’d smile and call me creative once more.
I didn’t start believing in my creative power until after my daughter was born and thirty years of my life had passed. I began to work on mosaics and paintings, finally creating original designs and realizing that my creativity had lived within me throughout my life. In fact, everything that I had done previously had been creative, despite my insistence otherwise. The ability to look through a camera lens and see what needs to be captured, the nerve to study someone’s face, a picture snapped during a fleeting moment, and recreate it with the delicate or strong strokes of a pencil, the vision to see a bunch of fabric and turn it into something warm and beautiful. All of this takes creative energy, creative nerve.
My own creative confidence had eroded over time, worn down by the minimal attention given to creative outlets in school, the feeling that creativity could not lead to a proper career path, and the idea that an absence of technical and learned skill must equate to a lack of creativity. I had always been creative. I think my husband smiled when he insisted on it, over and over, knowing that one day, in my own time, I’d realize he’d been right.
So, I rediscovered my creative spark, but what’s the point? Why should we care about creative confidence? What can it give to us, to our children, to the world? Why bother?
Creativity is not just about the creation of art, music, stories or poetry. Creativity is thinking independently. It is problem-solving and innovation. It is the aspect of human nature that has allowed us to advance and evolve as a society. Creativity is invention. Creativity is expression. Creativity is freedom.
In disciplines not typically described as creative, such as the sciences, creative thought is critically important in leading to innovations and breakthroughs. Someone’s got to be thinking outside the box to cure a disease or imagine a theoretical multi-verse. Science largely deals in facts, but sometimes it takes a creative thinker to guide the way toward new facts. If we want to raise the next generation of inventors, innovators and change-makers, we must allow them to think independently and access their creative energy. From that energy flows change.
If that isn’t enough, consider the impact of creative expression on our understanding of human history. Art and artifacts from our past give us insight into historical events, belief systems and psychology. Architecture shows us how others lived and what they valued. History is not just the study of the past, it is ongoing, happening now. What will we leave for generations ahead of us to discover?
Beyond a living history, how can creative expression, words or images that illustrate a worldview or experience, shape our interactions today? Music, art and writing can help us understand one another in ways that basic facts cannot. These forms of expression can transcend language and cultural barriers, speaking directly to the heart. They connect us, show us the ways in which we are different, as well as the ways in which we are the same. This connection is vital, in a world increasingly intertwined.
That all seems like enough, but is there more? Are there any other reasons to value creativity, to nurture it and help it grow? What if creativity contributes nothing to the world at large, but increases our own happiness, sense of well-being and calm? Many of us live busy, hectic lives. Some have found that pulling out a notebook and journaling, coloring meditatively or doodling can bring a small sense of peace into that busy lifestyle. Tapping into creativity doesn’t have to change the world to be important.
It only has to change one person.
