Friday, April 23, 2010

Do Crafts Foster Creativity?

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before -Dieter F. Uchtdor
I completely believe that statement.  I think every single person is creative by nature.  Of course we are!  We are children of the Great Creator - made in His image.  We have that creative drive in our souls.  I do not think that we teach anyone creativity.  We don't need to do brain exercises to help us be creative.  We already are.  We do, however, need the skills and wisdom that will help us express our inner creativity in a way that will be beautiful and true.
It is confusing when people say that we need to foster creativity in our children.  The creativity is already there.  I think what they mean is that we need to make sure they see the joy in expressing that creativity so that they will be motivated to learn the skills required to express that creativity well.

I think this is what people mean when they say that doing crafts or playing with legos and art materials will "foster creativity".  As a child creates something new (a craft, structure, picture or anything else) they will feel the thrill of creating and will want to create more.  There is truth to this - but the problem is that they won't necessarily want to create something better.  

Of course a child's first attempts at expressing creativity are not going to be of great quality.  The fear that many have is that if a child finds that what they create does not bring joy  - they might stop trying to create or give up trying to improve.

There is also a danger, however, in giving a child a false sense of achievement when they are merely making "little junks only a mother would love" as Keri Tibbets puts it. The danger here is that they will get plenty of satisfaction from their haphazard efforts and will not see the need for putting forth the real effort required to gain the skills needed to make something of real beauty.
"Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty.
We were created with the express purpose and potential of experiencing a fulness of joy.   Our birthright—and the purpose of our great voyage on this earth—is to seek and experience eternal happiness. One of the ways we find this is by creating things." Dieter F. Uchdorf
So, if a child needs to feel the joy of creating, but they don't have the skills to create much - what do we do to encourage them, without giving them a false sense of achievement?  Praise them on their effort?

This is what schools often have to do - grade according to effort.  It seems like a plausible solution.  It gets tricky though.  How are you supposed to know how much mental effort a child put into something and how much of it was skill (or lack of)?

It seems like this would be easier if you are a parent and you are familiar with what your child is capable of, but there's an inherent problem with this as well.  All of your child's creations require some effort.  How do you know how much effort is worthy of praise and how much is not?  I never knew.  I just praised any effort in order to keep encouraging effort.   The problem with this was that I did give them a sense that anything goes - it doesn't matter what you make - it's all good - so why put in the extra effort?

I think there is a different way.

We were reading about Monet the other day.  In his time, paints were very expensive.  Artists often had to make their own paints - this was difficult and also costly.  When an artists painted a picture - he tried very hard to make it nice and not waste his resources.  Was it always a success?  Of course not.  Artists paint a lot of pictures that they are not happy with.  Is this a waste of resources?  I don't think any of us would say that the pictures Monet painted, and discarded, were a waste of resources.  They were an important part of his becoming a great artist.
This is why I am no longer giving my children loose paper to waste to their heart's desire.  I am also limiting their art supplies.  Keri gave the example of a child with lots of smelly or glittery markers.  The child spends their time making lines to see what the marker does.  In contrast, if a child is given a few crayons and some paper.  They will draw something.  Then, they will draw something different because it would be boring to draw the same thing again.  After a while - they learn to draw!

So how do I keep up their enthusiasm for creating when they do not get the immediate satisfaction of giving it away or of experimenting with what all of the different art supplies can do?  I don't have to.  They keep their enthusiasm because they see themselves improve!  They are able to draw things that they couldn't draw previously.  I don't need little gimmicks to trick them into thinking they are good at something.   They will feel the real joy of actually becoming better.  They will improve much more quickly if they don't have all of these distracting things to experiment with and a ton of resources to waste.

I have a wonderful book called Drawing with Children.  The author suggests that children learn to draw with nice pens so that they can not erase their mistakes.  What is the purpose of this?  To teach them to be careful and to draw slowly from the beginning.

Anyone who has learned to play a musical instrument knows that practicing a song very slowly at first and then speeding up, yields faster results than practicing the same music wrong over and over again.  This is the benefit of limiting resources.  A child will be much more careful with what they are given.
This analogy can be applied to all other areas of life.  Creativity is not limited to the arts (thankfully!)  I would go more into this, but my original intent for this post was to write about what we actually need, besides skills, to truly have the ability to create real beauty.  Most people know that mere skills will not be enough for someone to be able to express their inborn creativity.  There is something else.  However, this post is getting long enough so I better save the rest for the next post.
Gospel gladness can give us a precious perspective about all things and can spur us on to share that beauty which God helps us to create. It is a process that should not trouble itself over much, initially, with questions of originality and utility but, rather, with quality and excellence. - Neal A. Maxwell

7 comments:

  1. I love how you write....it is so poetic and yet profound. Luckily today for our craft we are writing thank you notes at virtue girls so hopefully that counts as creating something of value...or atleast having gratitude. :) Thanks for your thought
    Julie

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  2. I never new why I despised crafts so much growing up. It was a horrible experience to sit in class and be told to draw a creative picture or write a creative story. It was truly one of the more painful parts of my elementary years. I would always hear how good everyone else's picture of glued macaroni was, and to me the teacher would say, "maybe you just need to try a little harder next time."

    I have loved the concept of creating things of value. Right now my most important creative assignment is raising great kids and their job is to create themselves into their own master piece.

    Thanks for the great thoughts.

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  3. I love love love the idea of teaching children to value their resources when it comes to creating. I have been one to leave a stack of paper out in the open for them... Perhaps this goes without saying, but when it comes to creating true things of beauty, I have found that my example is so important. If I sit them down and pull out the paints and let them paint whatever they want, and just direct the scene verbally or with quick examples, it is not quite the same as if I sit down with them and create my own work of art right along side them. They will peer over at what I am doing and start trying to paint/draw/color/create the way I am- often with comments like "I want to do mine just like yours" because they see truer forms in the art- which are beautiful to them. They then are inspired to develop the skill to create those forms with their own hands. Leaving them alone to do their own things while I run around getting something done never produces the same kind of desire in them to create something better each time.

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  4. Wonderful Blog ~ Wonderful Viewpoint!
    I have been sitting down reading all of your posts since you were first influenced by the Tibbet's ebook/article, The Headgate.

    I found your site via The Lazy Organizer and noticed that you follow a blog by a friend of mine, Celeste Bachelor: Cinder Mountain Scholars. Small, small world we live in these latter days.

    I will definately be linking to your site to read more of your posts. Since I am new to this concept, Headgates, I find I need to wrap my mind around the concepts with other's experiences. Yours, I find inspiring.

    Thank you.
    ~DeAyn

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  5. Ever since I was little, I've disliked making "crafts"*. (*First I feel like I should differentiate between the useless pipe cleaner creations made in preschools, useless cluttery wooden things made at enrichment meetings, AND the more elegant, useful things that Martha Stewart makes. For this comment, when I'm referring to crafts, I'm referring to the former.) When I express my dislike for making crafts, people are usually confused, and I almost always get a response like:
    "But I thought you liked doing creative stuff?!"
    I usually tried to explain that I personally felt that crafts stifled creativity, because they didn't allow much choice. Making them always felt more like assembling simple furniture from instructions, than creating art. (Not to mention that I often felt that the end result was useless and ugly anyway.)
    It really made and makes YW and RS activities pretty boring. (I often wondered in YW:"Why can't we have a watercolor painting night, or go camping like the scouts, instead of all these silly craft nights?")
    I've never considered that the joy of finishing a craft might be a cheap thrill, distracting someone from pursuing harder earned creative endeavors, though. I wonder if that's more true for people who aren't naturally drawn to the arts. A common sentiment among UVSC art students was a disdain for tole-painted RS crafts. On the other hand, I have noticed that a lot of the general population tend to be extremely self conscious, and impatient about trying to create things, especially in front of others. For example, I was asked to set up a painting class in my ward for enrichment, and hardly anyone was interested. I heard many people say something like: "Oh, I'm not creative", or "I'm not talented, all that I can draw is stick figures." On the night of the class, only two people showed up, and normally 15-20 show up for craft nights. With a craft, it's like the step by step instructions, and the elimination of choices set up a "safety net", protecting the crafter from all the anxiety that something like painting seems to invoke. What they don't seem to understand, is that although talent helps, it's a skill that needs to be learned, just like playing the piano, nobody is born knowing how to play a piano.
    I really like what you had to say about keeping endless supplies away from kids, because the fun is in wasting things. I tried this with Adrian, suddenly making the art supply closet off limits to him. Much to my delight, he wasn't making 20 pictures with tiny scribbles that only used a small part of the paper. For once, he almost filled a page with doodles. :)

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  6. Michelle-
    Thanks for the differentiation in the types of crafts - it's a good point.
    I think your experience with RS is the common in with the general population - we get our creative thrills from easy things (like scrapbooking or stamping or even shopping) and don't work and find the joy of creating something of real beauty - even if it's not in the arts. The disdain of your classmates maybe stems from knowing the real joy that others are missing.

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