The last few months on the Strategy, Creativity and Design course made me think about what happened to my own creativity. Coming from a photographic background I enjoyed going on journeys to discover my own backyard – South Africa.
Things change when you enter the corporate world, and before long photography was not important to me anymore. The course made me open the creativity door I closed about 9 years ago. I believe we all have a creative streak in us – we need to explore what we like doing creatively and start doing it as a hobby, etc.
We were all kids once. We were carefree and did not care running around naked or saying/doing funny things. I believe that as we grow up we start to conform to how society expects us to be and behave. I agree with Sir Ken Robinson, when he said that creativity is taught out of us at school. We are told to do maths, science and language if we want to be able to find a decent job one day.
The story of the six year old girl drawing a picture will always stick with me. The teacher went over to her and said, “What are you drawing?” The girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher said, “But nobody knows what God looks like.” The girl replied, “They will in a minute.”
Each one of us needs to find some creative outlet, because as Sir Ken said: “Creativity is a function of intelligence”
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Where did my creativity go?
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3 comments:
I am now a strong believer in the fact that we are all creative beings and we just have to find our creative sides. I am reminded of how our mothers and wives always prepare different dishes using the same ingredients without attending cooking lessons yet when the meals are prepared they are always delicious. Dont you think that this is indeed a manifestation of the creativity in us?
I've been trying to incorporate into my life a work / creativity balance. It's a real toughie. Especially since I have way too many creative interests. I recently read an article which spoke to the fact that many execs are feeling exhausted, overburdened and overstretched. There simply doesn't seem to be time for innovation and creativity at work. It got me wondering what kind of shift needs to occur in order for us to incorporate the expressions which make life that much richer into our day-to-day lives. The mantra of the day seems to be deliver-deliver-deliver.
At school my favourite subject, and where my strongest talents lay, was in art and design. However, my careers adviser, as well as my family, suggested that l take the sensible and safe route to employment by going into industry for a career.
Years later I began to understand that they lacked vision - they didn't have the ability to see that creativity and innovation is a precious resource that I had in abundance but they thought was of little value. As a result most of my life has been moderately successful but misdirected, and only now am I pursuing my authentic path to maximising the use of my talents for the benefit of others.
You can share more about my thoughts on the links between business strategy, creativity, innovation and authentic business at my blog site: http://cultivar.wordpress.com
keep on spreading the message... James Rock
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