We Are All Creators

In my workshops and courses, I call my participants creators.  Why? Because we are all creators.

In North American Indigenous cultures, the life force of all that is - or the maker of this earth/existence, this higher power is called the Creator. If one wants to consider a Christian stance, I believe (I’m not very well read in this aspect) we are made in the image of God. God is also seen as the creator of all we know. I understand there are similar themes in many if not most religious dogma. Hence, if we are a reflection of our origins (whatever they may be) we are meant to be creative in our being/lives.

Ultimately I believe that we are all meant to create.  As infants, yes there is attachment and bonding. However once we start actively learning – even to learn to walk - we are ‘using creative functions. We seek to do things and we will find a way to do it.  That finding a way’ is creative essence. 

Children are always creating, they imagine, they draw, they build, they find ways to do things differently (at least from their limited experience)… and sometimes it is truly different. When a child has limited abilities, this is a wonderful example of how parents and children try different things to compensate – this is creativity. The other essence of creativity is PLAY.  For children, this is innate.  Play is always engaging creativity. And, it is one of my constants, to let everyone - creator/participant of my groups, workshops etc. - know that every activity is for play, to have fun and don’t take this too seriously.

Unfortunately, what happens to many, not all, is that we are taught to disregard our creativity. We are taught to follow certain protocols, certain standards. We are schooled about what is “proper” socially. How often do you hear that it can be a good practice to finger paint every once in a while as an adult?  Yet the first time that I did that for myself (not with a group of children or with my son) in my expressive arts training, I found myself fighting my inner voice: Is this a good place to start? What can I create this way? Will this be useful? Is this a good use of my ‘studio time’? What I found is that the finger painting started hesitantly but then evolved to full fledge movement on paper and became fun.  In retrospect, I think this opened the doors to doing more abstract art and fully expressing emotions onto canvas – prior I only painted and drew rather concrete objects. This is also a message to artists, who get used to creating in a ‘certain way’, that changing things up, doing something ‘unfamiliar’, doing things that break up the routine can create breakthroughs.

Creative challenge: what are you doing to create breakthroughs? Where are you playing freely?