Creating opportunities

Thank you so much to all of you who left me such lovely comments on my last post.  I really appreciate your kindness.  Writing about my own creativity has made me think about why I place such an emphasis on this in our lives, I have never really considered why I felt this to be so important until now.  

I have written about creativity in our lives, about my worry that I was not offering my children, particularly Cameron, enough opportunities to cultivate creativity.  My children were much younger then and I was spending time reading other blogs and beating myself up for not doing the sorts of activities that I was seeing and reading about.  I needed confirmation that what I was doing was the right way for my family and I found this in the wonderful book The Artists Way for Parents, this author has written many books on the art of creativity not just this one aimed at parents.  It made me realise that creativity is so much more than paper, scissors and glue.

When I was a child I spent a lot of my time watching my parents make things. My father built an extension to our family home, it doubled the size of the house, he did this in the evenings and weekends, whilst holding down a full time job outside the home.  My mother used to make all our clothes, this was at a time when children's clothes were not widely available and those that were were expensive, she would also knit and draw.  I loved to watch them both, as I expect they must have done, one of my grandfathers painted, I have a few of his paintings hanging in my house, and worked with wood, I have a jewellery box he made for me.  One of my grandmothers knitted, her needles would click as she sat and talked to us, I still have a jumper she knitted me for my 18th birthday.  All that watching has been part of my journey of making, it has made me realise the possibilities, not to default to buying something made by someone else.  The act of making something is as important to me as the finished product, well most of the time.

I was lucky enough to go to schools that encouraged creative subjects, my parents chose the secondary school that I attended (my siblings and I went to different schools at this age) because of its excellent music department.  I wouldn't say that the current education system places such emphasis on these subjects, education the world over has a hierarchy of subjects with maths and languages at the top, the humanities and science in the middle and the arts at the bottom.  Even within the arts subjects there is a hierarchy with art and music at the top and dance and drama at the bottom.  Those children whose parents encourage creativity at home are not going to miss out, but what about those children whose parents either don't value this or don't have the money to provide the opportunities.

This approach to education, where arts subjects are marginalised, is creating skill shortages for many industries and occupations.  If there are no opportunities to explore and play with different materials where are our future designers going to come from?  The rather wonderfully named Professor Kneebone, a professor of surgical education, has noted a decline in the dexterity of his students, their ability to perform important surgical skills of cutting, stitching and sewing are having to be taught to his students, they are no longer able to make the assumption that they will be good with their hands. Are we going to have a dearth of original thinkers if the focus of education remains geared towards knowledge and SAT scores?

I wonder if any readers here had a favourite subject at school which was an arts subject?  I wonder if you were left feeling that you were not talented, as the subjects you were good at were not valued and you were steered away from them as you were told you would never get a job doing that?  I hope that the decision makers involved with education bring back creativity into the curriculum and value the contribution that arts subjects can make to society as a whole.

What does creativity mean to you?