1Participating in small creative acts keeps us connected.
For all of us, the small ways we are creative everyday are a far more important part of our life than we think. The houses we live in, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the entertainment we consume, these are all creative decisions we make ourselves, they reflect our taste, our own creativity. How we lay out our gardens is a creative act, the colours we choose to paint the walls of our homes, how we lay out our desks at work. We shape our environment to conform to what we like, shapes, colours and lines that please us. When we read a book, watch a play or a film, or play a computer game, we are absorbed into the world created for us by the writers, directors and designers. We are transported to new places in the past, future or somewhere other entirely, we meet characters we have never known and watch them struggle through adventures and predicaments we will never experience in reality. We are taken 'out of ourselves' out of our lives and into those of others. For a few precious moments we cease to exist physically in our bodies and instead are merged emotionally with the world created for us and the imaginings of someone else. This can be a live collective experience such as theatre, or a visceral joining across broadband via online gaming. It can equally be a very singular experience, like staring at a painting or reading a book. In all cases it connects us with the experience of others, other versions of the world different to our own.
2Our creativity is what we use to make sense of the world
We may know the world through carbon dating, DNA helixes and big bang theories, or a faith that a greater power is looking out for us. But it is the interpretation of our own life story that gives us perspective, that helps us understand. History is so much more than 'what happened' it is how we use what happened, how we became something other than what happened to us, how we felt when we overcame adversity, when we won a sporting event, or achieved a goal. There is a narrative present that is a creative story telling of our own journey. Without our own personal story, we are like animals in the forest, knowing where to find food and how to behave to stop something eating us, but having no reason to exist, no ambition for more, no pity for others or grief at their loss, no celebration at a collective coming together and no joy at the retelling of the story of what happened and what it meant. To know who we are, why we are here and where we want to go, is a creative journey. Our version of our world is fundamentally a creative one.
3As a country we are brilliant at creativity, it is one of our core strengths.
We are VERY good at making things. Almost by stealth the value of our creative output has crept up and up over the last twenty years. It's now as important economically to the country as the Finance sector representing nearly 8% of our economy. 2.5 million people work in the creative sectors, and for such a tiny country we punch way above our weight when it comes to being creative. Across film, tv, games, music, advertising and fashion we are second only to the US in the scale of our creativity.
4Creativity and creative thinking is the most powerful driver in a huge percentage of our young people.
Educating a new generation to be creative is the single most important part of the creativity agenda. Our creative teaching WAS the best in the world. Our art schools, universities, and FE colleges did a fantastic job of enabling creativity and helping our young people to be proud of their creative endeavours. Young people came out into the world with creative minds, trained to be expansive, lateral, intuitive and confident. As our curriculum becomes more focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, we are losing creativity and art as a subject that is taught and learnt. At the very point we are understanding how vital creativity is to our country, we are stopping teaching it to our young people! It's vital that this changes if we are to continue the extraordinary successes we have built to date.
5The strength of our dreaming, imagination and subconscious is a huge part of what makes us human.
To write a letter, or a poem, a play or a film, to design a garden shed or a new airport, to pull together a kids costume for the Easter parade or a new collection for Venice. These are all things that are a vital part of our sense of ourselves. There are far fewer areas of our existence we can control today, making things is a direct output that is entirely the product of our own minds or our physical dexterity in using out hands to produce something. To make our dreams and imaginings physical and to communicate our ideas to others, takes time, skill, experience and drive. For most creative people this process is as important as breathing, without it they have no purpose or existence. From the earliest cave paintings to the most sophisticated game or special effects movie, our desire to tell ourselves and others how we see the world and to create something in it that is outside ourselves is an essential part of being human.
To the full article visit Ideal Magazine at; http://www.idealmagazine.co.uk/5-reasons-why-creativity-is-vital/
For more information regarding creative festival SohoCreate and to buy tickets visit www.sohocreate.co.uk