« Art by god« 

…as someone famously put it…

[This is actually an interference pattern on the surface of a swimming pool in Tuscany…. and that pattern is/was unique in all time: naturally created.] 

But what of our creativity: yours and mine?

So, this is the start of our journey into creative genius and how each one of us might harness it.

Q. Why is this important to you and to GEPSAC?

A. Because culture IS creativity in evolution within society.  You will have perhaps seen the millennia-old cave-paintings of animals recently found in Australia: as long as we have been on the surface of the planet we have been learning and applying that learning to ourselves and the world around us through the creative process (even to the extent that we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’ (as it has recently been termed: the period of history in which mankind is affecting the planet itself.  We have been leaving evidence of this creativity since the dawn of time.

The point is, that either you ARE a creative performer yourself, or you are going to be working with people and organisations whose lifeblood is the energy of creativity…. so you had better be aware what creativity actually IS:

• where does it come from?
• how does it get from the inside of us to the outside?
• how do we harness it?
• what are the circumstances in which we are most creative?
• can we choose to be creative when(ever) we want or do we all need a ‘muse’, something or someone to ‘move’ us – what are the stimuli for creativity?
• maybe even why do so many creative geniuses appear to be ‘larger than life’ and sometimes reculsive or ‘tortured souls’….?

A couple of things to commence with:

1. Like the late, lamented Ken Robinson who died this August [DO watch the videos of his on TED that I link to further down the page: especially the first two].   I happen to believe that we are ALL, without exception, creative: we are born that way – it comes naturally.  I was going to write: ‘Creativity: use it or lose it‘, but I am not sure we can ever lose it, though it may well get rusty through not being used.
2. we may have ‘misplaced’ the creative urge somewhere for a number of reasons:-
   • the ‘stifling’ effect of current schooling models and practices (the world over – not just in France) which seem to want to mass-produce standardised units called ‘students who are capable of passing a common exam demonstrating knowledge’ when the nature of the student is individual: we are all different.  The context in which you have existed and been learning for you whole life since the age 4 or 5 tends to neglect and almost actively discourage the use of our innate creativity.
   • the effect of N°1 above, sends a strong signal to kids that creativity has a lower social and economic value than conformity. [My daughter, Grace, found this proven before her very eyes in her first year as a primary school teacher in England, where she was being told by the Head Teacher that unless there is a common learning outcome which is measured and evaluated and related directly to the National Curriculum she can’t engage in creative activities with the children in her class.  She first took the step of changing employer to overcome this and has found a small school where the teaching team and leadership put much store upon developing the creative potential within each student, but even that proved not to offer her enough scope for her creativity, so she is now self-employed and has set up an online, creative learning service which has clients in China, the UK, Russia, Hong Kong etc.  She has far more work to do, but is far happier doing it because she is fully free to be creative all day long. ]
   • the paucity of time in a world which expects us to be forever connected and actively engaged with others.  For the most part, the origin of creativity is personal reflection: giving ourselves a while to think, consider, allow ideas and feelings to gestate and then produce… yet such time is increasingly being ‘claimed’ by connectivity and the fear of being disconnected.  ‘Always online’ is an a enemy to the creative germ (even if it may be a great help and indispensable tool when it comes to helping realise the ‘big idea’.

So, after this introduction:

Your task is to:

1. Watch at least the first two of the Ken Robinson videos  linked just below [TED offers subtitles in English if that would help].  You will find that this video has a phenomenal viewing figure for a ten minute talk on education and that this owes as much to the speaker’s sense of humour as his lifetime of knowledge. Consider your own school experience and the extent to which Ken might be right in his thesis that schools are responsible for slowly ‘killing‘ the natural creativity of children:
   • How Schools Kill Creativity
   • Changing Education Paradigms (and I defy you not to adore the clever artists’ cartoon support).
   • Bring on the Learning Revolution.
   • How to Escape Education’s ‘Death Valley’
2. reflect upon your life: where and when did/do you find yourself in the most creative mood?  What did you produce and how did it come about?  To give you an example to get you thinking, for me it comes principally in five ways as shown in the bullet list below (you don’t need to listen to all my writing and terrible singing if you don’t want – don’t worry – they are just examples, nothing more!).

• Firstly when I am up against a problem of some sort and need a workable solution  and I don’t have a wife, friend or colleague to call upon. [That said, I often find it easier to be creative with solutions for other people and am sometimes too close to my own problems to ‘see the wood for the trees’].
• Secondly, when its late, I’m feeling melancholy, the lights are low, I am alone and I have a guitar plus sheet of paper & pen to hand.  [The mood is the key for me – I’m not good at writing riotously happy songs… as this one called ‘Don’t’ (this was it’s first ‘airing’, by the way and it isn’t exactly finished or polished as you can clearly see, but the riff is simple and fairly catchy IMHO)  clearly demonstrates!
  Melancholy is a far better muse for me whether she comes via a melody or by a meaningful phrase that triggers more].
• Thirdly, in some event or sight that catches my eye and seems to relate an entire story. It might only last a fraction of a second, but that can be all it takes to produce hours of creative activity.  Here’s a few personal, poetic examples if you don’t mind: ‘Beached Bamboo‘ – a poem of just a few lines that I sweat over for six hours huddled down against a sand-dune on a beach in a very cold spring breeze. I had seen a small piece of bamboo on the shoreline almost falling to pieces bar one knot… for me it was a metaphor (for my then fast-failing marriage) that I had to write… I didn’t seem to have any ‘choice’ in the matter. Another example:‘Man Maid‘ was a few split seconds waiting in the car for a red light to change on a dark, rainy November evening heading home from work.  I had the couplet ‘monochrome motoring’ on my brain until I got home and it was written in barely 20 minutes – yes even with the very constricted style.   A final example, below, called Starbucks Stanstead… where I have a five-hour flight delay and amused myself by threading together ‘snippets’ of conversations going on around me…They call this ‘Found Poetry‘…
• Fourthly: something ‘spins off’  in an encounter with someone else – a chance conversation, a strange expression, a piciture and it ‘sticks’ with me and I can call it up at will and work on it.  I know and recognise these signs in myself. I used to be frightened of losing the muse and the moment if I couldn’t write at the very second it happened, but I am more relaxed about it now and I know I won’t ‘lose it’ before I have time to write it or to play it.
• Fifthly: when I am put under pressure! I’ve been asked to compose music for two Ordre Nationale du Mérite ceremonies, two weddings, one christening, numerous anniversaries and birthdays, the release from detention of an asylum-seeker and even one funeral.  I’ve also had guitarist friends with great riffs but with a mental block for words who have turned up on my doorstep and asked if we could work together a bit to see if we can put anything together…

I trust that you appreciate that I am not suggesting the above examples are great and need a showcase, but it is rather difficult otherwise to give examples of creativity and relate them to stimuli etc unless one can give a personal example where one knows exactly what the stimulus actually was.  If you do watch/listen to any of my ‘stuff’ above, it might be nice were you to comment on this Tonyversity page, on  Youtube or on Poemhunter as appropriate (in English preferably, for the practice, but I won’t put a mark on it – the pressure is off!).

Enough about me, but how about the presenter of one of TED’s top 20 videos of all time (20,000,000 views+ and counting!), author Elizabeth Gilbert who had this to say about her research into creativity which set her free from panic and worries about her own abilities as an author!  It is a fabulous presentation…  Let’s watch it together….

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity: your elusive genius!

 

 

The Q is: How does this work for YOU?

Well, that’s me and I’ve spent some 60 years getting to know me.  I wish someone during my school and university years would have given me the chance, the space and the time to get to know myself rather better and very much earlier: I just felt as if I were on an educational ‘conveyor belt’.  I’ve missed that opportunity myself, but I can, thankfully give it to you here and now. That in itself is creative, is it not – helping others to ‘turn on & tune in‘ (very 1960s / 1970s expression that!) to their own creativity?  Well I like to think it is!

So, specifically, I would like you each to consider the following Qs

1. What is ‘the key’ that unlocks your creative ‘door’ – can you ‘put your finger on it’?   [If it has lain ‘dormant’, then why – what are the inhibitors stopping you from re-connective to your creative roots?]
2. What did / do you produce as a result?  How did you feel about it then?  How do you feel about it now?  Have you ever been able to recapture the feeling – have you ever tried?  If not, why not?
3. Plan to give yourself a ‘creativity massage‘ in order to overcome the ‘inhibitors mentioned above’ and enhance your creativity : what would you need to do to try to recapture the spirit, the feeling, the moment and unlock the potential for creativity in your personal, artistic, academic and professional life?  Is it a case of making and taking time, indulging yourself in something, escaping the norm, disconnecting from the web, getting out in the countryside or hiding yourself away…. what would be the best stimulation for your creativity?

After looking at Ken Robinson’s first two videos above (and some of mine but only if you wish)  think your way individually through the questions above and make some notes IN ENGLISH to prepare to contribute them and then:

• Meet up in class or online in order to POOL / SHARE your personal experiences of creativity IN ENGLISH and see what commonalities you share or don’t for example (but there are other dimensions here – don’t restric yourself to my examples!).  :
  • do you need to be alone or in a crowd?
  • do you need total silence, something in the background or loud noise?
  • do you need light or dark?
  • are you happier in the built-up or natural world?
  • do sadness and melancholy work better than excitement or joy for you?
  • do you need external stimuli to provoke your creativity or does it just spring up inside with no such need?
• It might be both interesting and helpful were you to bring (or enact/present?) examples / representations of your creativity: a song, a poem, a drawing, a photo, a dance: anything that touches your creative ‘mojo‘ in fact.  It would also be nice if you would be prepared to talk about your creative process in producing it, how you felt and how you feel now about it.

OUTPUT.

After the above two bullet points, as a group (and in your best English), I would like you to:

• organise a classroom event to showcase a selection of what you consider to be the most creative exploits of members of the group across a range of different creative forms (not all poetry, for example!) with appropriate explanations.
• also deliver a synthesis of what you have all learned about creativity and the creative process throughout this exercise.

This will require that:

• everyone is involved equally
• I get to see, hear or read an ‘equal’ contribution of each one of you in English.
• the group may decide how to ‘run’ the group showcase.

SUBMISSION DATE: to my mind it should run like this:

• Read the above and watch the two principal Ken Robinson videos (and some of mine if you are interested) in order to understand what we are doing.
• This week 18/10 in 2021 in English.  Discussion about creativity origins and the organisation of  the showcase event. (Remember, even the showcase is a creative event – so people organising it can contribute and write/speak about their creativity too).
• 25/10: Holidays!
• 8/11: Preparation of showcase event and associated materials
• 22/11: Preparation of showcase event and associated materials. Rehearsal
• 29/11 SHOWCASE EVENT and submission of associated materials: video/audio/written files etc.

That seems quite a long time-span, but there are two weeks when you don’t have classes with me or there are  national holidays plus a week’s holiday (when I do NOT want to give you any work to do!!)…  I think this gives you time to think, go on your own creative journey, develop your professional vocabulary, hone (aiguiser) your presentation technique etc.