Why the creative power inside of us should be kept alive

Do you describe yourself as a creative person?

Do you feel that you live your life with a creative spirit?

If I ask our youngest students these questions I can safely predict that every one of them will answer - yes!

If I ask a selection of adults I can also safely predict that most of them will respond - not really but I’d like to.

It’s one of the real misfortunes of the traditional education system that most of us have our creative spirit dampened in favour of achieving subjective standards of performance. It’s also why, in the spirit of Sir Ken Robinson, we strive every day to imbue our entire community with a creative spirit.

There’s a great book first published in 1938. It’s titled If You Want To Write: A Book About Independence and Spirit. The author was Brenda Ueland and if you’ve never heard of her we won’t be surprised. 

The title is a little misleading because when Ueland refers to ‘writing’ she also means anything that you love and want to do or make. It may be acrobatics, gardening or inventing a new system of bookkeeping!

Among the many relevant observations she makes, her perspective on why the creative power inside of us should be kept alive is especially poignant.

She wrote, "Why? Because it is life itself. It is the spirit. In fact, it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears. Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We didn't force it, but we loved it. We worked at it, sometimes for hours at a time without a break, because it was in us, though we didn't intellectualize it. 

“As we got older the fear crept in, the doubts, the self-censoring, the over-thinking. The creative spirit is in us now; it's who we are. We just need to look at the kids around us to be reminded of that.”

We’re fortunate at Walden because every day we’re surrounded by the creative energy of kids. We’re sometimes asked how we keep the kids engaged and motivated. That’s seldom a problem. It’s more likely that we’re challenged to occasionally bring them back from the many exciting journeys their minds take them on.

That’s because the Walden student is every day encouraged and led to have an openness to experience and, according to Scientific American*, that is the personality trait most consistently associated with creativity.

Openness to experience comprises intellectual curiosity, complex problem solving and reasoning, imagination, artistic and aesthetic interests, and emotional and fantasy richness.  And what’s interesting to us is that the avenues of creativity include visual arts, culinary arts, inventions, scientific discovery, music and dance and architectural design.

The point is, from the day we first set out to create Walden International School we were determined to, at any cost, build a programme and environment that would never ever diminish the creative spirit and openness of a single student. To accomplish this meant the staff and teachers we brought on board had the same values and perspectives.

In those moments when I allow myself to reflect, it is this that offers me the greatest reward.

Everyone has a creative spirit and as we continue to make good people at Walden we’re mindful of how we can support the broader community as well.

blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/openness-to-experience-and-creative-achievement/