When someone says, "I'm not creative"
Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. Today, we’ll look at why some people feel they are not creative (spoiler alert: I believe that, at their core, everyone is creative but may not allow for the flow of their creative energy). Our topics are 1) holding too narrow a view of creativity, 2) the quest for success and recognition, and 3) the death of the creative mindset at the hands of others’ expectations.
- 5-minute read -
(NOTE: I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free, and I’ll never share or sell your data.)
1. Expanding our definition of creativity (and announcing a new podcast episode!).
When I taught music in the public schools, I would often discuss my students’ projects with their parents and other teachers. Knowing the benefit it has to student learning, I would often suggest they try to get involved in some way or another.
I would often get this response: “Oh, I’m not very creative…”
As years went by, I grew more and more curious about why so many people felt that way. It seems that the trouble, in part at least, is many people think if they don’t practice an artistic discipline, then they aren’t a creative person.
In a TEDTalk with over 19 million views on YouTube, education authority Sir Kenneth Robinson shares his definition of creativity: “the process of having original ideas that have value”.
(I’ll discuss Robinson’s talk in more detail in the third item.)
When you live your life in alignment with your core values and core energies, you cannot help but to be creative. You generate new perspectives, new insights, new understandings, new ideas, etc. - all while telling the creative story of who you are.
The outward manifestations of your creativity have no disciplinary box into which they must fit.
They may be they crafts, gifts, meals, designs, news articles, social gatherings, commercial products, experiments, or yes, even songs, paintings, and plays; but regardless of how you express your creative energy, these products are simply the natural byproduct of honoring your unique individuality and living in the joyful flow of that energy.
This is quite evident in my conversation with the most recent guest on the ArtsBound Podcast. David Whitnack is the Vice President of Operations for Night Song Concerts and has a long career in concert and event production.
In our talk, Dave tells about the ways he would try to create special experiences for the touring artists who would perform at the theatre he managed. In one such story, he leveraged his relationship with the local Harley-Davidson dealership to arrange for three motorcycles to be dropped off for Willie Nelson and his bandmates to cruise around town.
When Dave tells this story, and when he discusses pulling together the “four-walled” events he produces in his current work, you can hear the spark of creativity rise up in his voice.
(Listen to my full interview with David Whitnack.)
You don’t have to be creating art to be exercising your own creative potential. You just have to know who you are, know what you love, and have the courage to contribute to the world around you in the way that only you can.
2. Letting go of our desires for “success” and fame.
Since I was quite young, I’ve had an inner drive to put sounds and ideas together in an artistic way. I wrote my first song when I was nine years old - it had three short verses, a chorus, and a consistent rhyme scheme. Improvising on the piano was a part of my daily routine since I started playing at age six. I started writing my own poetry at twelve.
However, when I got to high school, something changed.
I have a distinct memory of sitting the living room working on a song I was writing, and feeling that - if I couldn’t come up with a chord progression as complex or lyrics as poignant as a song by my favorite songwriter, Paul Simon - the song wouldn’t be any good. I was especially focused on what others would think of it.
Needless to say, I never finished the song.
Allowing yourself to write a song that emerges from the flow of your own creative energy will always produce a better result than trying to write a song that will be “successful” in the eyes of others. This goes for any creative endeavor. When you get success and comparison out of the way, your own unique perspectives have a path forward.
Does this mean you should never take your audience into consideration? Of course not. We know that Yo-Yo Ma became the cellist he is because he learned how to play to every seat in a concert hall through a relentless process of placing a recording device in every seat in the hall (practically speaking). But he didn’t attempt this effort before getting really, really good at his instrument first.
Yo-Yo Ma developed his own expressive capacities before worrying about what it would sound like to other people.
You want to write a play? Let your imagination run wild with the backstories of your characters. Want to choreograph a dance piece? Let the steps emerge from movements that feel good in your body.
Resist any urge to compare your work to that of famous people or fixate on becoming famous yourself. Ask for feedback, but wait until you feel like you’ve tapped into your own creative energy first and have given it enough time to develop. This will let you step back with enough objectivity to receive the feed back in a constructive way - allowing it to grow your skill instead of taking it personally and stunting your creativity.
3. Confronting school’s relationship to creativity.
Unfortunately, there is evidence to suggest that our school system - the place we ideally send our young people to develop their potential - plays a substantial role in our creativity problems.
The TEDTalk given by Sir Kenneth Robinson that I cited above is titled, “Do schools kill creativity?”. In his talk, Robinson reveals the troubling relationship between schooling and creativity with abounding humor and surgical precision. I can’t help but tear up every time I hear the story he tells at the end about a young girl who couldn’t sit still in class.
There is a subliminal lesson taught through, arguably, a majority of school activities:
“There is a solitary correct answer, and my success is dependent on following the prescribed process I’ve been given to arrive at it.”
Also implied is this:
“The things about which I am curious are less important than topics in the curriculum.”
These lessons are reinforced through systemic structures, oversized incentivization practices, and our need for social acceptance. They profoundly impact our thinking, our concept of ourselves, and how we choose to spend our time.
No wonder so many adults have a hard time thinking of themselves as creative.
It was with much celebration that I recently came across a program sponsored by Robinson called the Innovation Playlist. Found on the website whatschoolcouldbe.org, the Playlist is a collection of videos with accompanying resources meant to equip and empower parents, teachers, and community members to spark real change in their local schools. The goal of the program is student-driven learning with an emphasis on curiosity, collaboration, and creativity.
Far too often, we hear stories about famous creatives - Elvis, John Lennon, and the little girl in Robinson’s talk - who became who they were/are in spite of the influences of the educative adults in their lives... rather than because of them.
Perhaps, it’s time for that to change.
When someone is struggling to take hold of their unique creative energy, working with a coach can offer transformational insights in a short burst of focused work. If you or someone you know could benefit from this type of work, don’t hesitate to reach out.
See you next week!
Lee
PS - I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free, and I’ll never share or sell your data.