6: Creativity
“How can you ‘teach’ creativity? Surely you either are creative or you’re not?”
Performance poet, teacher, education adviser, children's leader Peter Dixon shares just a few of his thoughts...
'My uncle's an ammonite,' declared Philip one Sunday morning as he coloured in Joseph's coat (the multi-coloured edition, not the one Joe wore on Tuesdays). 'Oh?' I replied, bemused. 'That's nice.' Philip scrawled more reds and blues across Joseph's front and added, 'an ammonite is someone who doesn't believe in God.' Grinning inwardly, I surveyed my group's attempt to colour in the photocopied picture of Joseph in his famous coat.
They were all pretty awful pictures and you didn't need a degree in child psychology to see why. The children were largely bored as they chatted whilst colouring in the pictures (supposedly) as carefully as they could. Within the hour the pictures would be decorations on car floors or crumpled into coat pockets.
The above description is not atypical of many children’s group sessions and illustrates the dilemma associated with working creatively with children. Firstly, it wasn't creative and secondly, it was not child focused. Joseph was probably drawn by an adult artist and Philip was not over-enthusiastic about colouring him in.
Let's unravel things a little further. We are all born with the potential to be creative, and whether or not we continue to be creative depends largely upon opportunity. Let's call it nurture. Creativity is a way of thinking and has little or nothing to do with whether we can draw horses, play the piano or dance like Michael Jackson. OK, artists, writers, musicians and the like are creative, but so are scientists, business people, mums, dads and candlestick makers. It is unfortunate that we define creativity so narrowly. When we announce, 'Oh, I'm not creative', we are denying a gift we all have. You might not sing tunefully and your paper angels might look like chip wrappers, but that does not mean you are not creative.
Creativity enhances an ability to investigate, enquire, analyse, poke, prod and find out about the world around us. Last week we had a puzzle walk, trying to find the location of various trees, cracks in walls, gates, fences and architectural features within the church environs. These then became features for prayers. How can you write a prayer about a worn step or porch light? With energy and enthusiasm is my answer. The children loved the puzzling. They loved the process of finding and the idea of writing prayers about discarded coat hangers or the cracked vestry window. All children are extremely creative and swiftly rise to the challenges associated with imaginative demands and expectations. We will soon publish our Michele Quoist-type prayers, which make a jump in thinking from the 'God bless mummy, daddy, me and the new hamster' avenue of thought.
Further examples of our activities are when Beth dressed up in my old donkey jacket whilst we all fixed torn lengths of ripped up dress fabric onto it prior to her parading as Joseph into the last two minutes of the church service. And when we made the biggest pile of rusty bike wheels, tins and bits of iron plus moth eaten coats and socks into a display entitled do not store up treasures… And when Paul’s travels exploded into pictures and letters to relations we hardly ever wrote to – then things began to buzz. We designed Christian stamps, paraded to the post box where we sang hymns-cum-prayers. Yes real stamps were stuck and the letters went to real places (but not Ephesus). When the diver brought her sub aqua gear to put on and we nearly got blown over by the cylinder's blast of compressed air at Pentecost, things became even more memorable. Rather like the lessons of that man who did strange things on the hillside with fish and bread. And remember that story about the, coin and remember all those fish he got people to catch? And that parade with the donkey? A donkey of all things! If Jesus went out of his way to make his methods a bit different, then why shouldn't we?
Learning together is about being creative. It is about asking ourselves: what do children love doing? If you don't know then watch them: seeking, looking, finding, exploring, inventing, collecting, arranging, playing, acting things out, talking. And it doesn't stop at seven or ten or even seventeen years of age.
The educationalist Margaret Donaldson has explained in straightforward terms how children learn: 'Children learn in meaningful contexts - and furthermore this learning should be intrinsically enjoyable and rewarding.' Jesus taught like this and people flocked to hear him. He presented his message in a creative and imaginative manner. And so must we.
If you can't draw or write poems, don't worry. If you hate clay or paint, don't panic. Being creative is not about you being an artist or not. It's about you noticing what children enjoy and basing your ideas in their world of imagination and creativity. The greatest mistake we can make is to pretend that children are miniature adults and that we tell them things that one day will prove useful. Creative learning is about now.
So begin your planning with a prayer for an ability to make next time’s session a 'wow' for the three-year-old or the thirteen-year-old. It takes imaginative thinking to do that... creative thinking. Yours might be rusty, so get it going by watching those children and the things they love doing. That's the foundation of being creative together.