THE CREATIVE ENGINE WITHIN

The Creative Engine Within

How and Sometimes Why We Create

As far back as the cave paintings of Lascoux, scholars and artists have wondered about the sources and inspirations for creativity. Conventional wisdom suggests that everyone is wired a little differently. Common theory of “right and left brainers” often explains how artists and inventers create from the right brain. Right brainers are more creative and left brainers more linear, less willing to step off the edge of certainty, right?

Not so much. George Land developed a creativity test which was used to select the most innovative engineers and scientists to work for NASA.1 According to Land’s test, at age 5 creativity is at about 98%, by age 10 it dropped to 30%, and further diminished to 12% by age 15. Testing 280,000 adults, Land found that creativity was at 2%. His findings demonstrated that norms and education systems discourage daydreaming, imagination and mistakes or imperfections in work and exercises. By not using our creative innate abilities, we lose them.

Begin to believe in your own creative potential and you will begin to be more creative.

Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall, The Universal Traveler

We all have creative capacity to innovate and imagine.

This workshop is designed to provide general background and history of creativity. The group will explore sources and techniques that exercise the unlimited capacity of the human brain. A brief overview of creative thinkers and processes that lead to art movements and innovations will provide context. Understanding a bit about how creators found their way into a creative culture will help demonstrate our untapped creative abilities. Then we are going to play.

Children set off each day without a worry in the world. Everything is neat at hand, the worst material conditions are fine. The woods are white and black, one will never sleep.

Andre' Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

We go through the first 20 years of life trying desperately to become adults., Then to become artists, we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to the freedom of childhood. The following experiments and exercises are designed to open our minds to the childhood freedoms that education and society edit out of our lives. They are progressive and seek to open the mind's eye, helping to lead to discovering your creative engine within.