Whatever happened to the artist you were as a child and can you find them again?
As I start out to wrap my head around the roots and purposes of creativity inside this little site I could not help but look back to the very beginning of the individual journey we each take. After all, by training I am a biologist and walking in perpetual lockstep with the core idea that development and childhood is intrinsically linked to both developmental purpose and evolutionary advantage. I don’t have the research chops or educational bonafides to dig into this in any scientific way, but it certainly seems to shade my approach to how I think about the play-like creativity that paints and colours the life of many (if not most) modern children in the western world.
Was it something about the opportunity youth presents or maybe the lack of structured limitations yet to be learned until later in life? Perhaps the notion of the creativity of youth is entangled with the lack of social expectations to be productive, make money, or have a formal role in this consumer-driven society. Maybe there really is an evolutionary and developmental aspect to kid seeming to be more creative (if generally less skilled at those creative pursuits) that has already been studied and I can unravel with deeper thinking and reading about it. Or it simply may be that my bias is glaring through the window of western privilege and the notion that kids are creative at all is wrapped around a generous interpretation of personal observation.
Who can say?
Under the category of Toys & Tots, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.
Terms FROm this POSt
- bias
- It’s hard work thinking differently than others, and I often think of bias as a mental shortcut we all take so that we don’t need to. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s outright dangerous. But it recognizing it makes us more human, I think. That’s my bias.
- biologist
- My weak knees followed some bad advice and I spent a lot of time and money pursuing an education that I felt was an obligation more than a passion. In the end I got a bachelors degree in molecular biology. I can call myself a scientist, because technically I have a piece of paper that says I learned all that, but I never really worked in the field. I still think about a lot of things in the context of that education tho: science and biology, but don’t go looking for my published papers on it or anything.
- western privilege
- I live in Canada and was raised in a religious household. I try to break free of the narrowing lens this often puts between me and the rest of the world and I do my best to acknowledge that a lot of the things I say and write will be coloured by this narrowed perspective… but it’s the one I have and I am aware it exists. I’m legitimately trying. Be patient.
