Childlike Creativity

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

There are moments when I’ve felt like a grown up; driving a car for the first time by myself, moving out of home, buying a house. All of those milestones that get noted on your life timeline that seem to be grown up things.

I also felt like a grown up when I’ve been paid for doing work that I love…creative work. It’s very fulfilling and I suppose in a weird way makes me feel grown up. Mainly because it’s not me getting paid to work on someone else’s dream, it’s getting paid to work on my own dreams. There seems to be a difference there, there’s something about doing the work you love and getting paid for it, it feels like you are living the life you are meant to live… and I suppose that feels ‘grown up’ in a way.

But I think a big part of being a thriving artist is embracing your inner child. It’s funny we spend our whole childhood longing to grow up and do the things that the adults do, but when we finally get there we want to go back to being a kid.

One thing I find really interesting is how children are constantly encouraged to create art; crayons, paintings, finger paintings and colouring books. But at some stage the encouragement we give kids to be creative gets left behind in favour of rote learning, The funny thing is that that type of learning seems to make no sense in our modern world where things can be looked up or calculated in seconds on our phones or computers.

I think creativity is the main thing we should be pushing in our schools right now because in the modern world that’s going to be heavily effected by AI, human creativity is going to be something that is sought after, especially that limitless childlike creativity.