International Dot Day

When I saw that September 15 was International Dot Day, I was intrigued. I thought it must be a day to celebrate the wearing of polka dots. I was wrong!

Instead, the inspiration behind this day is the children’s book The Dot  by Peter H. Reynolds. Teacher Terry Shay introduced the book to his classroom on September 15, 2009, and the idea caught on.

According to the official website,  “The Dot is the story of a caring teacher who dares a doubting student to trust in her own abilities by being brave enough to “make her mark”. What begins with a small dot on a piece of paper becomes a breakthrough in confidence and courage, igniting a journey of self-discovery and sharing…”

The idea behind this day is that we are all creative in some way, and sometimes it takes another’s belief in us to give us the courage to take that first step, no matter how small. In the story, Vashti discovers she is an artist, but art isn’t the only way to express creativity. Whether you long to try art, or music, or quilting, or cooking, or dancing, or writing – there is a spark in you waiting to be fanned into flames. If you want to encourage a child, or need a push yourself, this book is well worth the few minutes it takes to read. The best part of the story to me is that not only has Vashti found her own confidence, but at the end, she reaches out to help another pupil find theirs.

Look into your heart and find that creative activity you have always longed to try but were afraid you weren’t good enough. Make a start, even if is as small as a dot on a paper, and see where it takes you.

Quotes about creativity

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.–Maya Angelou

Whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.–Julia Cameron

When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.–Madeleine L’Engle

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on Earth. So what the hell, leap!–Peter McWilliams

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.–Edward de Bono

We are born makers. We move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands.–Brene Brown

The process of writing, any form of creativity, is a power intensifying life.–Rita Mae Brown

Life is creation. Self and circumstances are the raw material.–Dorothy M. Richardson

It is important to do what you don’t know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.–Carlos Casteneda

Imagination is the spark that ignites the fire of creativity.–Richard Laurence Peterson

Focus should be to encourage and develop creativity in all children without the ultimate goal begin to make all children inventors, but rather to develop a future generation of critical thinkers.–Faraq Mousa

Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.–Mae Jemison

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International Creativity Month

January is Creativity Month. This was created by a man called Robert Munson. No one seems to know exactly when, but he wrote about it in 2004, so it at least existed by that time. You can hear a sample of this truly entertaining motivational speaker at his website.  One of the things he has to say that particularly jumped out at me is “A center for creative learning studied the creativity of children and found that during the first five years 90% of children are highly creative. The next two years, ages six and seven, the percentage of highly creative children dropped to 10%. By age eight or nine, the percentage of highly creative children fell to only 2% and stayed about that level from that time on.” What this says is that people are born creative, and it is bred out of us. So this month isn’t about techniques for becoming creative for people who have never been, as much as it about rediscovering the creativity we all had as young children.

There are many different kinds of creativity, of course. Some people have creative jobs where this is celebrated, such as writers, actors, musicians, and other such. For others, this comes out in cooking, in making things with your hands, gardening, and just about anything you can think of. Even what seems repetitive can be done with creativity.

One thing which Amazon does – or did when I worked there – is give awards for creative thinking, whether the idea actually worked or not. Munson says something of the sort when he asks if a person’s business celebrates failure. As Thomas Edison said about creating the light bulb: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Failure shows a person is trying. Creativity doesn’t happen without it.

So dust off that creativity and do something fun this month without worrying if you do it well or poorly or if it succeeds or fails.

Quotes about creativity

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful: yourself.–Alan Alda

Cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent–science, mathematics, energy, history, experience–and the more experience you have, the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create.–Julia Child

Creative minds are rarely tidy.–John William Gardner

Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.–Mary Lou Cook

Focus should be to encourage and develop creativity in all children without the ultimate goal begin to make all children inventors, but rather to develop a future generation of critical thinkers.–Faraq Mousa

I think there are two keys to being creatively productive. One is not being daunted by one’s fear of failure. the second is sheer perseverance.–Mary-Claire King

The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority.–Jean Caldwell

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done–men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.–Jean Piaget

We are the music makers.
We are the dreamers of dreams.– Arthur O’Shaughnessy

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on Earth. So what the hell, leap!–Peter McWilliams

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.–Maya Angelou

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