Celebrating Creativity

“Maybe, at the base of it… what creativity really is [is] just falling in love with the world” –Dewitt Jones

Some useful lessons to be learned about creativity:

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Learn from them but also turn them to your advantage.
There is never just one right answer. Find the one (or several) that works best for you
Break out of your self-imposed ruts and patterns. Learn how to switch it up by straying from your comfort zone.
Take your problems and turn them into opportunities.
Find and hone your technique. “Vision without technique is blind”
Care deeply about what you are working on and put everything into it
Be willing to look beyond the ordinary and see something special.

A while back, I was in a large group professional development class put on by our school district. Like most any profession, corporate training (what we teachers call professional development) is a tedious but necessary part of the job. Teachers are also lifelong learners.

Fortunately, this corporate trainer knew when to pull out the big guns and attract everyone’s attention with a discussion about creativity and looking at problems and situations from a different angle. The training video he showed us was “Celebrate What’s Right With The World,” featuring National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones.

To say my socks were blown off was an understatement. In the video, Dewitt talks about focusing on the positive in the world and in every situation, using that positivity to work around obstacles and begin to see them as opportunities.

Dewitt shared his amazing photographs taken during his time with National Geographic and afterwords, relaying the stories behind them and truisms about how creativity is summoned from within, even when we think that well has run dry.

In “Everyday Creativity,” another one of his training films, he talks about seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. The bullet list above is from my notes from watching this film. Key concepts are blow: