Difference, Play & Creativity
Play & children go together like Christmas & Santa, or so I thought. But in 2009, I got on a plane to Chennai, India, with a giant suitcase of toys and headed for an orphanage where I met 80 tiny people. I was planning to use my new play therapy knowledge and enthusiasm to train the workers in play skills. I expected there would be loads of visceral shocks in store for me as I drove into the slum, but I honestly wasn’t expecting to find children who had no idea HOW to play, when presented with an array of toys. It turns out that play doesn’t come before safety, security and love in our hierarchy of needs. I expected the children to leap at the opportunity to play and it was heart-breaking to observe the absence of what we naturally expect to see flowing freely from small children - an innate, uncontained playfulness. It was like Christmas without a single clue to identify it was Christmas.
Such a sad sight.
During #secondlockdownuk I decided to sign myself up for an on-line art course. It was called SPARK, with Art2Life and artist Nicholas Wilton. It felt like the course found me, but truthfully my antenna was on the twitch for a new injection of something to spark my art practice. My Duracell’s were calling for some kind of recharge. I could feel the need for new thoughts and a dose of difference.
I’ve just come to the end of the 21 day course and I wanted to share two key learnings – for my art and more importantly, for my life.
Firstly, I learnt from day one that ‘difference’ has a huge impact on HOW and WHAT we create. We come alive when we experience difference - we’re drawn to difference. When we see something we’re not expecting, it jolts us awake and makes our hearts quicken with delight. We are naturally attracted to things that are different – different people, places, colours, combinations of objects, you name it! We feel our curiosity-buds light up; a call to us to pull up a chair and take a closer look.
I learnt that bringing difference into my art/creative practices can be a game changer, because difference intrigues the brain, keeps the eye entertained and the senses engaged. When we put dull colours next to bright colours, these opposites dance because opposites like to hang out together. When we juxtapose two unexpected things, side by side…. for example, a pink dog sitting on a black wall, or the iconic Banksy’s street rebel throwing, not a brick, but a bouquet of flowers….it draws ALL our attention and invites a sense of playfulness.
And that’s my second takeaway - to make play central to my life and to my art practice. It follows, that if I’m at home with my playful self, then that playful self will feel safe and uninhibited when I make art (think children and finger painting).
Play is the secret weapon of all creativity. When we play, we bring all of ourselves out into the light. It’s impossible to play without sharing more of ourselves and that’s always fun to see in each other.
Play invites intuition and that’s vital, whether we feel we’re into art and creativity, or not. Our intuition is our touch-stone and internal compass and needs constant sharpening, so we can trust it to light the way and guide us through life.
The principle of using the power of playfulness in your life sounds great in theory, but the reality is a whole different matter. Those of us on the course exchanged FB chat on a daily basis, admitting how difficult we found it to just, ‘let go’, ‘get something down on the page with boldness’, or ‘take risks’’. We had to fight every impulse to control and to minimize risks.
I realised that even as a trained Play Therapist, I had to learn to play again. I had to invite myself into a playful space without clenching my jaw, or chiding myself over wasted time.
I could see that my play-muscles were weak and out of shape. I needed help. Something needed to be done! So I’ve decided to…..
a. Play in my art room for an hour every day for the next month.
b. Find a young play buddy to share art with for the next month - to keep me in play mode.
c. Invite difference into all aspects of my life, to shake things up and keep the spark of imagining and intuition alive.
“Choose repeatedly what lights you up” – Nicholas Wilton
