You Can’t Force Inspiration… or Can You?

Have you heard or even said the phrase, ” You can’t force inspiration.” In some ways this is true, you can’t force yourself or your students to have inspiration in any given moment, however, there are many practices that you can put in place that encourage and feed into developing inspiration.

Understanding the creative process is about a new way of thinking. A new way of looking at and interacting with the world around you. Being able to think in creative ways, is empowering. The creative process teaches you that if you don’t know the answer, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. It means that you need to ask new questions, which often will guide you to uncover a different and more important problem, and then, it encourages you to TRY to create a solution.

I say TRY because you will likely fail, we all do, and that’s important too! The creative process teaches you that failure isn’t bad, it’s a way to lead to new questions, new problems, and possibly new solutions.

Thank you cards inspired by Lancaster City

Each year, I design and create thank you cards, inspired by the city and neighborhood where my husband delivers mail. I’m asking myself, what reminds me of the city, and how do I use materials that I already have? (material related constraints is something that has always been inspiring to me, so I apply to almost every creative project that I start.)

Reflect

Are there any constraints or creative practices that almost always help you develop ideas?

I just finished re-reading Realizing Empathy for at least the 3rd time. It’s one of those books that I learn some new each time that I read it. And every time, I underline, add post-it-notes, and further circle this quote.

“Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves, to know what another person sees of the universe which is not the same as our own and of which, without art, the landscapes would remain as unknown to us as those that may exist in the moon. 

Thanks to art, 

Instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, send us still each one it’s special radiance.” ~ Marcel Proust/ Novelist

You will hear me say, many times that not all art is creative, and not all creativity is about art, we so commonly draw the connection between the two. While we’re talking assumptions, I’d also like to make sure that we’re in agreement that art can be taught and creativity can be taught. If I didn’t believe that with every ounce of my soul and didn’t see it reflected in my student’s work, I wouldn’t dedicate my life to art, creativity, and education.

Many people wonder if it’s worth going to school to study art if it’s worth understanding creativity. There are many variables to those questions, so I’m not going to attempt to fully answer them today. What I can tell you, is that as an adult, one who switched careers several times, that the one thing that has served me in all areas of my life, is my ability to think in creative ways.

My teaching focuses on principles that will last. I can not predict the jobs of the future. While I could teach you how to use a program, I would rather teach you the tools that you need to discover the program yourself. I will not teach you step-by-step instructions, but I will teach you, how to develop your own step-by-step instructions.

I want to tell you a story about how a change in thinking, changed my life.

I’ve never been very good at following directions, especially if there are a lot of them. But, I was taught to follow directions, that’s how you do things “right,” so I kept trying.

After purchasing my first loom, I tried to follow the directions in a book.

And, nothing worked.

It left me feeling frustrated, full of self-doubt, and like a failure.

After finding out that the book was on recall for missing pages (hence why nothing worked) I decided to give up following directions and make my own.

That mindset shift unlocked something powerful in me, and not just in my weaving. I realized that I didn’t have to do things the way that they were done before. I started making up my own textiles designs (and selling them), and I started making up my own rules for life, and LOVING it.

It often feels easier and safer to follow what’s already been done, and sometimes it is. But what happens, when the result of those instructions, those steps, leads to something that isn’t what you want. You need to be able to shift.