Colouring Outside The Lines

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Having attended various craft events with our son, I have been struck by contrasting attitudes of adults present. Comments which stand out follow similar themes:
“Keep within the lines.”
“Grass should be green.”
“Cats don’t have three eyes.”
“Are you going to add any more colour?”
Most of the children involved are younger than the starting age for UK schools (currently 5 years old). Yet they’re already being prompted to restrain their creative processes. Especially those who spend time colouring outside the lines.

I wonder who makes the rules of creativity. Is it a case of learn the ‘rules’ as a child, then break them once you know them? Or should we leave individuals to develop their own craft?

Colouring rocks – a splash of colour within the heart, but he preferred to do his own thing

Boden’s Creativity Types

Combinational

Margaret Boden identified three distinct types of creativity which she brought together in the Ripples Creativity Model. Firstly, Combinational Creativity, which takes familiar ideas and combines them to create something innovative. For example, records of people putting food out for animals dates back to at least 1500 BC, in Hindu writings. But it wasn’t until the mid 1800s, that the first commercial forms of bird table began to take shape. Combining the concept of eating at a table, with the desire to attract birds to the garden, the familiar structure was designed.

Birdtables remain popular items for garden spaces

Exploratory

Exploratory Creativity explores structured concepts to discover new versions. Music genres, for example, develop through taking the musical structures with which we are familiar, and using them in different ways.

Other examples might include engineering. For example, a school physics lesson in which each group receive identical materials and are challenged to build the strongest bridge. The students understand the concept of a bridge, and have the same materials to work with. Outcomes depend on their ability to innovate within their concept of bridge design.

Clapper bridges in Dartmoor are thought to have been created to replace stepping stones, to help packhorses cross rivers, thus transforming the crossing points.

Transformational

Using Transformational Creativity, existing structures are transformed. Things which appear not only new, but impossible.

What if a Guinea pig had more than two eyes? (Design by our son)

The general shape is familiar, as in the Guinea pig cut out above. But the fixed concept that Guinea pigs have a maximum of two eyes is transformed into a world in which Guinea pigs have multiple eyes. While this may not seem possible in our perceived world, the idea could be used in other art, such as creative fiction. So rather than close the idea down as being ‘impossible’, I discussed what function each of the eyes had, and how the Guinea pig used them.

Killing Creativity

Rather than telling children to colour within the lines, that creatures have to look a certain way, or bridges can’t have wheels … perhaps we ought to encourage them to innovate. Discuss their ideas with them, and encourage their creative thinking processes. Children learn about the world in their own individual way. Some prefer the ordered thinking of replicating life as they understand it. Others like to play with the structures they know, and explore the boundaries. Both approaches are equally valid, but it is the former which tends to be praised by adults. The ones who keep within the lines and draw cats with two eyes. My own preference is for colouring outside the lines, and encouraging others to do the same.

Our son knows the Earth has one moon, but wanted to imagine how the sky might look if there were three. So he painted the night sky with three moons.

Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”