I often remind my students that they have all the information man has ever known at their fingertips via the internet. I then challenge them with:
“What are you going to do with it?”
Knowledge is essential, but we would have no forward progress without creativity.
To see an example of that, watch the movie, ‘Apollo 13’ with your kids.
While the astronauts were approaching the moon, an oxygen tank exploded in the module, making it impossible to bring them home safely with the ship in that condition.
The engineers, scientists and astronauts at home had a wealth of scientific information, but it was their creative minds that solved the puzzle of how to jury rig a broken down space module with only the parts they had on board.
Those people were amazingly creative!
The marriage of creativity and knowledge is the thing that has created groundbreaking inventions throughout history. Creativity is the force of most of the cures in medicine and enables police to solve crimes when everyone thinks the trail to justice has dried up.
This is not lost on those who run today’s most successful businesses.
In a 2010 IBM Global Survey of over 1500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 different industries worldwide, creativity was selected as THE most crucial factor of success! Creativity got more votes than integrity, discipline, hard work or vision!
This could be frightening for a parent who is unsure of their child’s creativity. Even worse if their child shows no signs of a creative bent!
Thankfully, the fact of the matter is, we all do have that creative spark in us. Many of us just need to learn how to build that element of our thinking.
So, can you learn creativity? Yes, you can! And if you are already creative, you can build on that and be even more creative, and here is how…
Creativity is a process. We all have an “a-ha” moment from time to time. All one needs to do is to learn what to do when that happens and how to think in order to have those moments more often.
Creativity is a subject that is being taught more and more at universities around the globe. Here at OMS, we’ve been teaching creativity via the songwriting process for close to a decade.
We do this by teaching students how to brainstorm - that is - come up with many alternative ideas. Students learn to quit the common habit of self-editing before the idea is given a chance. The word “no” is not allowed to be spoken during a songwriting session.
Students are also taught not to be afraid to share ideas or have them altered by another member of the group.
These are just a few points in several processes we teach at summer camps and in courses all year round.
I encourage you to email us for more information and discounts to get your children in a summer camp at a deep discount. They will use their newfound creativity in every other aspect of their lives and have a gift they can use forever.