Welcome to the CreativityWorks website, a platform for highlighting and exploring creativity as a potent catalyzer and connector in our lives and communities.
FOUNDINGS
When I was a student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, my family came to see our graduation thesis show. While taking my grandma around the gallery, I asked her what she thought and felt. Her embarrassed response, “oh, I don’t know, I don’t really get all this,” shocked and saddened me. How could she so distrust or dismiss the value of her own experience to not be able to speak, even if just to declare something crap? Why was her take-away alienation, while for me and for many of us, making art and being creative transforms and, at times, saves our lives?
The “I am not creative” chasm between art-making and the rest of society continues to widen in our culture, even while creativity drives our economies, makes our communities more vibrant, informs our home-making, and fuels our play. Part of the blame lies at the feet of the art world itself, and we will discuss that here. Mostly we will focus on highlighting and exploring creativity as a potent catalyzer and connector in our lives and communities.
DRIVING QUESTION
How could creativity, this most natural gift that we all possess and that we use to weave the fabric of our lives- how could it be so misunderstood, devalued and invisible? That is the question that drives the conversation in this blog. How do we recognize and grow it in our selves, how do we see it shaping our communities and economies, and how can we harness it to meet the challenges, and promise, of our times?
Please help raise awareness of creativity- this gift from the stars that resides in all of us- and advance its role in our communities by participating, sharing and contributing your thoughts and hopes to this blog.
Thank you,
Tracy
Photo by Jonathan Stein; featuring John Lacques of Drumtime
