Jonathan Furst

Role of Trial & Error in Creativity

by Dads for Creativity
written by Dads for Creativity

“Daddy, do you know how to make a paper airplane?” My daughter’s question sparked an hour of trial and error test flights that culminated in our design for a plane that glided the length of our mid-century house: “Daddy,” she exclaimed after our successful flight, “We’re engineers!”

What happened during that hour enabled my ten year-old daughter to discover and begin to develop some basic creative problem solving skills. And in the process we both had a hellueva lot of fun!

Step 1: Drawing on Previous Knowledge/Experience

Building a paper plane from memory. My daughter watched attentively as I carefully folded down the edges of a sheet of paper. My boys school rigid education drilled me in the art of designing and launching planes as soon as a teacher glanced away. So, after pressing the edges of the wing flat, I proudly held up my recreated design:

I held it poised – ready for flight – and then a firm but light arched toss – as my plane flew 24 inches – nose-dived into a downward spiral & as it hit the floor just beyond our feet – my daughter and I erupted in laughter! What an absolute and colossal failure! And we picked it up and laughed again as each tried to launch what was clearly a hopelessly flawed design!

Point: Failure is an essential part of the creative process. Instill this in your kids & students. At the Apple Distinguished Educators Conference in AZ, they had us applaud anytime anyone made a mistake. At first this seemed like a cute pretense, but after a couple of days – the lesson sunk in. And it made so much sense:

 Allowing everyone the freedom to fail – also allowed everyone the freedom to take chances. And from then on – our group of Apple Educators all took chances – to build on our own and each other’s ideas and designs.

Parents must watch for signs of your kid shutting down after any failure – and if you see it – you must swoop in whatever way you know best – & re-program your kid’s response. Applaud your kid for trying. For attempting something. For saying something that comes out wrong. Your kid may not understand process yet – but reinforce the bravery it took to make an attempt.

 Step 2: Collaboration…Trial and Error

At first each of us created original designs. We glanced at what the other did, but came up with our own airplanes. “We’ll see whose flies farther,” my daughter said. The results were better – if you consider a six foot flight is better than a two foot flight. But since we had our sights set on long distance flight, we began to collaborate and share ideas:

We talked about the folds and angles and tips and weight and tried to streamline our designs. Each of us made folds as we passed the design back and forth. We built on planes that flew farther – trial and error – and soon had 8 prototypes scattered on the floor around us. We couldn’t break the thirty foot barrier. We seemed to have exhausted the possibilities and recognized our limitations. We were stuck. Before frustration could shut us down – we took a key step in the creative process:

Step 3: Explore Possibilities Outside Your Circle

I thought of calling my friend, Scott Chasen, who knows as much about the dynamics of flight as anyone. Last summer, as a leisurely sail in LI Sound turned into a race against an oncoming storm to get safely back into the harbor, he calmly explained the aerodynamics of twin-rotor helicopter design and flight. He communicated engineering R&D in such a fascinating and inviting way that anytime he wants to spend an afternoon with a room full of 5th grade science students, he has an open invitation! He’d be a perfect fit for our paper airplane R&D team! I knew he’d have had fun collaborating with us, but now it was too late on a Sunday night to call him for a consult.

Undeterred, Natalie and I reached for a laptop to research various design prototypes online. We compared their designs to ours and began to create a new prototype. Our research finally led us to the world champion paper airplane flyer. We checked the validity of his flight record claims and found the site where he revealed his once secret design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDiC9iMcWTc

Step 4: Finally – Make It Your Own!

We built his “record setting” model and tested it. While it easily had the distance capability to cover the ninety feet of our ranch style home – the design needed modifications to suit our goal: the record-setting design continually soared upward & hit the ceilings.

We needed a plane that could fly straight as an arrow down a long hallway.

 After an hour of creative play that followed our initial failure, our energy surged: trial and error led us to shorten the wingspan in order to achieve a straighter flight path.

Natalie launched our new model – our eyes were glued to its flight path as it held a dart-like trajectory down our long hallway, through 12’ high x 3’ wide opening in a brick wall and successfully glided across a huge room bordered by three walls of glass.

And if the glass doors were open – there were three acres of woods for a plane to navigate….

Step 5: Continue to Wonder!

We celebrated our successful flight. And then we wondered. What design would we need to navigate the interior of the house – and then, with the glass doors open, continue its flight path outdoors across the stream behind our house…and beyond?

FREE FILM for parents and educators

We believe the first stage in counteracting the imbalance of creativity verses content, starts at home. Help us share the word on Facebook and Twitter.

Anyone who shares or contributes content* will receive a FREE download to Creativity in Education: Exploring the Imbalance.

Unfortunately, we’re not super sophisticated (or perhaps lack creativity) so in order for us to know that you’ve shared content we need you to tweet to @dads4creativity or share from our Facebook page. We’ll follow up with details via a private message.

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Matthew Worwood

Noticing the forget-me-not moments of everyday creativity

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

I keep noticing these forget-me-not moments of everyday creativity when engaging in play with my boys, the types of things that I never really thought about until I began writing this blog. They’re really simple… for example lets take Lucas’s favorite toy from his twos and three – Thomas the Tank Engine. Naturally we bought a wooden railway to support his first obsession. At first there was one obvious track formation – the figure of eight. I tried a few different variants but they were never as good, and would put strain on some of the pieces. Slowly overtime we added to the set by buying a bridge here, and a tunnel there, before we knew it we had the ability to create a variety of different track formations by just adding one or two pieces. Eventually it became a challenge for me to build a different track each evening. My wife would sometimes get mad when I would respond to her calls late, but I was fixated on trying to jiggle the last pieces in a way that would make my latest variation work. It even became a game between Lucas, and me, as he would begin playing at one end of the track, as I rushed to finish the other end before the engines arrived. I confess that I would even try and influence Lucas in the shop when we were looking for additional pieces. That extra bend or fork in the track would make all the difference to our, or shall I say ‘my’ future creation. Obviously, this would be a challenging task to pass on to a two year old, especially unaided, but it certainly got me thinking about what other things I could ‘tinker’ with just to be different, to engage my originality and take notice of the forget-me-not moments of everyday creativity when playing with my boys.

As Lucas’s games have evolved I’ve noticed that originality play a big part in their design. He never made the same track twice, and the characters that appear in his games regularly change. I doubt this has anything to do with my track obsession, but it certainly has me thinking about how we might develop a tolerance for ambiguity and better appreciate differentiation in play. Ultimately, why would Lucas build the same track twice, he’s certainly never experienced the ‘correct’ way for it to be assembled? Now the greatest challenge right now is for me to practice what I breach and bring this theory into our Legos, for I am finding it really hard to accept that Lighting McQueen has a place in our recently built Lego Village – anyone seen Lego Movie? Yeah that’s going to be me!

FREE FILM for parents and educators

We believe the first stage in counteracting the imbalance of creativity verses content, starts at home. Help us share the word on Facebook and Twitter.

Anyone who shares or contributes content* will receive a FREE download to Creativity in Education: Exploring the Imbalance.

Unfortunately, we’re not super sophisticated (or perhaps lack creativity) so in order for us to know that you’ve shared content we need you to tweet to @dads4creativity or share from our Facebook page. We’ll follow up with details via a private message.

*Contributing content includes comments on existing articles.

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Matthew Worwood

The Empty Pickle Jar

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

I saw this video doing the rounds on Facebook a few months ago. I’ve since passed it along to some of my colleagues, but I think it’s worthy of a blog post. We live in a world where it can be very difficult to disengage from our work stresses, and I know this can have a negative impact on the quality moments we experience with our little bundles of joy. If we are to dedicate time to cultivating creative thinking it’s important to make sure we can find the right balance between work and play – at least as much as possible.

Check out the Empty Pickle Jar below. It’s a must see video.

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Jonathan Furst

Allow Chaos + Ambiguity to Ignite…Creative Thinking & Playing

by Dads for Creativity
written by Dads for Creativity

First let’s go in the opposite direction. I’ve always been haunted by Samuel Beckett’s line from Godot, “Habit is a great deadener.”

Most of us lead very structured lives. 9-5. Often by necessity – we have to pay the mortgage – save for the kid’s education. Part of the challenge of parenting is how to instill and nourish creative thinking in our kids:

 A key part of the creative process involves embracing the stages of chaos and ambiguity that can lead to innovative thinking.

Too often we’re trained to believe and then teach that order is the foundation of productivity. It is for a certain stage (but not the foundation!) of creative productivity.

If as parents and educators we become “order junkies” who are addicted to the rules of the game – chances are we won’t stray too far from the tried and true.

There is safety there – the boundaries are known and respected. And there is something to be said for that. Up to a point.

The beginning of all education involves learning and mastering the rules of the game. Knowledge of the Periodic Table must precede any experiments in chemistry. James Joyce mastered the short story form and wrote a collection of the most beautiful structured stories (Dubliners) before re-defining the novel and blowing the lid off what is possible with language in Finnegan’s Wake.

What is your response when your kid begins to see something in a different light – a “micro burst of creative thinking” as my Dads for Creativity colleague Mattew Worwood discussed in his January 12 blog.

Embrace the chaos. Allow your kids to embrace chaos. For too many – this is an uncomfortable space to inhabit – there are no know rules – no borders. Don’t look for a compass – because it hasn’t been invented yet. You can’t map a journey of creative exploration from point A to B.

My daughter’s room is sheer chaos. But not only is she comfortable there – she is thriving in that environment. It’s a painter’s palette in there of books, drawings, video projects, music, hand-me-down iPhones, colorful clothing (all over the place) ….yet what emerges are carefully structured artistic and scientific creations that astound and delight me.

The other day I ventured into her room – and found her on her bed fashioning a guitar from a cereal box and rubber bands of varying width. (see photo above!)

Nurture your kids creativity – allow them to explore and help them to feel safe in the chaos and ambiguity that may (or may not) lead somewhere. They’ll be plenty of order and structure as they proceed with their education.

Herman Melville said it beautifully, “It’s not down on any map – true places never are.”

How can we as parents encourage our kids to explore and feel more at home in these “true places?”  In whatever way you can – validate and support your kid’s journey into the unknown – as they explore.

There will probably be a period where chaos and ambiguity reign – that wave is one of the essential building blocks of creative work and play. And periods of frustration can emerge when things are not perfectly clear. Don’t band-aid that emotion and try to make it “all better.”

Just be there for your kid – let them know it’s okay and brave to wrestle with the ambiguity of not knowing how or where a thought or game or project will end up. It’s a process not a product at this stage – let them know it’s okay to ride their wave of creative energy – they’ll be plenty of time later to codify and organize it all.

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Matthew Worwood

We must make more of the ‘Micro Bursts’ of Creative Thinking

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

I first heard about the concept of ‘Micro Moments’ from Susan Keller-Mathers, at the International Center for Studies in Creativity, she was referring to the brief moments of creativity that occur during the day and may only last for a few seconds. I’m going to call them ‘Micro Bursts of Creativity’ as I think the word burst is better associated to the little ones, but they’re certainly moments. They’re usually associated with a creative response to a question, or responding to a presented problem in a new and surprising way. Usually we notice these actions and perhaps might respond with a ‘well done’ or ‘hey did you see that… my girl just did this’… but because they’re so brief we usually let them glide by and fail to celebrate the creative thinking within the action.

Here’s a perfect example, my little boy was helping me prepare the Christmas cards. It was kind of annoying as I wanted to get through them quickly, but he’s currently in this fix of wanting to join in with adult jobs and gets very frustrated if he’s not included, so I suggested he write his name in each card, which then turned into drawing pictures. I confess I didn’t look at any of the pictures as I was too busy writing each address on the envelopes, but I noticed him looking a little puzzled after we’d got through about 10 cards. ‘Lucas, what’s the problem’ I asked, ‘I’m thinking what to draw next, I’m trying to draw a different picture in every card’. Wow, this was a really cool creativity exercise that only a three year old would invent! Through his many years of studying creativity, E. Paul Torrance identified a creativity skillset, and one of the skills identified was the ability to produce and consider many alternatives, it’s often referred to as the Fluency Principal. This would have been an excellent fluency exercise, and has similarities to activities like ‘come up with as many alternative uses for a bathtub, or a brick, or a bucket, etc. The goal of this type of exercise is to focus on quantity over quality, to resist the temptation to find the one ‘right’ idea and instead generate a variety of ideas. This is one of four principals of brainstorming and has proven to be effective in the production of innovative ideas during ideation sessions.

What’s the point of this article you might be saying… well I believe the action above has now dwindled from Lucas’s mind. He probably doesn’t realize the recognition I gave it, and certainly didn’t associate it with anything special, but when he first spelt his name I reached for my phone and immediately pushed record. If I ask my family if they’ve heard Lucas spell his name they’re all going to say ‘Yes Matthew’… if I ask them if they heard about the story above they’re going to say ‘No… and might not be that interested’… so my point is we need to value these micro bursts of creativity as much as the micro moments of academic development. I mean seriously, most kids know how to spell their name by five or six (and who cares when they started). If we want to better nurture creative thinking we need to recognize the ‘coolness’ of generating twenty-five different pictures* in the space of 5/10 minutes? I’m not even sure I could do that!

*Full disclosure, I didn’t actually take note of the pictures Lucas was drawing so he actually might have failed miserably if this was one of E. Paul Torrance’s Tests of Creativity.

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Matthew Worwood

My New Years Resolutions for Cultivating Creativity at Home

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

It’s another New Year and time to make some New Years Resolutions! So how might we better cultivate creativity at home? I’m honestly not sure at how to best approach this task, but I think it’s important to work at identifying where our little ones are currently exhibiting areas of creative thinking at home and work at building upon them. Below is my list for Lucas (Liam, if you’re reading this just remember I’m writing this when you were nine months – this is NOT favoritism to Lucas!):

My first is to research how I might better nurture some of the talents Lucas has demonstrated. I’m sure we all see them in our kids but what do we actually do to nurture their development. Lucas loves to draw and make stories, so I’m going to try and help him make some books that we can read at night and might even investigate some art classes.

My second is to slowly introduce the use of technology. Lucas is a skilled operator of the iPad, but we don’t do enough with the many apps that are designed specifically to cultivate creative thinking. I’m also going to make more of our movie production and start utilizing some of the stop motion apps. This links back to nurturing his desire to make stories and hopefully will become an activity we both enjoy once a month.

My third is perhaps the most easy to adopt and is simply being better at recognizing the ‘micro’ moments of creativity. These are those small acts of creative thinking that we might respond by ‘good boy/girl’ but never actually celebrate. A perfect example was last month when Lucas turned to me as said ‘I’m trying to draw a different picture in every one Daddy’ this was his contribution to our Christmas Card. *

My forth resolution is another simple one – cultivate more questions. Yes they’re annoying, and there’s only some many answers to ‘Daddy how does the bladder work?’ (He’s learning about the human body in school), but actually asking questions is one of the greatest creative acts of a scientist and the scientist within us all is probably one of the most creative aspects of our personality. A renown Physicist stated that he owes his success to his mother asking him ‘what questions did you ask at school today’ as opposed to the more common question ‘tell me what you learned at school today’

Finally, I recognize that if I’m going to better cultivate creativity at home then I better get a little more creative myself, so I’m going to search out a creative hobby of my own. I’m thinking astronomy, photography or a combination of the two.

* The act of trying to create a different picture in each card was a perfect fluency exercise, which is a specific creativity skill that was identified by E. Paul Torrance and involves the ability to produce and consider many alternatives.

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Matthew Worwood

Choosing Presents that Promote Creativity at Christmas

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

Santa… Claus… is coming to town! And this means lots of Christmas shopping for parents. My boys haven’t got to the age where they can identify a list of wants and send these off to Santa – and this means their choice of presents is mine to make!   So, what gifts can we buy that will create magic on Christmas morning, but also provide opportunities to nurture and cultivate creativity at home.

Below is a list of five items that I believe can be used to cultivate skills in creativity.

  • The Olloclip can be found on Amazon. It’s basically a micro lens that clips on to your smartphone and lets you take really, really close up pictures. Come Spring you can take your kids on nature walks and grab all sorts of images that will stimulate curiosity and provide a whole new perspective to the tiny world that lives under our feet.
  • My boys are a little to young for this gift but the Makey Makey – An Invention Kit, has got ‘Maker’, ‘Wow Factor’ and a verity of problem-solving skills written all over it. I confess I haven’t checked it out but have identified it for Christmas 2016. I’ve seen people turn bananas into remote controllers for video games.
  • Legos – this stuff doesn’t need an introduction, I just encourage you to be cautious when purchasing ‘branded’ based playsets.. There’s certainly a place for our little ones to reenact the stories they see in the movies, but we don’t want them to be confined to the characters in these worlds. Instead we want them to create their own characters for their own worlds. Apart from that I really don’t think it matters what Lego you purchase. Some kids will probably play, others will build, but whatever happens Legos make create ‘Makers’. I don’t plan to spend this kind of money on Lego, but for educators the story starter kits from Lego Education are worth exploring.

 

  • Science Kits/Telescopes/Ant Farms, anything that stimulates wonder and curiosity for the world around us. I’ll be keeping it simple and purchasing a magnet set. These types of activities will work best with parent participation, who can facilitate questions and arise curiosity.
  • Games should really have their own section. Most games are renown for their problem-solving skills. There’s certainly little debate on the learning that takes place in game. The discussion is usually on whether this learning translates into the real world. Personally I feel that probably varies from game to game. Just to clarify, traditional board games are just as important as digital games. Personally I’m not in a rush to introduce Lucas to video games so I’ll be keeping to simple things like Connect4 – Remember not to give it away – let the little ones try and problem-solving how to win the game.

This is only my third Christmas as a Dad so I’m still learning on what to buy. Generally speaking, play is a creative act so you can’t really go wrong. I’d just suggest that you try and vary the types of toys in order to stimulate a wide variety of creativity skills.

Happy Holidays!

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Jonathan Furst

Creativity and Fantasy

by Dads for Creativity
written by Dads for Creativity

Einstein

“Dear Mr. Fantasy….

….play us a tune

Something to make us all happy

Do anything take us out of this gloom…”    -Traffic.

 

We’re all creatures of habit. And there’s some comfort there. As teachers and students and parents we often sink into the familiar rather than explore unchartered waters. And that’s really where all the fun is. Kids know that when they are young: watch them play and spin reality into fantasy and back to reality faster than we channel surf.

At times the rigidity and gloom of too many school curriculums can rob them of their creativity unless we as parents allow, encourage and participate with them in creative activities like the one my colleague Matthew Worwood described in his wonderful 11.22.14 post on “ten items that must be included in a dressing up box.” Sometimes I think fantasy gets too much bad press from the sociological/psychological gurus. Here’s another guru for you:

“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” ― A. Einstein

There are no rules in unchartered waters. As parents and teachers we want to equip our kids with the navigational tools to explore these waters, but too often we are reluctant to go there ourselves. It has been reiterated many times that we are now educating students for jobs that don’t even exist yet. Unchartered waters.

It’s often the parents and teachers that need the encouraging to use their fantasies to explore and not the kids.

I used to teach 11th grade English at the high school. The whole curriculum was British Literature. Imagine teaching Macbeth (or Beowulf!) to a room of really reluctant readers at 7:30 in the morning the first week in September. Many of these kids had never read a book from cover to cover in their lives.

I shared a room with Sean Malloy – an amazing teacher but a misguided fanatic Red Sox follower. The students always enjoyed the playful banter between the two of us since I’m from NYC and a die-hard Yankee fan. As we drove to work in the morning passed trailer parks and local diners, we listened to sports radio and often talked of curriculum – and then tried, with mixed results, various instructional strategies to engage the students in Shakespeare.

The students loved our rat-a-tat-tat taunting of each other with regards to our opposing baseball teams. And one morning we slipped into unchartered territory and the whole game changed:

Both classes were reading Hamlet and one of us suddenly asked, “If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern played baseball – what position would they play?

Stop. The room went quiet. Everyone in the room looked at us. What are these teachers taking about? It made no sense. Where’s the logic? Baseball and Hamlet?

And the other shot back, “They’d have to play shortstop & 2nd base – they’re a perfect double play combination!”

And we were off to the races…..

The kids loved it. Instant engagement. We put the names of all the characters from Hamlet on the board and had the students discuss each one – and then had them assign characters in the play to baseball positions based on their personal attributes and their relationships in the play. Collaboratively teachers and students formulated a line-up that bears some resemblance to the following:

-Hamlet – contemplative, reflective, can be rash and impulsive – Center field

-Claudius – shrewd, conniving, tries to control the game – Pitcher

-Laertes = Claudius’ catcher, as he’s receptive to everything the “bastard” throws his way

-Gertrude – charm and grace – desires a good position – 1st base

-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern – Shortstop and 2nd base (double-play combo)

-Horatio – 3rd base – because Hamlet’s discussions with him are close to home.

-Ophelia – (DEEP) left field

-Bernardo or Marcellus – platoon in right field-based on righty/lefty pitching matchups

-Fortinbras – comes in from the bullpen to close it out.

-Polonius – Manager

-Old King Hamlet’s ghost – General Manager – as he gets the wheels in motion.

-Yorick’s skull would be displayed in Monument Park, and the Gravedigger would be the mascot.

The fluidity of the above exercise can stretch way beyond the classroom to spontaneous and creative moments that you can share with your kids. The other night our family was sitting around the dining room table laughing as our three pit bull rescue dogs, Flash, Stella and Arlo entertained themselves and us with an endless series of antics. We started talking about their very different characteristics – at which point my ten year-old daughter (having just finished yet another book in a adventure series about the Greek gods) – asked, “If Flash was a Greek god….which one would he be……”

Back to our baseball team – and for the fun of it –
the statistician:

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” ― A. Einstein

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Matthew Worwood

Creativity Chit-Chat: 5 ways to engage Creativity at Christmas

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! I absolutely love the Holidays and consider it my duty to make it a magical experience for my boys. Merging family traditions with my wife can occasionally be challenging, but for the most part extremely fun because you get to choose best of both worlds.

Not only can Christmas become a magical experience, but it can also be one full of creativity and imagination. As my eldest is only celebrating his third, and my youngest his first, we’re still building on our annual endeavors but I’ve been making efforts to integrate activities that cultivate creative thinking:
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  1. Making the front cover of our family Christmas card; this was new for this year and turned out to be an enjoyable experience. It’s basically an art project, but because the drawing will be uploaded as the front cover of our card it has added value and purpose. I didn’t challenge the imagination too much this year but anticipate we’ll try and introduce some storytelling elements in the future. They’re currently in the post but I’m looking forward to showing him so that he can make the connection that he’s a ‘Maker’.
  2. Writing a letter to Santa; this should go beyond the writing of a list of presents, which I’ve been told by many parents helps install the ‘I want…’ attitude in later years. Instead this year we wrote a letter telling Santa we’ll be in London, England and will leave him a Mince Pie this year as opposed to a cookie. However, I think that this is another opportunity to tell a story, draw a picture, or write a story to Santa.
  3. Choosing Christmas presents that cultivate creative thinking; I’m going to write another article with some gift ideas that I’ve identified as being particularly helpful when trying to cultivate creative thinking in our little ones. For now I would just say that all children should open gifts that engage the imagination, use fantasy, and have some elements of making, problem-solving, or stimulating curiosity and wonder.
  4. Making, Making, and Making; The Maker Movement has renewed in purpose and energy since the birth of the World Wide Web and other digital technologies. For children below five, making a Ginger Bread House, decorations for the tree or doing some cooking all encourage kids to make and engage in problem-solving. For older children I’m getting particularly intrigued by 3D Printing and plan in the future to make presents for my boys using a 3D application like Blender, or to take my boys down to a 3D printing shop such as the Maker Bot store in Greenwich, CT and have them make decorations or stocking fillers. I’m really excited to see how this one develops and hopefully will be writing bout it this time next year.

    A 3D printer has just begun to print a toy plane for my eldest.

    A 3D printer has just begun to print a toy plane for my eldest.

  5. Make a Christmas Story; this is still in development. I’m hoping to identify time over the next ten days before we jet off to the UK to make a book. I’m still not sure if we’ll make an eBook using Apple Author, or if it will just be made up of pictures and published via iPhone, but I’m going to work with Lucas to create a story of Christmas, and obviously as we get a little older I hope the stories will capture some of the values that we hold so dearly during this time of the year.

Please feel free to share how you plan on cultivating creativity this Christmas. I’m only three years into being a Daddy at this time of the year so am looking for lots more suggestions.

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Creativity in Education: Exploring the Imbalance. is a documentary film that explores Creativity in education. To gain FREE access, simply comment below and we’ll follow up with a link and password.

 

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Matthew Worwood

Storytelling? Or just really simple homemade videos on YouTube?

by Matthew Worwood
written by Matthew Worwood

Ok, as a digital media practitioner, I hate, love, and most importantly envy all the extremely simple, basic, homemade videos of talking toys, trains, and Legos that are shared on YouTube. I find myself sitting there thinking, who is watching all of this stuff, and how has such a simple video got thousands of views when the trailer for my documentary barely has over a hundred. The answer is right in front of me – ‘DADDY!!! Can I watch Disney Collector Girl’, says Lucas. Who is Disney Collector Girl I say, ‘She’s on YouTube silly’. My boy absolutely loves these YouTube videos, he watches them during lunchtime and often chooses them over his favorite shows on Disney Junior (ok don’t judge with the fact I let Lucas watch the iPad at lunch time, He’s three and can be an absolute pain when it comes to eating so we need a distraction).

It’s certainly difficult to specify on what he finds so engaging about the content, which may I add he finds himself by ‘browsing’ the suggestions on the right of the screen. Most of the videos he watches appear primitive and unstructured in their production and storyline to me, but to Lucas they make perfect sense and grasps his attention just like the latest Hollywood Blockbuster. This is probably because the director, filmmaker, and storyteller, is usually a child close to Lucas’s age. Why shouldn’t Elsa from Frozen jump into a spaceship to go and visit Lightening McQueen, who’s busy chilling on a wooden railway with Thomas the Tank Engine? Then comes in a monster in the form of a coke bottle and destroys everything in seconds and the film comes to a close. There are some videos that have been produced with the support of parents, and these include soundtracks and credits but the stories remain as sporadic. Lucas’s early favorites come from a category devoted entirely to wooden trains crashing and falling off tracks to the song ‘Accidents Will Happen’. This was when he was really into Thomas the Tank Engine and would get his trains and replicate what he was seeing on the screen.

As I reflect on this activity I realize that Lucas was actually acting out the story that was unfolding in the video, and this is what makes the videos so powerful – it’s kids telling stories, to other kids, who in turn are inspired to create their own modified versions. Obviously children have always created their own stories in play, I still remember some of the stories I created when I played with my Star Wars figures and Legos. However, in the digital age we now have the ability to capture and share these stories with the world. So last week I recruited Lucas to produce our first movie, it was certainly an experiment and didn’t last longer than thirty minutes, but participating in the activity I realized how much of a creative act it really was – We were making and telling a story.

Now I confess that in the first few minutes I made a genuine attempt to structure it as a wannabe filmmaker, but as you can see my boy was having none of it and quickly stamped down his authority as the director of our film.

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