My instagram friend Chani Friedman @thepaintery_com tagged me in a photo series by photographer @noralorek for @natgeo and told me the sentiment of their post reminded her of what I share about CReATE and creativity on instagram.
If we want to raise our children into resourceful, kind, caring, thoughtful, curious, fun loving adults then we need to give them the down-time to cultivate it. Being in the lull space and doodling, building, puzzling, playing and so on in a “use what’s around you” kind of way brings self connection and inner respect along with the the ultimate knowing you can do anything. It’s subtle but it happens.
I read Shonda Rhimes book, “A Year Of Yes” , where she described nurturing her childhood imagination by playing alone for hours in her kitchen pantry with soup cans that she created whole dramatic worlds around. Now, she does it for television with shows like Scandal. Reading about that reminded me of my own childhood, playing in my caregiver’s backyard with all kinds of storage boxes and food boxes, whatever was on-hand and tons of imagination. I think that’s ultimately the infrastructure that lead me to create CReATE STUDIO.
I was touched by the images of these Sudanese refugee kids on the National Geographic account, I could relate to the core nature of being a kid and just creating stuff because we only have what’s in front of us, that’s resourcefulness and it’s what we’re created to do. Because they likely have only down time to play and create once their responsibilities are done they imagine and wonder. They may well be the first doctors and architects from their community. The limitations of their lives has removed the distraction of stuff overload that many kids of privileged are prone to. These kids are going to their minds to see possibilities in even the most basic things that would in the wrong hands be taken for granted.
Down-time is really up-time, it’s the place in our present that allows inspiration to come into our minds, it’s where resourcefulness lies so mud becomes a pie or some such thing that let’s the world get so much bigger because we dreamed it up. R is for resourcefulness and our kids need it to grow up and into resilient, thoughtful adults. Isn’t that at lease part of what we want to give them?
It is for me.

-Jemma