Why do we do this work?

Creativity

There are several common misconceptions about creativity and divergent thinking. The first is that people think that only some individuals are creative. At Capture we believe that the nature of human beings is that we are all creative and that you can cultivate creativity and teach children and adults to think and develop their creative potential.

There are several issues around cultivating creativity, first the national curriculum and second is teaching itself. It is not possible to give a child a creativity injection, adults have to create an environment for curiosity and a way to encourage children to think divergently and get the best out of them. The current system is very target and result driven with no room for any divergent thinking or for allowing and following a creative process. There is only one answer to every question and no room to maneuver within these boundaries, this stifles and shuts down the ability for children to think for themselves.

What we have discovered during our research project is that many adults are afraid to think creatively, pressures of meeting targets, child to adult ratios being to high, fear of failure, working in a culture of blame etc. all compound the issue, leaving adults fearful and demoralized.

Capture is developing art workshops to seed the creative thinking process within each child whilst providing a safe and open environment for this process. The production of meaningful artworks is often the end result.

Creativity and creative thinking are empowering tools for problem solving that can be applied across the curriculum and in daily life. The tools give children a structure on which to build their thinking and the confidence to approach new problems.

We have developed a workshop system that can be simply adopted and used in early years settings, it is a system that enables children to have the space to think creatively and divergently and we have a range of creative thinking tools to give to practitioners and parents to allow this to happen.

MTM is now an ongoing programme of research and we find new discoveries with each phase of the project. It raises many questions that we hope to find the answers to and in doing this we can directly affect the future ability of children and adults to be true creative thinkers.