Five Skills your Students Can Learn When You Center Creative Arts Practice

Did you know that creativity can be developed... just like learning how to speak a new language or learning to swim? Here are five skills that your students will gain from creative arts practice routines: 

1. The Power of Observation: Observation requires attention and awareness. All the senses work together to narrow in on the subject of observation. This, in turn, is how we build an understanding of the subject at hand.   
2. The Call of Curiosity: When observation is developed, curiosity increases. Curiosity is linked to how much we observe the ideas at hand.  
3. Fun in Formulating Questions: Curiosity sparks questions. Creative arts practices are based on inquiries. In the study of something, when it is learned through exploration, more inquiry follows. This keeps the learning evolving and expanding rather than meeting a cul-de-sac and turning back around. 
4. Serious Self-Reflection: Creative practice almost by nature forces us to stop and look inward. Stopping to reflect on what has been made, thought out, or produced is a significant part of the process. The reflective practices developed in the arts are quickly and effortlessly transformed into ways that learners can self-reflect in any life situation.  
5. Earnest Empathy: Creative practice is driven by artistic research...the desire to understand ideas, people, places, and things through enaging in imagination and expression. The experience of developing craft with others, or working with materials or an artform closely, can develop empathy in learners. Empathetic neuropathways can be created through the artful acts named here: observing, being curious, asking questions, and self-reflecting. 

Want some quick and exciting ideas to center creative practice? Stay tuned for more.

Mariah Rankine-Landers

-Mariah Rankine-Landers