Saturday, May 25, 2013

A Creative Experiment

I saw this fun video on Upworthy, and Kate sat down and watched it with me. The basic idea is to debunk the idea that working under pressure fosters creativity. These media people, frustrated by clients wanting faster and faster turnaround on creative work, did a little experiment with elementary school kids, giving them a rudimentary sketch and asking them to complete the drawing in 10 seconds, then giving them the same sketch and 10 minutes to work on the task.



In 10 seconds, all the kids basically did the same thing, clarifying what the sketch most obviously represented. In 10 minutes, however, the kids' creativity came out, with time to imagine and develop an idea, transforming the starting sketch into a variety of things.

It was an interesting little experiment, so I decided to see what Kate would do with a similar task. I drew a simple, black trapezoid on paper and set the microwave timer for 10 seconds.

She turned it on its side and declared it a door, adding a doorknob and some color.

Then I drew another trapezoid and set the timer for 10 minutes.

She colored it and a couple other things, making what appears to be a collection of lamps that remind me of Ruby Tuesday.

Just a fun little activity to get the creative juices flowing. We have an art station among our prayer stations at The Road (our Sunday evening casual worship)—maybe I'll try it myself as a prayer exercise tomorrow night!

2 comments:

NALA said...

Amazing! I don't have much creativity though so I probably would still have drawn a clock even with 10 minutes. Those kids imaginations were
fantastic though.

Rachel Moss said...

Awesome! I can totally apply this to my new teaching position.

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