Creativity & Genre

    Over the past two weeks I have learned about the importance of creativity. During this time, we completed several activities involving watching a Ted Talk, completing an activity, and reading an article. After these projects I noticed that using the right side of our brain is needed just as much as our left side.

    The first activity that we did was watch a Ted Talk titled “The Theory of Creativity” by Duncan Wardle. In this Ted Talk, Wardle grabbed the attention of the audience by sharing a Christmas experience. He began his lecture by sharing the story of opening a present. As a child, the present could have been used for anything. In the eyes of a child, a box was not just cardboard but instead a rocket ship or a car. Wardle states, “Over time we begin to think reductively because education teaches us to look for one right answer”. This led to the realization that adults don’t have the imagination like they did when they were younger. Another topic that Wardle brought up was drawing a picture of a house. When I drew a house, I drew a square with a triangle on top. Inside the square was a rectangle located at the bottom and more squares with two lines inside. What I drew was the shape of a basic house. This little experiment demonstrated how much creativity I have lost over the years. The Ted Talk ended with the importance of creativity. Wardle finishes by stating that if you aren’t creative, you will be unemployed because you have to innovate and be brave. The second activity that we completed was called, The New Introductions Activity. During this activity, we were to choose a topic and write ten sentences about ourselves only by communicating through that topic. It took me the entire time my teacher gave us to complete these sentences. The fact that it took me so long to come up with statements about myself in a different way terrified me. This made me realize that I have been in this routine of introducing myself the exact same way for years. 

    The third activity was reading an article. The article I read was titled “An Interview with Ron Beghetto: Subtle Nuances of Creativity in Learning and Life” by M.F. Shaughnessy. At the beginning of the article, Beghetto shares that having a creative self-confidence can increase the ability to work through problems. He then gets on the topic of creativity in school. In school, teachers can teach the students how to solve problems in many ways instead of the standard, basic way. Beghetto describes this way of teaching as a “beautiful risk”. He believes that there are three types of risks: a good risk, a bad risk, and a beautiful risk. Good and bad risks are self-explanatory, but a beautiful risk is different. Beghetto believes “Beautiful risks are different because they involve doing something that may not work out but have the potential to make a contribution to the learning and lives of others.” It is important to take beautiful risks because they could potentially benefit others. When the interviewer asked about structured uncertainty, Beghetto described it as something that occurs when a regular routine is broken. This segment of the article caught my eye because I realized that during The New Introductions Activity I was in structured uncertainty. I was so used to introducing myself in one way that my creativity never participated. After reading this article, I realized that it is necessary to use creativity in school or else you will be unprepared for life’s uncertainties.

    The last activity wasn't about creativity itself, but finding a genre in which you could express it. For the past couple of days, I have been studying the types of genres. The genre that drew my attention was comedy. I love comedies because it is such a broad genre that can be incorporated into any topic. The other day, I researched two movies under the genre comedy. The first movie is titled Knives Out. This film is a great example of what I am thinking for my portfolio project because it takes a serious topic and finds a way to place comedy inside too. The film managed to make a murder mystery funny. The second film is titled Napoleon Dynamite. This film is a comedy classic because of the use of jokes in a completely awkward way. The reason why this is a classic is because of the quirky main character. I hope to incorporate some of the awkward and quirky aspects of a teen's life into my own film.

    In conclusion, creativity is one of the most important things to have in life. Creativity is what gets jobs and solves problems never seen before. Creativity is needed to be expressed and there are many ways to do it. One way is to incorporate it into a project. The AICE Portfolio Project allows me to express my creativity through film. The film genre that I have chosen is comedy because of its ability to be expressed everywhere. I have not fully decided on the topic of my film, but I have thought about doing a documentary about a podcast my friends made.