THE BENEFITS OF ARTS AND CREATIVITY TRAINING:

October is Arts & Humanities Month - take a creative risk!

A growing number of studies demonstrate that creativity training, or development in a creative domain, integrates the brain, body and emotions in a symphony of heightened functioning. A study published by Columbia University’s Center for Arts in Education Research reports that teachers in schools providing high-arts “spoke of the effects of arts learning along five specific dimensions of ability. These were the ability to:

Express ideas and feelings openly and thoughtfully;
Form relationships among different items of experience and layer them in thinking through an idea or problem;
Conceive or imagine different vantage points of an idea or problem and to work towards a resolution;
Construct and organize thoughts and ideas into meaningful units or wholes; and
Focus perception on an item or items of experience, and sustain this focus over a period of time.

Dr. Elliott Eisner, author of The Arts and The Creation of Mind, writes that working out the issues we face when training in an art form prepares us for the uncertainties and ambiguities of life, and perhaps most importantly, teaches through lived experience that “small differences can have large effects.” Creative experiences and arts education train the mind and personality to persist in a visionary process toward an unknowable outcome, as we deal with situations that have no single correct solution and call for a range of perspectives to find a way through.

Attend a concert. See a stage play. Go to an art show. Go out dancing. Try improvisation. It takes courage to create.

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