A recent conversation with my five year old;
“Mummy, I am an artist.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I have all of the good ideas.”
This as she was spontaneously fingerpainting the bricks underneath our patio with watercolours.
I often wonder when it is exactly that we lose that confidence as artists that children so often hold. That seemingly inherent self-confidence to freely create and explore, to manipulate and construct, to delve and to know more.
Maybe just a little of it is knocked away the first time a peer laughs at their purple, spotted leopard, their imperfectly formed love heart or their non-cotton-bud-topped tree.
Or as a loved one responds, “What is it?”
Still more is likely stifled by the limitations well-meaning adults place on the time dedicated to creative pursuits, as we prematurely fill their days with academics and extra curricular activities. Not recognising the value of integrating art into the very learning we encourage.
Whenever it is we do our children a disservice by limiting their opportunities for creativity.
Regular time and space for creativity, for art, provides all children with the opportunity to develop and express original thinking, to ask questions and find answers and solutions. Art provides children with space and reason to communicate symbolically, to organise ideas, to share.
All of these are important skills for future job success in the 21st Century. And how we respond to and support a child’s artistic attempts right now will influence her creative confidence not only in the present but also far into the future.
“To support a child’s developing artistic confidence, be encouraging even when it is difficult…. Children need to feel that their ideas will be accepted and respected; (to learn that) mastery comes through repeated attempts. The masters of drawing and painting did not paint an image only once, they revisited an image over and over again, representing it each time in different forms, from different angles, with different materials. Children need this same opportunity to try many different ways of creating and representing an idea without feeling pressured to produce in the one “right” way.” – Time to Create: Hands On Explorations in Process Art for Young Children
“Mummy, I am an artist.”
It’s a self-belief I hope to hear her express for many, many years to come.
Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.
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