DISCUSSION 6: Creativity & Imagination

(Referencing ORGL-502)

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For our sixth discussion, I decided to touch on the idea of creativity and imagination. We started with the idea of "Do you consider yourself a creative person?" This was also inspired from the final project that I created for my Leadership & Imagination class (ORGL-502). I wanted to make sure that people understood what creativity meant to each of them before fully diving into group discussion. About half of the athletes said that they considered themselves creative people and talked about examples of why, including art classes they had taken along with hobbies that they do in their spare time. Some athletes liked to write, knit, paint, read, and travel just to name a few. We started to write down ideas and adjectives that we felt embodied creativity, such as "artistic," "patient," "colorful," "thoughtful," "inspired," "provocative," "inquisitive," as a few examples. Right off the bat, it was very clear to everyone in the room that creativity meant a little something different to everyone in the room. So to use an interactive idea, we worked to get everyone involved again and we reflected back on a scavenger hunt that I had previously designed and created for the athletes at the beginning of the year. We talked about how they had participated in this scavenger hunt and found ways to get creative and problem solve without even realizing that they were initiating a creative thought process. With the idea of the scavenger hunt, each of the athletes reflected back on how they were able to approach a task given and all complete the task in separate ways with their group. 

 

We then touched on discussion ideas that had been introduced to me on campus at Gonzaga. We discussed the idea of "seeing and seeing again." I asked each of the athletes to pull out their phones and take a look at their most recent Instagram photo that they personally had taken and posted (meticulously edited and 'seen' by the photographer with the purpose of sharing with others). When sharing their thoughts candidly about their photos, they pointed out obvious points about each photo, and took time to think about why they thought it was a good photo in the first place. When I asked them to further take a look at their photos for a minute without any conversation, their faces started to change. They noticed and subsequently talked about small details that they hadn't recognized previously or even given much thought to. This added depth and beauty to something that had been looked at many times already, sometimes without a second thought. 

 

This led us to our final point, in how we talked about how we would describe ourselves and how others describe us. Sometimes creativity can be inhibited by ourselves and we don't truly express it and let it shine. I showed each of the athletes a video that detailed a sketch artist drawing a person based on a self description, and then that same sketch artist drawing an image of the same person based on someone else's description of that person. I think that this helped the athletes better focus on the true need for expression and how creativity can help us grow as people when we let it but can inhibit us if we don't use it effectively or are afraid of opening up about what it can truly mean.