The best environment to nurture and develop your creativity is in a structured learning environment. When you have a system to follow you feel safe to create. Creativity does not happen in a vacuum. Understanding the rules, techniques and methods gives you the freedom to then experiment and express your personal interpretation of the material in a practical way and get real results.
Repetition with some variations allows you to develop mastery and muscle memory. Once you master the basics, you can begin to experiment with different variations without sacrificing quality. A structured environment will encourage you to learn variations, different styles and techniques. This encourages you to be original in your thought and action. This environment allows you to find many different ways to express yourself from a technical competence.
Structured learning encourages collaboration. Showing your work to an instructor or peer will get you feedback in the form of different perspectives, constructive criticism and ideas you may have never thought of. This feedback will inspire new ideas, challenge your assumptions and encourage you to explore new possibilities. Take this feedback and apply it. Reflect on the input and find ways to incorporate the suggestions into your work. Your work will be technically correct and beautiful as well as personally expressive.
Part of the structured learning process is learning to try and fail. Most of the time, you won’t get it right the first time. Encouragement to try and fail, and try again will help you to understand that each failure brings you closer to your goal. You will learn that the more you persist, the closer you will come to your goal. This persistence will help you to make progress, but at the same time, allow you to continue to dream about what is possible.
Learning in a structured environment how to be creative will allow you to continue to use your skills, imagination and your critical thinking abilities. You will learn how to use a system and bend it to fit your needs. You will learn how to take a framework and make it personal. You will learn to incorporate your creativity into a process to produce consistent, predictable results that are also imaginative. Add purposeful creativity to a structured learning process and the results will be purposeful, consistent and long lasting.
