Mother's day here in the UK and my youngest child wanted to express her love for her mother with a drawing.
I guess I didn't expect this....
This is one one of the walls on her bedroom. I'm not here to get into the ins and outs of how this happened, if you are parent like me, you already know.
My question here today is...
How do we nurture that creative spirit rather than suppress it?
Now for obvious reasons, drawing on a wall of a house that we don't even own is a pain in the ass. It's difficult to remove, an awful lot of work to just get it off. However, part of me wants to keep it there.
I want to encourage my children to express their feelings in what ever creative form they wish. We have rolls of blank paper just for them to scribble on. Yet the majority of society seems to either shun this expression or just ignore it altogether favoring the academics.
Even at their young age I am seeing in their education ever year a dramatic decrease in the ways they can express themselves through various creative means.
It enrages me. I thought education was supposed to be more than just studying history, language, geography. I expected it to be encouraging children to explore who they are and what they are good at/enjoy. Like a perfect partnership with the ideals we have at home.
I have a confession, I am a former "street artist" - Particularly in the Bay Area, I watched my art along with much better (from people I know) get painted over, power washed off, etc.
I'm trying not to sound like a entitled millennial.
WHY IS THE MAN TRYING TO PUT US DOWN?
I think society needs to change for the arts. For too long it has been its own subsection of "normal life", either in local councils or on online communities. Art qualifications are considered "wasted" in comparison to computer programming, finance, law, engineering.
** We need to make a bigger stand in our communities than we are already, we need to start from the ground up, with our youngest. **
I think the rant is now over and the floor is open for discussion