Celebrate Creativity

Celebrate a forum of over 80 countries sharing all forms of creativity in the United Nations 20^th annual World Creativity & Innovation Week. When you register you can take a look at the prodigious diversity of speakers from over 80 countries. You can see their profiles and their topics of presentation.

Creativity makes the world go round, and you can participate in this United Nations Forum with a worldwide community emphasizing that everything you see in this world is a product of creative minds.

This conference will demonstrate how human being brains think differently, challenge our norms, take risks and learn from trial and error. It is time to understand that everything you do can be a creative act.

What is creativity?

You may believe you have a reasonably good grasp of what creativity is. After all, you see it, you hear about it, and maybe you even practice it. Maybe you exclaim, “Wow! Now, that’s creative! How did they do that?”

Yes, what is it that makes something creative? And how can one get better at creativity? Well, there is always the old adage: Necessity is the Mother of Invention!

Nonetheless, spend some time with the creative people in this United Nations Forum for World Creativity and Innovation, and you will recognize that creativity is a mindset – a skill set – and a tool set. It’s a framework for tackling problems. It involves brainstorming a lot of ideas, seeking the new and novel, suspending judgment, and building off the ideas of others.

When it comes down to it, creativity goes far beyond just your first right answer. It’s about insatiable curiosity, playing with persistent experimenting. That means, trying and trying again… and again.

Why is Creativity important?

Practicing creativity brings creative confidence. With creative confidence comes your ability to look at problems as opportunities.

Amy Purdy lost both legs beneath the knees when she was nineteen years old. Any human being might be devastated, yet Amy became a Para-Olympic Snow Boarding champion as well as a luminous dancer on television’s “Dancing with the Stars”, and is now an inspiring speaker. She often lectures about seeing her challenges as opportunities:

“My legs did not disable me. My legs enabled me,

because they led me to believe in possibilities.

Here is my challenge to you:

instead of looking at our limitations as bad,

we can look at them as opportunities – as magnificent gifts.

We can use them to ignite our imagination

and help us go further than we ever knew we could go.”

With creativity, you can set your imagination on fire. You can find new solutions to personal challenges. Creativity can help you discover new connections, to change – to improve – your life. Perhaps, to change your world.

The Lens of Imagination

You can change your perspective with the lens of imagination. It is one of the most powerful forces of creativity. Despite anything you have been told or anything you have learned – the United Nations Creativity Forum can help you recognize that you are creative! You can suddenly see that your doubts and uncertainty actually can be the fuel that moves you through a challenge in your life.

At first, uncharted territory may seem overwhelming, until you realize – every single little or big thing in our world IS created. For instance, there was a time when traffic lights did not exist, and there was chaos on many a city street crossing. Yet those accidents fueled the challenge to find a solution.

I happen to like the fact that Light has played a big part in automobile safety: from headlights and tail-lights – to blinking directional signals and flashing traffic lights, Light has kept cars and passengers safe through eye-catching illuminations! Truly creative!

The Offshoots of Innovation

The wheels of creativity often turn on curiosity. It may have killed the cat, but it is essential in opening wide the doors to our possibilities.

Likewise, persistence and perseverance are what makes us try, try again, because our unwillingness to stop at failure opens our futures to a world of opportunity.

Human Beings are natural ignitors, explorers, leaders, do-ers. You can see this clearly, as human beings conquer our fears, and take off into the wild blue yonder. Or when we produce something brand new that no-one ever guessed could make our lives easier – like replacing old-time water wells with indoor plumbing! Creativity created the changes we enjoy today, and it is creativity that fosters the innovation of tomorrow.