Foster your creativity

Many law students and lawyers have a creative bend, and it turns out, there are lots of good reasons to continue fostering your creativity.  Online Guide to Mediation offers an insightful review of the Boston Globe article "Art for our sake: School arts classes matter more than ever - but not for the reasons you think".   The article reports on a recent study indicating that art teaches a “specific set of thinking skills,” or what the researchers call the “studio habits of mind”: 

One of these habits was persistence: Students worked on projects over sustained periods of time and were expected to find meaningful problems and persevere through frustration. Another was expression: Students were urged to move beyond technical skill to create works rich in emotion, atmosphere, and their own personal voice or vision. A third was making clear connections between schoolwork and the world outside the classroom….

Each of these habits clearly has a role in life and learning, but we were particularly struck by the potentially broad value of four other kinds of thinking being taught in the art classes we documented: observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, and reflective self-evaluation.

Art teaches us to look beyond our own expectations, which may cause inaccurate perceptions:

Seeing clearly by looking past one's preconceptions is central to a variety of professions, from medicine to law.

And for some, creativity can bring a big pay-off literally.   Just read the story of Scott Jordan, a lawyer-turned-entrepreneur who invented the Technology Enabled Clothing, designed to keep your favorite gadgets hidden but easily accessible when you need them.

Comments

[Diane Levin]

Anastasia, I'm really behind on blogging these days (both reading and writing) and only just today discovered that you had linked to me in this post! Thank you kindly for sending readers my way.

I was delighted to be introduced to your blog back in August--it is an invaluable resource for those of us in search of the art in the practice of law! Thanks for all the inspiration you afford us.

Best wishes,
Diane

[Anastasia]

Diane, thank you for your kind words. I love your blog!

[Ed]

Very interesting article.

As someone who has worked as an account planner (the person in an advertising agency responsible for coming up with the 'big idea' for a campaign) with some leading London advertising agencies I cannot emphasize the importance of creativity in business.

Something people in advertising like to talk about is the 'big idea' (first coined by David Ogilvy of Ogilvy & Mather). One of my favourite examples of a 'big idea' in advertising is the 'big idea' behind most of the recent Guinness ads, where a once-perceived weakness of the brand - waiting ages for a pint of Guinness to be poured - was turned into a positive (all the great Guinness ads, at least over here in Europe, are all about the excitement and mystery of waiting for a pint of Guinness to be poured and to settle). In fact advertising is all about flipping conventions onto their heads. Account Planners, in particular, like to question good ideas to see if they are really all that good, and explore 'bad' ideas to see if they contain the sparks for great ideas. In fact we call this kind of creative thinking, disruptive thinking.

Without disruptive thinking a brand dies. But disruptive thinking is something that can be transferred to other business disciplines. It can be used to develop a business model. It can be used to develop a company ethos. It can be used in product development. And so on.

[Anastasia]

Ed,
Thanks for great insights. I've heard of a brainstorming exercise when you have to come up with as many "bad" ideas as you can when you try to solve a problem. I think that in part, it helps to take off the pressure to come up with good ideas. And as you said, one may find some unexpected creative sparks in those "bad" ideas as well.