Harness the Transformative Power of Art Every Day
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Many of us give up on lighthearted creative pursuits and play as we move out of childhood, but what have we lost in the process?
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Neuroscientist Julia F. Christensen makes a case for the transformative power of art
Do you remember what it felt like to draw as a child? Many of us would have started drawing before our formal education began, getting lost in the colours, shapes and movements without there being any right or wrong way to do it, and our efforts would have been rewarded with delight and praise – perhaps even with a coveted place of honour for our work on the family fridge.
When we enter formal education, however, our relationship with the arts starts to change. In Western cultures very often, drawing, art and other abilities like writing, language learning and maths are seen as separate things and taught to children separately. We forget that we have only one brain and that brain takes care of everything we do, hence, functions overlap and can be optimised by using different behaviours that stimulate the same mechanisms in the brain.
Yet, we’re taught to separate the arts from everything else, as a separate category of behaviours, while in reality they are part of a continuum of stuff our human brain does. Teaching children that the arts are part of life and continuing to encourage their intuitive play, celebrating their ten-minute absorption in creative materials (and our respite), would not only build audiences for tomorrow for the cultural sector, but, more importantly, bring much-needed benefits for children’s cognitive development.
In China, a long-standing tradition has children copy drawings from adult models. However, in 2002, a new curriculum was implemented which added episodes of creative expression through painting, letting children draw what was on their minds.
Initial research shows that drawing regularly has several positive effects on children’s and adults’ cognitive skills, like, for instance, on writing skills, and on memory. Children learning geometry via a dance class, where they make the angles and the circles with their hands and arms to music, score better than children who were taught the same material while sitting at their desk. Children who sketch science concepts retain them better than children who summarise them in writing. Using your body to learn helps you retain information better, improving memory for events and abstract concepts. ‘Drawing it out’ also seems to improve socio-emotional skills in children and help them deal with emotionally challenging situations.
As we know, the benefits of using creativity to focus our minds aren’t just for children – they’re important for all of us. Fortunately, there are ways to return to that intuitive movement-based approach to learning within the arts to help us get over the first step and our performance anxieties. It's about enjoying the journey, more than wanting a specific outcome.
It is not important what you draw, but that you draw
The Danish professional artist Kasper Købke reliably tricks our brain’s motor system into overcoming obstacles to learning a new skill. His solution? Make it fun. I know – fun is an unusual approach to art! But not unheard of: you may remember the much-loved TV series Art Attack from the 1990s and 2000s, or Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting?
‘It is not important WHAT you draw, but THAT you draw,’ Kasper repeats enthusiastically on Danish morning TV, while he’s monitoring a drawing game unfolding between two young girls and the TV host. He has a stop watch, set to forty seconds, and each time the clock chimes, he shouts, ‘Drawings up!’ and the drawers obediently drop their pencils and raise their drawings into the air. The situation has a comical hint to it, and everyone’s faces are all smiles and giggles. On Kasper’s signal they pass it to the next person in the line. Then they draw again, now on top of each other’s drawings. Kasper holds workshops for children and adults alike, gives talks and moves the masses to draw. The game he’s playing in the TV studio is one of his ten drawing games for the whole family. Kasper is a descendant of the Danish Golden Age painter Christen Købke (1810–48), who is known for perfect figurative paintings of seascapes. Kasper is very different – for him, drawing and painting is prioritising enjoyment over perfection. On his homepage, you can find ‘the doodle game’, ‘let the pencil tell the story’, ‘copy-cat’, ‘draw ahead’, and so on. These are all games you can play at a table with sheets of paper, lots of colours and your favourite people. The doodle game consists of making a huge messy doodle on a sheet of paper with one pencil line, and then starting to explore the cracks and creases between the lines – adding an eye here, another one there and, after a while, under the strokes of colourful pens, extraordinary creatures start emerging. It really is fun.
Kasper’s process-over-progress drawing practice has had tens of thousands of us Danes drawing in delight so far. The giggles, smiles and good times that he prescribes make dopamine rain down on our little neural connections, calling the oligodendrocytes into action to create myelin that hugs our neurons, building stronger neural pathways.
Every art has a set of core movements that build up to form an expressive toolbox. Don’t be too stern and stressed about learning your skill. For skill learning, humour (and a little bit of self-irony) is your super power.
It’s up to us which experiences we give our brain to forge new pathways, and to create the life we want to live. This is easier said than done, for example, if you are battling with issues genuinely out of your control, like illness or caring responsibilities. But I’d like you to take that idea with you, of creating the life you want to live, as we dive in deeper – even if it’s just for brief moments in your day.
Julia F. Christensen is the a neuroscientist and author of Pathway to Flow
