The INFINITE POWER of CREATIVITY and the ARTS for STUDENTS
Creativity is driven by the need to improve humanity. It is a natural way to distinguish the potency of imagination and intelligence. Creative acts are expressive and engaging. That makes art and creativity fun. When people have fun, they are happy. Creativity is often labeled intelligence at play. This contest is about driving students to reach higher states of expressive consciousness in performance-based virtue and imagination. This contest is about creating new vibrant ideas, and through plasticity, students will become better performers while viewers may become more insightful. The term plasticity is for creating brain neurons that represent new knowledge, ideas, thoughts, and memories. It is a physical and neurological process of building connecting parts of the brain (Fox Cabane and Pollack, 2017).
“High arts, low socioeconomic status students in the eighth grade were more likely to have planned to earn a bachelor’s degree (74%) than were all students (71%) or low arts low socioeconomic students (43%)” (Gifford, 2012). This statistic proves that studying and creating in an arts curriculum creates vision. Students planned to earn a bachelor’s degree in this context. This data also confirms that art radiates confidence in youth as eighth-graders who make their college path document a forward-thinking and pragmatic mindset.
“Aesthetics are beautiful through releases of dopamine in the observer. The information we take in with our eyes can be processed in any part of the brain. We have an aesthetic, even emotional reaction to particular scenes or objects we see. Researchers theorize that we have an innate hunger to pursue visual stimuli that give us pleasure. That is how our brain releases its natural opioids” (Horowitz, 2013).
“True happiness is a verb. It’s the ongoing dynamic performance of worthy deeds. The flourishing life, whose foundation is the virtuous intention, is something we continually improvise, and in doing so our souls mature. Our life has usefulness to ourselves and to the people we touch.”
-Epictetus
One can’t just be happy. S/he must continually work to improve the lives of others to sustain happiness. Anthems will be worthy deeds to projects and express the voices of change. The state of flow is a person in the moment of their driven path in a moment of direct purpose, concentrated, doing what they feel they are meant to be doing and happy (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). “The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experiences are something we make happen” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 3).
The dynamics of flow are:
1) Intense focus and concentration in the current moment 2) Merging of action and awareness 3) A loss of reflective self-consciousness 4) A sense of personal control over the situation 5) How one experiences time is altered 6) The activity or experience is intrinsically rewarding (Snyder & Lopez, 2002, p. 90).
Anthems of HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS
Chase Aesthetics! is driven to enable students to create bold visions from conceptualization, writing, blocking, and then performing. This contest is about working towards a higher purpose within students and then how they seek to change our culture. This may create happier students.
Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences are conditions of shared flow, e.g., a group in meditation, a coach calling a huddle in the clutch, or a theater director who is harmonious at the moment with her ensemble. Peak experiences are the most meaningful moments of a person’s life. (Maslow, 1964) It is defined as when flow is shared with someone close to you. It is a moment of shared transformation that is driven by joy and a bond with one another. Robert Marrone, in his book Body of Knowledge: An Introduction to Body/Mind Psychology, documented that Maslow wrote that peak experiences are: “The best moments of the human being, for the happiest moments of life, for experiences of ecstasy, bliss, or the greatest joy” (Marrone, 1990, p. 142).
“If you feel you’re working towards a higher purpose, you’ll have far more breakthroughs” (Fox Cabane and Pollack, 2017. P. 193). There is an elated feeling produced at this moment that has no other parallels in life as it is timeless. The actualized bliss, when shared, defines the foundation and potential of a beautiful friendship or partnership. Maslow stated that peak experiences enable “...The goal of education -- as of psychotherapy, of family life, of work, of society, of life itself -- is to aid the person to grow to fullest humanness, to the greatest fulfillment and actualization of the highest potential, to his greatest popular stature” (Maslow, 1964, p. 49).
Metacognition is a dynamic tool in thinking where people think in strategic and reflective ways their thought processes. It is a psychology topic often not taught in K-12 education.
Time has recorded that the minds that change history were unconventional. The Edisons, Einsteins, and the Jobs of the 21st century are among our student population, but we have to give them their platform. People who create peak experiences feel, “Greater creativity, spontaneity, expressiveness, idiosyncrasy, and a feeling that the person is the creative center of his or her activities” (Maslow, 1971, p. 105). The experience as identifiable when ecstasy describes the level of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.
We live in a culture where information is endless. Students can pick of up tens of thousands of shows and videos to watch after school. But how many of them carry the resonance to critique our culture constructively and offer insights and inspiration into what young people can do to take leadership in our society? Is this platform driven to enable students to construct a one-act Anthem with a direct commentary on replacing the status quo? For many students, their iPhones are their most incredible tool for creative expression.
“Your work is the single greatest means at your disposal for expressing your social intelligence.”
-Robert Green in Mastery