PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

I am a passionate advocate for art as vehicle for personal and creative development currently working with the third sector organisation - the WISE Group in Glasgow I have been actively involved with a number of employability and development projects.  

Many individuals, particualrly young people have written themselves off a "no hopers" non achievers with little or no future.  It is clear for many that conventional school education has failed them, unwilling or unable to engage with their personal and specifc learning needs.

I am currently developing a modular learning course for young people to enable and empower so that they can reach beyong their expectations and open up new horizons of opportunity.  

I have identified personal progression in three stages:

BELIEF,  CONTROL and CHANGE

BELIEF - self awareness, self esteem, belief in your own inate abilities.

CONTROL - control of actions, personal responsibility  and understanding of the "locus of control"

CHANGE - understanding the role of change, goal setting and use of visualisation.

How many of us consider it a luxury or due to our upbringing a willful waste of "constructive time".
Daydreaming is something frowned upon, how many us at school witnessed the child staring out of the window in class, lost in some other World, or maybe we were that child.
I'm not suggesting that children shouldn't pay attention in class, but often boredom and lack of attention stems out disengagement.
Its fairly normal to consider daydreaming being synonymous with laziness.
Daydreaming in its creative form, for the technically minded when the brain is in an alpha state is an integral part of developing that space that we can all give ourselves. Many successful scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs make the space in their lives to let their mind wander a little.  I have found most of my ideas spring into my head whilst staring out of the window of a Glasgow bus. Some of them great ideas, others maybe a little crazy.

Creativity starts with quantity, not quality. Being selective and discriminating is the hard part that comes later.

I consider that the space is not only constructive, but essential to well-being, positive self image and creativity.
We have to think of the imagination as one of our most essential life tools we need "Space" to develop and explore our imagination and thus creativity.

This is the creativity that we ALL possess. We must STOP NOW thinking that creativity is the preserve of  "Creative people", those special gifted ones, the artists, musicians, film-makers, dancers.

Children particularly in this busy, frenetic world  are often unable to take the opportunity to have this space to explore and play. With adequate space children will be able to live in a world of magic, joy and wonder. The sharing of creative play is surely a keystone to connectiveness and the development of self expression and self esteem.