Kids take a few seconds to get the confidence to make a mark and then they're off. No fear — all heated — pure focus and passion. Their faces pressed up close to the tip of the pencil and the paper. An arm or two to hide the gaze from the grown ups. An object lesson in creative attention and engagement. It's hard to get the thing out of their hands.
So let's not.
Let them keep drawing because at the same time they're thinking — pushing their ability to 'speak' through drawing. I can't for the life of me imagine one good reason why our education system seeks to kill it. Too many schools marginalise the pursuit of drawing in favour of other less valuable study.
In Africa the kids don't automatically have access to paper and pencils — there's little likelihood of expressive art material available either. Beautiful boxed sets of multicoloured crayons are few and far between. So, when I go I try and take a ton of stuff and give it to them.
It was extraordinary to watch the kids get immediately comfortable with an iPad and a stylus. It was like they had been long term Apple users. It was such a great thing to watch — literally less than a minute.
They all seemed to have an inbuilt knowledge of what to do and how to do it. They seemed to know already about drop down menus, tapping the nib in digital ink, finding the colour menu, mixing it, changing from brush to pencil, to pen — and either erasing or using the back arrows to undo.
Crazy good.
Drawn To It
I'm pretty sure that most people think in visual form. Pictures light up in technicolor inside our brain at any opportunity it gets. We think we see things all the same as each other but we definitely don't.
So as we think — we see — the opposite is also true. As we see we think — maybe all the more as our lives become so full of noise and pregurgitated nonsense. A lot of what we see worries me because we take too much of it at face value — if that's what we think — and we don't challenge it then we are doomed.
Talking with young people is always a valuable experience — chatting with young people in the poorer parts of the world is a humbling privilege. I always learn more from them than I do from the grownups nearer home. I hope that by giving the kids the chance to draw and to feel what that means they improve how they think.
And when we think we don't just take everything at face value.
The Kids Are Alright
I feel accountable when I start to share my thoughts with the kids. They are avid listeners and I know they will take what I say on board. It's a big responsibility helping someone — they are looking at me as someone who knows the path.
And I probably don't…
Role Models
My starting position is that they know the path better than me — some pointers may well help but that's all they are. The people I've been working with recently have a genuine and innate skill — and a far higher sense of inspired purpose than we think. Sure it may need direction but western advice isn't the best advice.
There's a very sad projection that people living around the poverty line are lesser creative individuals. In my experience the majority of the time it turns out to be the opposite. Of course they want to make progress — and they need to see that they can — they need the simplest of pushes in the right direction.
They need to have the confidence that they can.
"Our ability to draw gives us the ability to share knowledge. Knowledge begins with an experience and a passion born out of our situations and the journey we are on. The big shame is when that skill is allowed to fade with it goes the opportunity to achieve our dreams…"
If we can draw and articulate our ideas then we can make. And if we can make then we can make a difference.
How To Make
People everywhere can make.
They can come up with an idea, they can make a case for it in their community, with luck and some support they can make it come true. They have immense ingenuity and the passion to be better — we need to help them 'make'.
*I believe in that simple idea — "*If you can draw you can make"
What Can I Make?
First Step
Ask yourself— What can I do? What am I really good at? What am I passionate about making or doing? What is it that I do that's valuable and someone would want? What's my idea?
Draw it. Make a diagram.
"Make your idea so real that you can touch it. Make it able to be told in words and pictures — write it down — add 'story' to it. Write the story with the same passion as the thing you're making — always be adding to the story. Make the story worth talking about. Add pictures — add words —look at it again — repeat…"
Second Step
At some point we can move the project from idea to design — make it something that's able to be built — get started. The thing — your dream is staring to live. The sketch becomes a near reality — you begin to see it. Design on paper and with notes and more descriptions.
While all this is going on continue to develop it — have fun and keep curious. Continue to flesh out the story that explains all of its value to others.
"To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest." — Mahatma Gandhi
Third Step
As any design evolves so does our learning and our impatience to get it out there — you need to get a few other people to witness the value of it. Sketches turn into prototypes and stories become infectious. Others want to get involved. The idea starts to get tested by this exposure , and thats good. The idea and the story gets more and more validity. With more validity comes yet more strength to the design — and to the story.
Fourth Step
And as the thing we've made gets out there the story and the product can take on the life of its own — that little idea that entered our dreams and then into our consciousness. The one we sketched out and worked with sweat and frustration to give birth to. That little flash of inspiration that we listened so hard to and that gave us the energy to create in the first place.
Now you are in business!
First published in Just Thinking, John’s publication on Medium in 2016. See the original.
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