January 27th, 2012

This was a creative assignment but I decide it could also be a journal. Because.

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“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” This quote by author Julia Cameron illustrates exactly what I have learned in the creative process in this assignment.  As this was a group assignment the creative process was much different then that of an individual creative process. At times we had to “kill our babies” because even though individually we might of thought it was a good idea, it wouldn’t work in terms of a whole group. The final piece that we shared was not at all what I thought it would be and that’s what I think is so amazing about the creative process; it allows change and movement and growth. Ideas were bounced off each other in order to “perfect” the idea. I put perfect in quotation marks because the beauty of the creative process is that it isn’t perfect. I believe that my creative process works in a very chronological where there is a beginning middle and end but working in a group dynamic where the other kinds of the creative process were different I had to compromise and change my way of thinking slightly. One thing that worked was our collaboration, especially with Emily and I. We really worked well together because I believe that our idea of the creative process was the same. Another thing that worked was our group’s ability to work fluidly and efficiently without compromising the creative process. Something that didn’t really work was our group’s ability to change what we had done. I believe that our “scene” should have been improved upon but we were comfortable with what we had done and so that’s where our creativity kind of stopped. We weren’t able to take a risk because we were comfortable.

Looking back I now realize that one of the key components of the creative process is the ability to take risks and make changes and to trust yourself. I really enjoyed this group assignment because I love poetry and I loved that we used tableau with accents of the movement in between each tableau. It really let my mind run wild to try and put a poem into a dramatic work. There were so many possibilities to explore but with limited class time we had to narrow our creative process a little in order to come up with what we did.

In conclusion, I would say that this activity has taught me the importance of the creative process and how working in collaboration with a group can affect an individual’s creative process. If I had to do this assignment again I think I would have tried to bring out other’s ideas more instead of contributing as much because it is very interesting to see what other’s can bring to the table.