Emotional Advantages of Creativity
Allison Armijo
It is a well-known fact that creativity is important for the development of youth and adolescents, especially as they transition to adulthood. Creativity, for example in art, allows individuals to express their emotions and limitations through outlets such as painting and writing. The vibrant colors and persuasive letters are vehicles that act as keys to allow young people to “unlock” their emotions and contribute to the world in a way they never thought they could. On the other hand, creativity has other advantages besides just physical. It is important to acknowledge that the emotional advantages of creativity are profoundly essential in the development of adolescents. Although they are not seen as much, emotional advantages have just as much, if not more, hold over a person’s actions, feelings, and thoughts.
Through simple activities like drawing and coloring, young people can heighten their emotional development in many areas. For example, “through creative art, children may be able to represent experiences that they cannot verbalize. They may draw pictures out of proportion, exaggerating things that are important to them.” By being able to express themselves through simple things like color and larger depictions of people or places that matter most to them, children especially are able to articulate what and who is important to them and how they can express those feelings in other ways than words.
Besides exaggeration of specific images or ideas, creativity fosters other emotional advantages. Aside from classic modes of creative expression, like painting or drawing, the less-common outlets like singing and dancing also possess important emotional influence. For example, arts like dancing (forms of self-expression) allow young people to test their emotional range by seeing how “emotionally mature” they are. This is extremely important, especially in the lives of adolescents because it allows them to control their emotions and reign them in as different forms of creativity and self-identity. This is expressed by an article about the importance of creativity and child development, which states, “...while the arts help adults release feelings they might otherwise have difficulty expressing, the arts help young children to explore their emotional range so that they’ll be better equipped to deal with the ups and downs that will become a part of their lives as they grow older.” The article continues by offering some creative outlets that help achieve emotional range, including, “Theater, dramatic play, and role playing.” The ability to express oneself through such emotionally vulnerable activities allows young people to grasp their creative potential and improve their emotional development.
Overall, creative arts are very important both for physical and emotional development. Without creativity and outlets for expression, people, especially adolescents, are able to challenge themselves emotionally and express themselves in way certain outlets do not allow. That is why activities like painting or theatre are so important; without them, young people would feel confined with nowhere and no way to voice their emotions in other ways besides words.
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