Note: This sat in my drafts folder for 2 weeks. Creativity School is having a hard time launching…

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It took 3 weeks, but it appears that schools in Massachusetts are now requiring kids to attend some lessons with their teachers. This is a little disappointing for me because for the past 3 weeks I have been developing something called Halley School with my nieces, which is basically lessons in creativity and imagination.

We all enjoyed Halley School quite a bit. Sometimes it was pretending we were powerful rulers in the forest kingdom, and other times we were singing in earnest harmony. All of it was part of the same idea: go within yourself to create something new and most importantly, stop judging yourself!

Here’s one of our exercises:

Tear up several small squares of paper (recycled schoolwork, etc.) and give each participant 4 of the squares.

On each sheet have them write down:

• a color

• an action

• a feeling

• a vegetable

Once finished, collect all the vegetables in one pile, colors in the other, and so on. It helps to label “color”, “feeling”, etc. on the opposite side of your paper so they don’t get mixed up. Put the colors in a bowl, and have each participant fish out a color, then do the same for action, feeling, and vegetable. At the end, each person should have a silly assignment:

An angry dancing purple broccoli!

Next, get some crayons or markers out and set the timer for 5 minutes. You can only draw with one color, so pick it out and go! This is not enough time to make anything decent. That’s the point. No self-judgement. No judgement of others. There are so many ridiculous parameters on this one that you just have to get to work and do your best. Hopefully you’re laughing a little too.

One of the most important things to notice while you’re doing this is your judgement of yourself and others. Do you hate it immediately? Are you so bad at this?! Is your neighbor way ahead of you? Are you freezing up? What the heck does a broccoli look like!?

So often we can’t just sit down to draw because it comes with some major baggage. This is why I like BIG PARAMETERS on my creativity to ease back into it. It tends to quiet the voice of doubt or insecurity that too often crops up. When you can’t POSSIBLY do a good job, you might actually have fun. Or! You might just do a decent job.

The point of this exercise? There is not enough time to do a great job. Just do the job and see what happens.