I am convinced that we are on the cusp of a resurgence of the arts, and I am not just being blindly optimistic. I've noticed for a long time that we are getting starved for the arts and for creativity, and there's a whole host of reasons how we've ended up in this situation. And part of it is the environments we're in, the architecture movement of the last 70 years. Part of it relates to anti-intellectualism that's happening in the United States. Another part is how we're experiencing the world through our phone screen. So if you are ready for a creative resurgence, this episode of the Modern Creative Woman podcast is designed for you. I'm Doctor Amy Backos, I'm your host is here today on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, and we are exploring the art and science of creativity. Specifically, we're having a look at why, now more than ever, we need the art. And women taking the lead in this area is exactly what the world needs. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. First, I want to talk about why we are so starved for art. Then we will get into in a little bit the reasons why. Now is exactly the time that each of us needs to take more active engagement in the arts, starting with our environment. We have experienced a shift from things that are aesthetically pleasing into things that are solely based on function. You can imagine brutalist movement in architecture that was designed to create large amounts of public housing at an efficient price, but without the aesthetic innovation that was the hallmark of previous generations. Architecture. Brutalist architecture is a style that emerged in the 1950s in the UK, and really this post-war era where minimalist construction took over. And you're familiar with this? It's showcasing bare building materials, structural elements over decorative design. It really is making use of exposed or unpainted concrete or even brick. It's all about the angular geometric shapes, usually all one color and the simplest of materials are featured and seen. You can see them because there's nothing that's decorating the material. Now, while this is a descendant of modernism, it really showed up as this reaction to any kind of nostalgia in architecture and New Brutalism was first used by the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson, and they were pioneers in their approach to design. However, this style. Completely swept away. Aesthetics and unusual design and unusual shapes. Leaving us with all the buildings kind of looking the same. We are in these kinds of environments in the United States, because so often beautiful architecture is torn down to make way for something new. And if you remember how hard Jackie Kennedy had to fight to keep Grand Central Station in New York without someone famous fighting for architectural, historically relevant buildings, they get demolished and replaced by something more akin to the brutalist art movement. So our environments are not inspiring to us in the same way they used to be. Next, I'm thinking of how fashion has been stripped down to its most basic modern, minimalist elements. From the 1970s and 1980s. There was such a sharp pivot in design into the modern minimal shapes, and it's not to say that that's always the case, but the idea of quiet luxury, all of these movements that are. Removing the ornate aspects of getting dressed, removing jewelry or complicated stitching seems fitting. Tailoring, etc. leaves us really lacking inspiration in our own closet. For something beautiful and aesthetic and we end up in this place where since 2020. People are often in pyjamas and tracksuits, and I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be able to dress as we please. Tracksuits are amazing, I own several. They are comfortable, of course. They, however, lack ornate aesthetic experience. And that's what I'm talking about when we are being deprived of creativity in a fashion experience. This doesn't hold true for everyone. Of course, there are people like Ari Seth Cohen who are photographers of people who dress in a more ornate way. There are incredible. Fashion, beauty, aesthetics happening in the fashion world. But for most of us, what we're looking at is things that are mass produced, mass sold, we all kind of end up looking the same. But this also leads to a starvation of creativity and inspiration in our life. Next up, we have the amount of time that we spend on our phones. If you're scrolling on your phone for huge amounts of time, what you're doing is consuming. You're absorbing what someone else has made, created, or has said, and you're being influenced by that. So instead of being influenced by them, by people that are around us, we end up being influenced by all kinds of people that maybe we wouldn't even hang out with in real life. We read terrible comments and critiques, and after a while, the algorithm serves you up the same thing as you were looking at yesterday. You like this one thing? Well, here's 45 more of that same thing. It really does not allow us to have variety and creativity in what we're viewing. There's a movement, maybe the last 15 years of anti-intellectualism and the idea that. It's to be viewed with suspicion. People who pursue education or study science, or who create art, that there's something wrong with pursuing information, and people wanting to just believe what they want to believe that their opinion trumps what the facts are. And so living in an environment where people are providing quote unquote alternative facts leaves us really starved for the beauty and eloquence of a good speaker, of people who are inspiring and offering up beautiful ways of describing situations. And the less people read. The problem becomes even bigger. In preparing for this episode, I started having a look to see what percentage of people are engaged in reading and in the art. And in the United States, it's about 50% of adults are reading books or engaging in reading for pleasure on a weekly basis. However, that also showed that 40 to 50% of adults in America read zero books in an entire year. So people that are reading actively are gaining intellectual steam and gaining empathy and reading books about and by people of a culture different than you is the amazing way of learning to understand the perspective of other people. The more we realize that our perspective is not the one right way to be, the more empathy we have, the more critical thinking skills we have in exploring what percentage of people in the United States are making art, pursuing some kind of creativity or art making activities at least once a week? Well, it's 37%. And in terms of breaking these statistics down, this is from the National Endowment for the Arts. About 18% of people engage in creative or artistic activities every single day. I'm imagining you might be in that category. 37% do so on a weekly basis. And then thinking about year year round participation, about half of adults in the US create or perform some kind of arts like singing, dancing and visual arts or crafts over the course of the year. So it's not so many people that are using art on a daily basis, only about 18%. This shows that everybody else is starving for creative self-expression. There's such a huge need. So now that I've given you some of the reasons why, I see that we are starved for our own creativity and making original ideas and expressing our emotions through the art. I want to tell you why. I think now is the time. Now more than ever, is the time for us to have a return to the art. And I'm already seeing that happen and things are getting really interesting. First, that 2019 study I've mentioned before from the World Health Organization about arts in healthcare, have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt how much arts benefit us in terms of longevity, that exciting people who engage in the arts live longer and they also live healthier, longer? People who engage in the arts are more able to tap into the present moment and engage in a mindful way with what's happening around them, which gives us access to better solutions to what's happening around us. Furthermore, people that are engaged in the arts experience chronic pain, depression, and anxiety in a different way. In other words, they feel better. It's not as awful when one is engaged with the art. It's not so bad to go through grief or loss or pain or depression. Arts give us hope. It points us in the right direction and the art help us feel our emotions, which is essential to healing and recovery from all kinds of traumas. We have to experience what's happening. Pushing down our emotions causes trauma to stick longer and make it feel worse. What's exciting about this study, besides the findings, is that so many researchers are out there studying the art. It's not just limited to what our therapists are studying. It is scientists from all kinds of discipline are exploring how arts benefit our heart health and our lung capacity, and our ability to move. All of these things are showing that the researchers are really curious about this. And for me, that's an excellent sign that we're headed in the more creative direction of things. Next, I've been working increasingly more often with women who want to experience the power of creativity. Now, if you're a woman who is using the arts on a regular basis, you already know about how art can inspire you, inform you, soothe you, give you the information you need to make decisions. And I've been working with women who want this capacity. It really is the ultimate in wellness to be able to use your full, rich inner resources of creativity and intuition and being able to understand, process and output some solutions to things that are challenging you. It also is so amazing when women show up with the idea of wanting to just feel better through creativity, because it works. This is the solution in terms of feeling a vague discomfort with life and ennui, a boredom, a you've accomplished all these things and yet you still feel unsatisfied. The arts is the answer. There are a plethora of resources available to us, and what I see are museums and galleries being more open and interested in culture and community, and showing the diverse lives of people in their community. And the library in San Francisco always has amazing art shows. I have a beautiful art gallery. It's free. There are three days at all the museums, and even if you feel discomfort at going to a museum, check back at some previous episodes of the podcast where I talk about how you can have a look at art in a way that does not cause so much stress or pressure, or make you feel like you should have gone to art school before you show up at the museum. It's exciting what's happening in the visual professional space, but even better than that is that we have the capacity to support one another. I see women all over. Having an art night where they do collage or painting or get together, and one person teaches everybody else a particular skill. And this can happen in artistic circles. It can happen with your neighbors. There is no pressure to create beautiful art. Remember, what I'm seeing is hosting parties where you get together and do something creative and expressive. And when I was a kid, some of the moms would do cookie parties and they would make a lot of one cookie and then swap, and then they would have lots of cookies for the holidays. This is creative baking. Fun social. It has all the elements of longevity and health and community gives you socializing and the pleasure of enjoying cookies. I'm also seeing a return to the art because we are no longer interested in AI art, and AI art is taking away from what artists create and have learned to do. It's not only that though. The person who's making AI, art or whatever they're doing is missing the opportunity to engage with both hands in a physical, visual, tactile sensation. And so only making art on the computer is limiting the ways that you can benefit from the art. You know, a lot of artists are doing really cool things, working back and forth with digital art and then using traditional material. And that's what Doctor Aaron Partridge always recommends. Is it when you're engaged in computer for art, that you take it back to the drawing table and add paint and drawing and all kinds of things that allow you to have that tactile experience, because that kind of creating is. Really essential. It's similar to what we know about with handwriting, with pen on paper being more important to your cognitive capacity in what you're learning. Then just taking notes by typing and the idea of using your whole body for creative expression, it's essential. We need it. So much. So because we're facing all of these AI art images, I find myself so much appreciating the art that hanging on my own walls, painting and textile art, the idea that we can have a space where art flows through us and then we can appreciate what we've made, doesn't have to be good. We can just appreciate that we did it. It's so much more enriching than merely looking at art or making art in a digital way. I really want to encourage you to just take the leap and make some art. Stop consuming and start creating. The benefits are tremendous in terms of your health, your intellectual capacity, your critical thinking skills, your ability to solve problems all come from just using your brain in a creative way. A great example is the idea of a brainstorm. You can brainstorm all kinds of words, just ideas to answer a question. And when people generated more ideas, they're encouraged to generate just more. They don't have to be good. They ultimately came up with amazing solutions to problems. And this is a research study that also looked at a group of people who were told to come up with really good ideas, and they would get a dollar for every good idea. However, those people came up with kind of terrible ideas because they felt so constricted. They had to make something good or come up with an idea that was going to be great and useful to to everyone and a brainstorm is a free flow. It allows your mind to wander, and ultimately it's stretching your brain to come up with more creative solutions. Now this happens in painting and sculpture as well. Experimenting, exploring, trying different lines, different materials. Just the idea of practicing like a brainstorm of how many different kinds of lines can you make with your alcohol markers on your office size paper? That is a brainstorm that will give you so much better experience with creativity than if you sit down to try and draw something that looks really good, quote unquote good, or it looks professional or pretty. So being willing to engage in a brainstorm activity with words and with art will stretch your brain in a way that no amount of watching a YouTube video could ever do for you. Your unique personal solutions have to be. Cultivated uniquely and personally by you. There is no formula for your creativity that exists by just staring at other people and watching more and more videos that your own interpretation has to take place. We have to digest when we look at a piece of art, or we have an emotion that we have to metabolize it. There is no way that you can just copy someone's formula. There is no way there is your way. And in fact, the my style of the quote makers in Gee's Bend is championing this exact idea that your unique style is what's to be celebrated, not maybe technical perfection and not the repetition of some kind of pattern that was very appealing to a lot of people. My style means my style. So your style is unique to you. It cannot be copied and it takes a little while to find that creative voice. I think art therapists are especially good at helping people unpack and uncover what authenticity look like to you in visual experience. So it is certainly making art, but it's also how you show up, how you decorate your home, how you set out your mood, how you style yourself. All of these things are about authenticity and personal expression. And if you're starving for this kind of beauty, it's time. Don't wait anymore. Pick any of these areas that I've mentioned to you the environment, your social media experience, what you're wearing, how often you're making art, how often you're reading for pleasure and move forward with some idea. Not a perfect idea. Try a brainstorm. Not a perfect idea. Just a place where you're moving forward to engage in the world in a creative way. So now that you know all of this, that we are starving for creative experience, that you have capacity to leap into it and that the stage has been set, we are ripe for creative resurgence. Now that you know all of that, what will you create? Thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited about what I see coming forward in terms of creativity, making a big comeback in all of our lives. Enough is enough with the same old, same old. We are ready for beauty and aesthetics and creativity and just making ugly art, or pretty art or bad art. All of it is welcome and necessary. I hope that you will take this call seriously, and pause to figure out how to stop consuming and start creating for yourself. I would love if you would share this episode with a woman that you love, who you think might be ready to engage in a more creative experience in her life. And maybe you send it to a few friends so you can get going on an art practice as a group, and being part of a community that's creative and expressive, and is interested in engaging in ways that are less consumption and more creativity. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode.
