LEGO is one of the most ingenious toy invented, isn't it? Children get very excited when they receive new toys; but they get tired of it after playing with it for a while. Strangely, have you noticed, children don't really grow out of LEGO bricks. They'd bring them out occasionally and start building new things as they age. Even with adults, when we are sitting in front of a pile of LEGO bricks, we would naturally start building out of the blue. We have all experienced the wonder of transformation (scientific creativity) through LEGO bricks and our drives and desire to create something that is beautiful (artistic creativity). In other words, what makes LEGO so powerful is the mixture of scientific and artisitc creativity incurred during the play process; it fulfills children's (and adults') primitive desire to create. LEGO is a very well-established enterprise today with its own team of research to promote the idea of innovation and creativity through play. You can access the LEGO.com Learning Institute website to see some of the research done by a team of expert. I espeically recommend the report Defining Systematic Creativity. This 87-pages document explains the nature of creativity (from a systematic and scientific point-of-view).
As I have mentioned before, creativity is an ability that grows by age and experience. Children demonstrate creativity based on their pervious knowledge. Creativity does not equal to chaos or mess; creative individuals creates within a system (e.g. a composer has to include the basic elements of music, such as sound and time, when they attempt to create something that is valuable to the the field of music.) Children need rules and parameters when they create. Ultimately, they will adapt to this new system in which they can freely create.
In this blog, due to my personal backgound in music, I have included mostly resources that are related to arts. However, the more I dig into creativity, the wider this subjects become. Certainly, creativity is not confined to artistic sense; it also refers to the ability to solve problem, to innovate, to transform and many more.
Due to my limitation in academic background, I am unable to give insightful suggestions on scientific creativity or technology innovation. However, may this article about systematic creativity serve as a starting point to all of us and inspire us to interpret creativity with an open-mind.
Children supporters of LEGO may find some fun game in the LEGO website where you can directly access from the LEGO Institute website. They may also be interested in a game called Mini-Mizer in which they can build a LEGO avatar with different styles. For the younger children (under 6), The LEGO Duplo Website maybe more suitable for them! (LEGO has surely thought about creative people of all ages when they build their kingdom of colourful bricks!)
