Celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Day

Last month, people and businesses around the world celebrated World Creativity and Innovation Day! A day dedicated to the celebration of creativity and new ideas, it’s a day to promote creative thinking and to cultivate an environment that fosters innovation.

Every year, Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday, April 15, opens a time portal to those who embrace free thinking, innovation, creative decisions, actions and outcomes. (WCID) marks the final day of celebration during World Creativity and Innovation Week (April 15-21).

The History of World Creativity and Innovation Day

After reading a newspaper headline, “Canada in Creativity Crisis,” , a creativity specialist, decided to do something about it. As Canada’s first undergraduate and graduate student to hold a degree in Creativity and Change Leadership, Segal understood the importance of creative thinking.

With the help of her colleagues, she organized the first world creativity and innovation day to encourage people to use creativity to make the world a better place. Celebrated in over 46 countries since 2002, individuals, businesses, organizations, schools, communities, and the neurological community takes part in this fun day to generate new ideas for a brighter future.

Creativity and the Brain

Traditionally, we teach children to color inside of the lines. Yet, later in life we encourage adults to think outside of the box. Encouraging creativity from a young age will improve innovation during the later years of life.

A recent study conducted by found highly creative individuals appear to have more connections between their brain hemispheres. Additionally, the study found that highly creative people exhibit “significantly more white matter connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.”

A separate conducted by the Mayo Clinic on risk factors for cognitive ageing found a remarkable correlation between creativity and cognitive ability. Dr Rosebud Roberts and his team found that participants who engaged in artistic pursuits proved 73% less likely to develop problems associated with mild cognitive impairment, including memory loss and executive function-related issues.

In addition to promoting increased cognitive function, there are several ways creativity helps to improve overall health and wellness.

–  Physically – Pain starts in the rather than the joints or muscles. The idea that creative expression can make a powerful contribution to the healing process has been embraced in many different cultures. A recent study conducted by Heather L. Stuckey, DEd, and Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH, shows that stimulates those parts of the brain necessary to help us recover from pain. Art therapy, dance therapy and music therapy have proven to help individuals overcome physical and emotional .

–  Mentally – New are revealing that brain plasticity is enhanced when an individual takes up a creative hobby. The key is to find a hobby, such as art, music or building, that holds your attention, is interesting, meaningful, and important to you.

–  Emotionally – When we do participate in something creative, we see the fruits of our labors. This creates a sense of pride and accomplishments, which in turn helps us trust ourselves and raises our self-esteem.

Everyday Tips to Promote Creativity and Innovation

While businesses, schools and organisations around the world hosted a variety of events to celebrate and promote world creativity and innovation day activities for preschoolers, you can celebrate on your own everyday of the year.

The encourages individuals around the world to –

• Take up a new hobby
• Form new relationships
• Establish new standards
• Consider different approaches to meeting challenges
• Learn new information
• Practice new skills
• Develop fresh insights
• Generate positive possibilities and potentials for the future
• Embrace something ‘strange’ (a new restaurant, a different way to hold meetings, a new approach to an old challenge, etc.)

Far too often in life, we feel stifled, bored, and frustrated. Creativity and innovative thinking ignite a spark of hope and encouragement. World Creativity and Innovation Day is a day set aside for everyone to feel empowered to generate new world creativity day ideas, make new decisions, take new actions and achieve new outcomes to make the world a better place.

At The Brain Workshop, we take pride in offering a new approach to cognitive learning. Our training program provides intense, one-on-one, designed to dramatically enhance learning and cognitive ability.

Skills developed during brain training can expand a person’s ability to become more observant. Additionally, brain training helps us process larger bits of information and data in different ways, which manifests itself into ‘out the box’ thinking.

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