We are all born visual thinkers, and drawing comes as naturally as speech to young children. They use drawing to explore ideas and feelings, to tell stories, to play, to help them think. So why is it that so few adults make use of this valuable resource we're all born with?

What holds most people back is a strongly held belief that they can't draw. Somewhere along the line they've decided – or been told – that they haven't got the 'talent' for it. But why should an ability to draw depend on talent? We don't say we can't write just because we can't write like Shakespeare, yet when it comes to drawing most people immediately compare themselves to Picasso and declare that they 'can't draw'.

At CreativityWorks we believe that drawing, like language, is an in-born capacity which needs nurturing and development in order to flourish. For hundreds of years, our culture and education system has recognised the need for reading and writing to be taught and developed, but it has mostly ignored drawing and visual thinking, so that only those few who happen upon it by chance ever get to experience its enormous benefits.

We know that drawing is a wonderful tool for thinking and communicating, and anyone who can hold a pencil can do it. Ask a five-year-old child if they can draw, and they'll think it's a strange question – of course they can! But ask again when the child is fifteen and you'll probably get a very different answer.

Even as adults most of our thinking is done in images, and we dream in images every night. Our lives are continually influenced by the profusion of images that surround us, persuading us to buy, vote and believe, yet people have got out of the habit of using their visual thinking skills actively and purposefully in their lives and work.

CreativityWorks hopes to change all this by getting people to use drawing just as they use writing, as a tool for thinking and communicating.

The best way to start is by coming along to one of our open workshops, or by arranging one for your team or organisation. To find out more, call us on: 01273 249813.

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