Mary Lou Cook and Creativity

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun." - Mary Lou Cook

Who said it

Mary Lou Cook is an American activist, teacher, and artist. Based in Santa Fe, Cook has made lots of community work through her social, political and environmental activism and her role as a teacher of the arts. This led to Cook as being awarded the honor of being called “Santa Fe Living Treasure.” Aside from that honor, Cook also has received numerous awards for her community service from both local and international organizations and institutions.

What it means

This quote from Cook takes a positive view of creativity, if not a somewhat comprehensive take on it. It’s interesting to note that her take on the matter is typical or as expected of an educator, where freedom and the room to make mistakes are essential for the effective learning process for any student. This kind of freewheeling and carefree attitude towards learning and creativity does have its merits. It is better for students to learn from first-hand experience; testing boundaries and eventually respecting them, experiencing failures and learning to deal with them, and of course the outlook that everything can be fun—these concepts are good concepts to observe and implement in any learning environment. And not just for students, artists can also benefit from this advice. As Cook specifically stated creativity, the ways to which Cook believes creativity can be achieved are quite light and insightful; one can give credence to them as Cook is an artist herself.