Gertrude Stein was particularly inspired by the traffic on busy Parisian streets. Automobiles stopped and started with a rhythm that thrummed right into her prose. ~Celia Blue Johnson
Creativity Prompt #10 Sensory Rich Paths | 30-Day Creativity Challenge
Path through the fields from Momoyogusa–Flowers of a Hundred Generations (1909) by Kamisaka Sekka
Teachers of children use outdoor sensory paths to offer fun opportunities for kids to explore and build sensory connections in the brain. Depending on how the paths are planned, these outdoor walks can help kids build spatial awareness and balancing skills while also immersing them in a variety of tactile sensations. Outdoor sensory paths are meant to add to a child's “sensory diet” in order to boost their capacity for, among other things, learning and creativity.
Interestingly, just being outdoors can boost children’s creativity, regardless of how fancy or plain the activities along the path might be. That’s because exposure to nature increases creativity for humans of all ages. That’s just one reason that I, when teaching in person workshops or retreats, prefer locations that offer ample access to nature and outdoor writing spaces.
Consider this excerpt from the study “The Influence of Natural Environments on Creativity”:
The most important influence of the natural environment on creativity is at the creative idea stage (i.e., in the incubation period), including getting inspiration and problem-solving. Nature beneficially enhances creativity, new ideas, and flexible thinking, while improving our attention to analyze further and develop ideas. During a creative incubation period, nature walks foster calmness and spiritual rejuvenation, providing opportunities to rest and review problematic issues in a new light. Numerous studies have discussed the relationship between creativity and natural environments, including actual nature experiences, indoor plants, natural window views or natural environmental images, natural environments experienced through immersive virtual devices, and even quick design practice in an actual outdoor natural environment. All the above studies found that creativity improves in natural settings or the presence of natural elements. Since creativity relies on the benefits that individuals obtain from environmental perceptions, the degree of perceived naturalness in this study mainly refers to the proportion of natural elements in the visual environment and how close to nature individuals judge the environment to be.
And outdoor spaces need not necessarily be tranquil to stimulate creativity. For example, as noted in the article “Where Writers Write” published in AnOther:
Gertrude Stein liked to write in the driver’s seat of “Lady Godiva” her Model T Ford while her partner Alice B. Tolkas ran errands. Celia Blue Jonson notes that Stein was “particularly inspired by the traffic on busy Parisian streets. Automobiles stopped and started with a rhythm that thrummed right into her poetry and prose.” Vladimir Nabokov is also said to have preferred reading and writing in the privacy of a parked car, always writing on index-cards, a portable strategy that allowed him to compose on the move while his wife drove him around on his adored butterfly expeditions.
For today’s prompt, we’ll experiment with a process to jolt our senses awake in unusual ways in order to enrich our relationship to both our outer and inner environments.