Our Youth Need Confidence.  Scratch that…

We ALL need more confidence, and that is potentially the most blatant lesson I’ve learned in my recent travels, specifically when reaching out and connecting to other people.  Granted, despite the distance traveled, I tend to interact with a certain demographic.  And any sweeping generalization causes particular exceptions to appear, like monsters under a child’s bed when the lights go out.  However, I do have this feeling that this “lack-of self-confidence” may have a presence a bit further than my own projected perceptions.  Everywhere I go I see this sort of hesitation in everyone’s individual personality.  Almost as if they are trying to think through being themselves, instead of being themselves.  This, I’ve started to realize, is what Do Art Productions is really offering:  (Which is really what all art already offers)  A momentary blueprint on how to Be Yourself.

How to be Comfortable Expressing Yourself

This has been an idea that has been planted in my ruminations ever since a young participant left me a message on our website explaining how she thought it was ‘very cool’ how I was comfortable expressing myself, and how she hopes to be like that someday.  Which before, I naively didn’t take notice of.  I was playing the guitar, juggling, riding a unicycle, and making jokes, at first, to entertain and create an engaging environment to promote creativity.  Of course, when doing any of these, you have to do them YOUR way.  And in doing anything YOUR way (like art) you immediately begin expressing YOURself.  The multiplicity of expression in all these different forms also expresses a comfort in self-confidence.  It’s this total accumulation that the participant reacted to.  Her deeply energetic personality projected her own desire for personal expression onto my own energy of personal expression.  Witnessing the performer’s impressionable self-confidence revealed a platform for her own–growth sometimes needs a frame to grow further.

As with most things, once you notice it, you can’t stop noticing it  Workshop after workshop, I began to not only watch how people were expressing themselves, but take notice of their confidence in doing so.  I began to spot the signals of uncertainty and doubt, which allowed me to address the participant with reassuring interaction about either their artwork, or their creativity in whatever idea they are trying to get across.  The effects of this were reinforcing.  At every workshop there is always an inwardly secluded child that has anxiety written across their face as they peer around at the other participants.  And, every single time, by the end of the workshop, that kid is smiling, drawing, and high fiving with that vigor we all show when we successfully let our guard down.  

Teaching Self-Confidence Through Art

You don’t let your guard down when you’re being taught something.  Especially when you’re being taught by a stranger.  Our aim at Do Art Productions is not to sit and teach and show the clear cut path from lack of knowledge to obtaining knowledge.  I’ve always thought this was a very non-creative way to teach anyone anything.  We want to inspire a love for art, not only through example, but by generating an experience that is grounded in a creative atmosphere where we can communicate ideas by creating ideas together.  Self-confidence comes from others as much as it does from the self.  This is obviously scary, and could be the root of the lack of self-confidence in many, but art can help.  Creativity can help the individual express themselves, which, inherently, helps them build bridges with others around them, especially with those who are creatively like-minded.  With these bridges, we can begin to fully grasp not only who we are, but our value as an individual to those around us.  All of this just by do-ing art!

I know this hesitation.  I know this echoing voice in the back of our heads that says ‘they won’t understand.’  This echo collides and transforms all logic into its own.  I know the oppositional pull of wanting others to SEE your art (art being all forms of expression).  We want them to understand, but we don’t want them to question it.  We don’t want them to question it because sometimes we don’t know the answer ourselves, we just know that it’s us, and we want to express it.  This invisible ‘I-don’t-know’ is the exact reason WHY we must create.  The more we express ourselves, the more there is to understand.  This is the process of self location.  Through understanding this desire to express ourselves, as well as the very desire that we express: I like art, or I enjoy reading books, or wearing bright colors fills me with harmony–through this we begin to understand who this ‘I’ and ‘me’ really are.  This is the great adventure of existence.  

Let art be your compass.  

From knowledge of self, everything becomes possible…

The first step is self-assurance.  Our feet may hesitate realizing that we can only assume where the next step is going to be.  This assumption contains the possibility of infinite consequence.  Worry.  Anxiety.  Stress.  Art is light.  It won’t illuminate far, but enough.  When finding solace in creativity, we can start to feel out our steps beforehand.  We don’t have to assume, but now, we imagine.  This difference is crucial, and prepares us.  Now we can see who we may, or may not be.  Our steps are no longer blind experiments exhausted by a shadowing anxiety.  Of course we imagine wrong, and, in many cases, imagine wrong more times than not.  But it is no longer a game of right and wrong–life or death–pain or pleasure–no.   It is a creation.  It’s painting our own canvas on existence.  It’s dancing from here to there to wherever we end up.  It’s stepping without doubt, knowing that consequence is but a variable like a musical note, or a color, but, better yet–a shade.   

Our youth need more confidence, not consequence.  

Scratch that, we all do…