Creativity and travel

 Da The Washington Post, Creativity may be the Guide to Healthy Aging. 19 luglio 2021 


“People who travel tend to be more creative,” said Darya Zabelina, a psychology professor at the University of Arkansas Traveling encourages people to reexamine their models of reality, Zabelina said. Some studies show that travelers have more creative success, and people who enjoy unfamiliar experiences perform better on divergent thinking tests, open-ended questions calling for numerous ideas. Performance on these tests differs from IQ and may predict aspects of real-world creativity.
Writer Naomi Shihab Nye, 69, of San Antonio calls herself a “wandering poet.” Through extensive travel, she’s become more observant, writing about the parallels she sees among different cultures in her work, which includes novels, young adult fiction, picture books, songwriting and poetry. “It’s utterly important to keep exposing yourself to experiences to be less rigid and judgmental,” said Nye, who received a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle.
Singer Andy Steinfeldt, 73, records songs in the languages of the countries he’s visited — seven tongues so far. “You get ideas from other cultures you don’t get here in the Midwest,” said the Minnesotan, a retired businessman.
Any novel stimulation, not just world travel, can benefit creativity. Nye has a broad “appetite for difference,” seeking out interactions with people of varying ages and backgrounds. Kentucky poet Gregory Welch enjoys “opposite days.” When he turns his routines upside-down for 24 hours, new perspectives pop into his head.
Morning people can try focusing on creative solutions at night (and vice versa). Research indicates that people do better at creative problem-solving, as opposed to more analytical challenges such as memory questions, at their non-optimal times, when inhibition is lower.
Letting your mind wander helps, too. Many highly creative people make time for idle thoughts unrelated to specific tasks. This engages the mind’s “default mode network,” brain regions that facilitate the imagination. Although mind-wandering seems to decrease with age, it can be nurtured. One way is to practice free association. Nye recommends “poetry therapy”: leafing through a poetry book for appealing lines, then free-writing. “You’ll come up with interesting thoughts you didn’t have before,” she said.
Another tip: Be playful, even childlike. Research shows that adults excel at divergent thinking tests after pretending they’re 7 years old. That’s the habit of Ashley Bryan, a Maine artist who will turn 98 on July 13. In 1962, he was the first Black American to publish a children’s book as both author and illustrator. “Each day,” he told me in an email, “I look forward to finding the child in myself who’s anxious to create something new and wonderful.”

After time away due to the pandemic, artist Ashley Bryan is returning to his art studio on Little Cranberry Island in Maine.