Care About Climate? Unleash Your Inner Creative.
Photo by ameenfahmy on Unsplash
National Creativity Day was May 30. I do cringe a little bit at the made-upness of days like this and will rue the day that Hallmark invariably creates some type of card (or, worse yet, a low-budget rom-com) to monetize Creativity Day. Still, I like the opportunity to recognize creativity as something to celebrate even though many of us adults might secretly break out in a cold sweat when we’re asked to be creative.
How many times have you heard someone say “I’m not a creative person.” Perhaps you tell yourself that? Well, it’s nonsense. All humans have the capacity to be creative. Don’t believe me? Think about the creativity that kids, especially under the age of 10 or so, not only embrace but seemingly use to taunt us adults with their effortless ability to ideate and imagine on a daily basis.
In the past two days, my nine-year-old kid created a handmade birthday card for a friend from Colombia using the Colombian flag as inspiration, authored lyrics to a new song about summer break, developed a new way to cut a muffin, and explored novel ways of marketing at his lemonade stand. One of the joys of our neighborhood is watching the roving band of kids come together to create new games like “Pitball” and “Cherry-chase.” Thinking back to my own childhood, my creativity didn’t shine through art, music, or writing, but man did I like creating imaginary worlds.
If only I could get that feeling of unrestrained creativity back. The thing is, I can. We can. It just might look a little bit different than pitball and song lyrics.
The good news here is that creativity is a skill; therefore, it can be improved with practice. “Practice?” you say. “But how?” I’m glad you asked.
To use a popular analogy, creativity is like a muscle. For your creative juices to flow more regularly, you need to regularly exercise your creative “muscle.” Ideally, what we advocate for through our playful approach at Lighter Side of Climate is that creativity gets woven seamlessly into your work. But creativity can also be nurtured through short, engaging activities that can be done in just a couple of minutes. For instance, you might try the Daily Creativity Challenge featured this week (June 2-6, 2025) in the New York Times online.
Alternatively, or additionally, I invite you to play Lighter Side of Climate’s Creativity Bingo. So as not to needlessly excite any of you hard-core competitors reading this, this is Bingo in name only. Sure, it’s printed on a Bingo-like grid; however, it’s not so much about completing a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row. I mean, go for it if that’s your cup of tea. And invite a friend or two to play along. Give yourselves a week to see how many of these actions you can complete. Can you get two bingos? Three?
Competition aside, Creativity Bingo is about giving folks tangible simple activities they can do to help exercise their creativity muscles. While some of these activities directly connect to making the planet better, others are more about helping to prime curiosity and creativity, prepping us for innovative problem solving.
Why should we care about fostering our creativity? Studies suggest that creativity is linked to subjective well-being; that in itself makes it a worthwhile pursuit. I believe creativity is particularly important, though, because it’s a major source of innovation. As Albert Einstein noted, we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking used to create them. Instead, we need fresh ways of thinking our approaches and solutions to today’s most pressing problems, whether it be climate change or runaway inequity. Fostering creativity helps us get there.
