Let us step back and learn to appreciate Imagination and it’s central role in Creation. Look around at how many objects we are using, including this computer which was created using the imagination of others in the past. Think about life without it. That’s life without imagination.
However it took more than imagination to create these things. For in imagination any form can exist and have meaning. Because these thoughts had to be worked into the far less flexible reality, which you and I live in. This was done with the tools and abilities we have, utilising our knowledge of reality to ‘create’ a physical representation of that imaginative thought. I loosely call this engineering.
In 1952, Walt Disney founded WED enterprises to create the Disneyland theme park. Drawing from his recent experience overseas, he wanted something grander and family friendly rather then the sorry excuses he had found in the US.
To make his concepts (his imagination) come to life he gathered some of the best and most diverse people from Disney Studios who were dubbed ‘imagineers’. These imagineers were to be the glue between Disney’s desires and the Disneyland theme park. ‘Imagineers’ who do ‘imagineering’ is of course a melding of the words ‘imagination’ and ‘engineer’. These imagineers were to use both their imagination and also engineering abilities to bring Disneyland to life.
It’s interesting to note that imagineering embodies the creation process of knowing what to create combined with bringing that creation into physical reality. Yes imagineers must find a way to bring their wondrous creations of the mind into a creation of reality. Reality has hard rules that the mind does not have to follow. Reality is the ultimate testing ground, as engineers know only too well.
The kind of people employed were incredibly diverse. Many skills and job kinds were needed including those that were not so formally recognised. So there were artists of various kinds, engineers of many flavours, those with experience in media and stage and so on, all adding their unique abilities into the greater project.
So Imagination is the starting process, followed by bringing that image into reality with our best available moulding skills. This sums up the awareness side of the creative process.
There’s an common perception that we have ‘Imagination on tap’. This is true in one sense but totally false in another.
Once upon a time a storyteller told his imaginative stories around the campfire and whose skill could elicit hope, wonder and even terror from listeners young and old.
Soon technology made the stories even better for the alphabet and printing presses soon spread the stories far and wide as books.
It wasn’t too long before the radio joined in so ‘one’ could again hear the story being told, wider than the local campfire! Television soon added images to the mix and truly made a story immersive. DVDs came then the internet which allows one to play the character in such stories and influence the outcomes. So now the stories are interactive deepening the immersion level, and therefore our attachment to them.
Truly we have been awash in imagination. All those books, TV shows, Movies, Music, Broadcasts, Podcasts and MMORPGs! But these are not of our own personal imagination. These are merely tools to convey another person’s imagination. An illusion that many have fallen for.
And it’s getting stale. Each new release is mostly a rehash of previously told stories. The Ménage à Trois, the Romeo and Juliet, these kinds of stories have been told so often their fresh brilliance has eroded to the nature of chewed cud. It’s parasitic solely feeding off another’s imagination and is it doing us much good?
What we need, is to use our own imaginations too.
But how do we do that? Well this is the sense where we do have imagination on tap. All of us have it we merely need to get in touch with it. Let’s face it, most of us are not accustomed to using it. We might ‘day dream’ but just plod along life without ever using the imagination we have. We’re too busy, too tired, too poor, too old, too inexperienced to do anything like that. Or are we?
Our children need to learn about the rules which govern reality, but also to explore and risk expressing their imagination (or ideas) is OK. It isn’t just children, we all need to wake up from other people’s dreams and nightmares to follow our own paths.
Artists (including those who create the many books, TV shows etc) may be able to help. Artists of all kinds still use their own imagination and do at least partially bring it into reality through whatever media they favour. They may promote the idea that their art is so much better but many of them probably know better. Artists must have something to offer.
Companies are afraid of imagination, because of the expensive iterative steps of bringing the imagination into reality, and the risk of it being rejected. Most faced with a choice of uncertainly high profit or more certainly low profit will nearly always choose the safest road. Those that embrace imagination go a lot further. It’s hard to come up with an example besides Disney’s, however there would be many small medium enterprises (SME) which do just that. Even larger companies do it to a small degree. Microsoft imports it by corporate takeovers and deals with smaller more dynamic businesses and individuals. Google in-houses quite a lot of it on the cheap, from it’s customers and developing nations. The tiniest drop can go a long way. Look at Youtube.
These days some of the most necessarily creative, innovative and ultimately imaginative business’ are found in the entrepreneurial startups and venture projects. Many of whom resort to breaking all sorts of business norms, such as bootstrapping. These business people are trying their hardest to bring something imaginative into commercially viable reality, and thus also becoming imagineers in action. We could learn something from there as well.
I feel imagination and it’s role in creation is too centrally important for us to continue to neglect. We need to revitalise interest in it and that will help us all be imagineers.
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