If we had a magic wand and could flicker into existence a world in which creative youth development was a common value and practice, what would we know and communicate? What would be different than it is now?
We know much about teaching skills of creative thinking. And indeed they are crucial to creative youth development (CYD) programs. What is equally important though is to acknowledge and address the emotional side of creative development. Understanding and training this emotional side might be the biggest difference we see in the world in which we flicked the magic wand.
Emotion Barriers: From Recognizing to Overcoming Creative Anxiety
Facing the blank canvas or the blank screen induces anxiety. We know that there are multiple possible directions and it is not clear which approach would be the most fruitful. This uncertainty is inherently uncomfortable.
Beyond its sheer discomfort, anxiety is troublesome in that it moves us toward diminishing risks and discounting original ideas to instead focus on what might seem more practical. The result are ideas that are largely conventional.
Research with high school students shows a peril of another emotion barrier for creativity. Youth are exquisitely sensitive to social judgment cues. When they come to expect negative social consequences of sharing their ideas — because those around them might find ideas too unconventional, disrespectful, or may be angered by them — students are also more likely to be self-conscious or overwhelmed by the prospect of sharing their ideas. They retreat and creativity is obstructed.
Popular advice says that to be creative one needs to become comfortable with discomfort. Although well meaning, such advice might be yet another barrier. Because discomfort is by definition not comfortable, we find ourselves not able to follow the advice. Instead, we should acknowledge and accept that the creative process includes times that are unpleasantly uncertain and feel risky.
The psychologically safe spaces that are central to creative youth development programs go far in building creative potential. However, there is more to do. CYD programs must equip youth to manage the discomfort inherent in creativity.
Mentors and teaching artists can support this by framing uncertainty as part of the process and by sharing their own experiences with tolerating risks.
Emotion Skills: Capacity to Transform Potential into Achievement
In the world taking great care about creative development, people around youth understand that we have agency in relation to our emotions. Emotions move us — we recoil in discomfort and fear or enthusiastically engage with objects of our interests and passions — but we can also intentionally harness their power and nudge their course when they come in the way. Research shows that greater skills of managing emotions help youth transform their creative potential into visible action by enabling them to sustain their passion and persist in the face of obstacles.
Foundational to managing emotions is understanding where our feelings are coming from. To be able to sustain passion through time, youth should learn that passions are developed. When a teen states that they have not found their passion yet, adults can help them realize that passion is not something to be discovered as if it was already in existence, only waiting to be unearthed. Instead, passions — for multiple can coexist — grow from trying out different experiences, gaining mastery, and broadening or deepening them.
As passions develop, so can emotion skills. Once youth learn that emotions signal something important in our minds or in the world around us, they can learn to listen to and apply these signals. Noticing something frustrating around us can show gaps between what is and what could be. It is not just a feeling to pack away.
Yet, there are times when the challenge of creativity becomes overwhelming. At those times, we need to find ways to change the course of those feelings. It starts again with a realization that our ability to influence emotions does not need to produce a drastic change from paralyzing insecurity to full assurance. The goal is to take the emotional edge off just enough to start moving again. This might involve redirecting our attention or taking a break, showing ourselves kindness we would offer a friend in a similar situation, considering what we have learned from a difficult experience, or reaching out to others for support.
Emotion Infrastructure: Foundation for Consistent Creativity
Creativity is social, and creative youth development programs provide fertile ground on which potential can grow and be actualized.
CYD programs support young people in expanding and diversifying their personal networks, which become an important resource for creativity. Youth can reach out to those at the outskirts of their networks when looking for new perspectives. And close friends and trusted mentors are the people youth can turn to when they need to expand on their ideas.
Mentors and teaching artists in particular have a key role. When they communicate a belief that youth can be creative, they start building their confidence. And when they explicitly notice youth feelings and support their skills in managing them, mentors build capacity to share ideas and contribute opinions, even when there is a risk of failure. This makes for conditions to truly grow creativity.
Young people's creative development depends on how well we tend the individual and community emotional landscape, whether within creative youth development programs or beyond.
When we recognize and reduce emotion barriers — like anxiety and fear of judgment or premature satisfaction — we make space for ideas to surface. When we cultivate emotion skills, youth learn to work with their feelings, transforming visions and ideas into momentum. And when we build a strong emotional infrastructure — through supportive relationships, communities, and mentoring — we create the conditions in which creativity can take root, grow, and endure. Together, these layers do not simply support creativity; they make it possible.