Imagine there’s no reason

Today I’ve been thinking about this message that Lego wrote to parents in 1974:

“The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls.

It’s the imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A bed or a truck. A dolls house or a spaceship.

A lot of boys like dolls houses. They’re more human than spaceships. A lot of girls prefer spaceships. They’re more exciting than dolls houses. The most important thing is to put the right material in their hands and let them create whatever appeals to them”

Of course it’s primarily a comment on how toys are genderless , which is great- but I feel as if it conveys more than that.

“It’s the imagination that counts. Not skill” is a hugely freeing statement that opens up artistic endeavour to everyone. Often people feel as if they don’t have the ‘right’ to draw or sculpt or write, as if those things belong to others- ‘real’ artists that have studied or have degrees. It just isn’t true.

It’s this categorisation and imposterism that kills both curiousity and experimentation. Art begins with imagination and eventually becomes skill, but only if you find that you care about the subject enough. It’s fine if you decide you don’t care! You can paint and write things without caring about them at all, and they still count. There is absolutely NO need to have reverence for a subject and you don’t have to ‘respect’ art because luckily it doesn’t have feelings. It’s fine to mess about and have fun- build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. You don’t even have to have a reason.