Art, Like Bread: 5 Hopeful Quotes by MLK and Creative Prompts Free Printable Download

Are hopeful people more creative?

I am currently "reading" a book on Audible about the creative mind called Wired to Create. Since it's an audiobook, I have been tuning in and out, so I can't comment on the book as a whole (yet), but I did latch on to one gem that led me to an inquiry and a subsequent craft project. The book states that hopeful people are more creative.

Click to download printable now or read on.

To invesigate this claim, I did a quick web search, which led me to the article Hope and Creativity: Their Relationship in Children and Adolescents by Michelle S. W. Shum, Toby M. Y. Tong, Wing Ling Li, and Sing Lau of the Center for Child Development at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Without going into a lot of boring detail (too late), I believe the paper presents sound support for the assertion that hopeful people are more creative.

I thought this quote from the paper was interesting, "Hope and creativity share a common thinking process as they both involve divergent thinking, which is the production of ideas."

So if hopefulness fosters creativity, maybe creativity fosters hopefulness.

I can certainly tell you that crafting lifts my mood and makes me feel more optimistic. Many people have noted the surge in crafting after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Heather Ordover often talks about how she taught her students to knit as a means of working through the trauma after the attacks. The school she was teaching at was very close to ground zero. We always need hope, and hope, it seems, goes hand and hand with creativity.

Click this picture to download your free printable. Read on to learn how to use it.

In honor of the MLK holiday, let's draw hope and creative inspiration from the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a treat to read over three of his speeches and choose hopeful quotes. I then wrote creative prompts inspired by each quote.

Directions
1. To use your printable, download the PDF by clicking on the picture above or here.
2. Print the prompts on regular paper or on the unprinted side of scrapbook paper.
3. Cut out the quotes/prompts - leaving each quote attached to its prompt on the right.
4. Fold the quotes/prompts in half and place them in an inspiration jar.
5. Choose a quote/prompt at random and complete it when you have time.

Whenever you need hope, nurture your creativity.

Sources

I Have a Dream
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
MLK Online
Rediscovering Lost Values

If you use this free printable or decide to make an MLK inspiration jar, please let me know by leaving a comment or contacting me at artlikebread (at) gmail (dot) com. As always, thanks for reading the blog! Please leave your thoughts, ideas and questions in the comment section below. If you liked this post, please share this post with a friend through social media and have a thoughtful dialogue about social justice! Like my Facebook page for updates and more crafty sharing!