Creating is the final block needed to support a solid foundation. John-Steiner describes creativity’s accessibility:

1. Creativity lies in the capacity to see more sharply and with greater insight that which one already knows or that which is buried at the margin of one’s awareness.
   

To be able to encourage students to explore the margins of their minds requires understanding of creative potential. According to Smith, “Everyone is creative; we all have the potential for creating.” Smith continues, “But commonplace creativity is not particularly valued, because there is not scarcity of it. Commonplace thinking appears unoriginal, but only because it is taken for granted. We all have to create the world for ourselves; we cannot copy anyone else’s image.” In addressing “Why Creativity Fails,” Smith said,

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2. Poor performance in creative matters may be due to lack of skills and knowledge in a particular medium, but not to lack of “creative skills.” … Paintings, symphonies, and novels cannot be “made up;’ there is a need to know how they are constructed, just as there is a need to know about the equipment and materials involved in their creation. Creativeness is not a skill, but skills are involved in expressing creativeness. You do not learn to be creative by creativeness exercises, but you learn to capitalize on creativeness through the mastery of a medium. … Creativeness necessarily fails when its expression is thwarted by ignorance, inexperience, or feebleness of intention.
   

By providing opportunities to learn from certain skilled artisans or teachers, children are able to apply techniques to express ideas or creativity. The journal encourages students to identify mentors who can teach them these skills, or explore local continuing education classes by asking them to brainstorm and record possibilities, think about available resources as new solutions or opportunities, and providing an organized space to record information and develop ideas. The productive act of making something helps to implement all of the absorbed self-knowledge into something tangible. Levine presents the importance of creative opportunities to a child:

1. Creative opportunities liberate a child’s mind to cross into personal zones of higher thinking. In being creative, kids unshackle their minds and discover possibilities of self-expression and mental free play.
   

Learning a new skill opens doors to a new form of expression unavailable without certain tools.

Creating demonstrates how everyday information is processed through the use of instrumentalism, which Bruner describes as (Vygotsky’s) “way of interpreting thought and speech as instruments for the planning and carrying out of action.” Vygotsky said “children solve practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as their eyes and hands.” Bruner continues that each of these “reflect the tools and aids available in the culture for use in carrying out action.” Applying the learned tools and skills accumulated from community learning at home, in cultural institutions, and through education and reading, young adults can fully express their ideas in a tangible outcome, which only contributes to move them forward in the ever-evolving process of lifelong learning.

According to John-Steiner creative individuals should expect extensive creative output after periods of absorbing information:

1. The development of self-knowledge—the realization of one’s special talents and the best way to use them—does not necessarily follow a simple linear progression. Students of creativity have identified cycles in the lives of productive individuals. At times a person spends years absorbing new experiences, styles, or theoretical ideas without making his or her own contributions to a field, only to be followed by a period of intense bursts of productivity.
   

Art and Play provides readers with a wide range of information and continued resources to absorb. They are now ready to test their creativity through the activities. By encouraging readers of Art and Play to apply the information to their own life through the suggested activities and worksheets, young readers have the key elements to take an idea and move forward with suggested ideas instead of a detailed how-to and list of materials. Young adults are encouraged to stretch their imagination and select their own method for creating the plans or final art projects. This springboard provides an opportunity for a more creative response to the suggested activities than if provided with rigid instructions.

A study of preschool children demonstrates the importance of allowing children to select the materials they use for their projects. According to Langer, Teresa Amabile found:

1. The children were asked to make collages and were randomly assigned either to a group in which they were encouraged to choose the art materials they would be using, or to a group in which they would use materials chosen for them by the experimenter. After they had finished judges who did not know which group was which found that the collages of students who selected their own materials were made more creatively.
   

Langer continues in describing how the example of the children’s choice resulted in more mindful and creative expressions. First choice makes us feel more responsible for what we are doing; the children given the choice might have cared more and tried harder. Choosing materials—making comparisons—also forces us to draw mindful distinctions. It encourages a conditional view, a sense of possibility. For example, in choosing between two colors the child might think more what can be done with a color than if he or she were simply give one color. In this way, choice encourages mindfulness.

Encouraging more mindful activities reinforces the ideas of lifelong learning, which gives the learner control of following their interests as those interests evolve, multiply and grow like an ever-expanding web. The connections that they discover and create help them to eagerly find a way to blur the lines between work and play just as Duchamp, Calder, Tinguely, Oldenburg, Murray, and Cornell successfully did.