Mistakes

Dear Parents, 

 I hope your child makes lots of mistakes this year.

Let me explain.

One of the things children are most scared of is making a mistake. It could after all result in looking silly or even being mocked by others. That’s why most young people avoid making mistakes like the plague. Unfortunately, the way they often do this is by deciding to not do anything new at all, which pretty much guarantees they will remain stuck exactly where they are (wherever that might be.) 

Being creative, invites our kids into a different relationship with the idea of mistakes. It invites them to experiment, explore and try new things. When they try new things on stage, some things will work and some won’t. When things don’t work, the child adjusts their next action accordingly. ‘Bumping’ into mistakes in this way isn’t unfortunate, it’s a navigational device. It provides us with the feedback we need to create something better, something we ultimately like.  

On a creative journey, mistakes and successes are of equal value as they each have something to teach us. The most important thing is to keep taking the next step and the next one, taking lots of steps, until at some point your child looks behind them and sees how far they’ve come. And at that point I hope they look in the rear-view mirror and realise that the mistakes weren’t nearly as bad as they’d feared they would be, and that they really were a necessary travel buddy, even a kind of compass to find a better way of doing things.

I hope you choose to join us on another year of creative adventures and that we make lots of mistakes together, share lots of successes, learn lots of new things and that we can all look back on 2021 as one where we all grew our greatness in a fun and fearless fashion.  

Let’s ride!

Andrew ‘ bumpety bump bump bump’ Wright