Small Things Big Ideas

Small Things Big Ideas ©

By Michael Casey

I thought I’d better write something new today even though I’m a bit tired, then I looked at an old bucket and I was inspired. Yes, my muse is an old bucket, Picasso and famous writers had dusty maiden, me I have an old bucket. So today before the girls get back from choir practice I’m going to talk about how things inspire us.

As a child I had a big imagination, no change there, me and DmC used to use a paperclip and it was a car for the Leprechauns, we drove their car through the grooves of the brickworks, you know the mortar between the bricks. We were very happy to have Leprechauns even though we didn’t even have a plastic car for them to sit in, all we had was a paperclip.

This illustrates how we and children generally can use anything they find to create an imaginary land with all kinds of everything used to create structures. A discarded cola can is used to represent The Rotunda in Birmingham, which happens to look like a cola can in reality. A fag packet can become a block of flats, a shoe box a shopping centre. An apple can become a recording studio and so on.

When you grow up you become an architect and your ideas are seen as revolutionary, because you have a giant apple as a fresh produce market, a giant book is a book shop and a giant phone, the old style phone is the new  Apple headquarters, with a slice cut out to allow light and a  central stairway to be slotted in. Now to some this may sound very avante garde if my French is correct, but really all the great architect is doing is remembering all the fun he had in the playground with his best friend DmC.

The butcher shop was of course shaped like a cleaver and the doorway was like entering via a pig’s buttocks, and the light fittings looked like a cow’s udder with lights coming out of the teats. This made the shopping experience feel more like a visit to an art exhibition.

The Public in West Brom did of course fail and was turned into a school, which proves Art should be left to real experts, not councillors who call themselves cabinet members, but know nothing about, woodwork.

Modern computer games do allow you to create spaces and so forth and these can be expensive, but do you know what are the best tools for creativity? Imagination is the best tool of all and a bit of paper and some crayons. If when you walk home from Aldi with your kids and you encourage them you look around and notice all the people all the beautiful people, what is the result?  They are observant.

They may even become writers like dad, but their minds are filled with shapes and noises and best of all with ideas. If all your kids do is trudge home resenting having to go to the shops with you, then you have missed an opportunity. Open your kids’ minds, don’t just fill them full of sugar, fill them with ideas and love and hope.

A hand-made card is made with love and skill, it keeps you kids busy for ages while you have a cuppa, or a sly pint of Stella Artois. Expand their minds with words and shapes and sounds and craft stuff, then you will have the next Laura Ashley in your home, and best of all batteries are excluded.