🎨 Create an Arts and Crafts Ritual at Work
Ritual 06: Five Activities for Building Community through Creativity
There’s more to a paintbrush than the strokes it creates on a canvas — art teaches children decision-making, supports innovation and correlates with improved performance, according to a report by PBS Kids. What if we took that same approach and applied art lessons to adults at work — coloring, creating and designing could positively impact internal communications and culture.
Summer offers a perfect opportunity to infuse art into the workplace by drawing upon the crafts of camp with activities such as team tie-dying in-person or water-coloring remotely.
In their book, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross studied the impact of the arts on people. Jill Suttie of Greater Good magazine writes:
Art does so much good for our minds and bodies, helping us to cultivate our curiosity, stay open to our emotions, experience surprise or novelty, think differently about life, embrace ambiguity, engage the senses, feel awe, and more. It may even help heal your soul.
Consider creating an art ritual for yourself or your team to spark creativity, joy and wonder. This could start in the summer with that camp spirit and continue all year as a Friday weekly winddown activity, once-a-month team bonding or quarterly offsites. Here are a few activities to consider:
🌌 Create Dreamcatchers
🧘 Meditate with Watercolors
🧩 Design a Puzzle
🪨 Draw Cave Paintings
🖍️ Color in a Coloring Book
🌌 1. Create Dreamcatchers
A Native American tradition, this hoop symbolizing the sun has traditionally been made from a willow tree. It’s adorned with feathers and beads to warn off evil spirits when you sleep and let good dreams through. This artifact originated with the Ojibwe people but was adopted by other nations. Learn how to create a dreamcatcher. Over the years, it’s also become a popular summer camp activity.
💬 Conversation Starter: While crafting your dreamcatcher, consider connecting this art project to a conversation about the power of sleep. There are many articles, books and talks to spark the discussion, including Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Here’s more about the book from Simon & Schuster:“Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.”
🧘 2. Meditate with Watercolors
There’s something soothing about watercolors — the way the water melts with color on a page to create art. Consider a painting workshop together or remotely. Your team can all paint the same scene and see how it turned out differently for everyone or each pick a unique focus.
Artist Volta Voloshin-Smith, Founder of Color Snack, has combined watercolor with mindfulness with her Watercolor Meditations class. In her own words:
My artistic style is inspired by colorful fruits and veggies, with a deep connection to a childhood memory of helping my grandmother harvest her summer garden.
When we go through stressful situations, our brains dip into a flight or fight response, which makes it harder to make decisions. Art making (regardless of experience or skill) has been shown to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which carries signals of calm and relaxation. Essentially, creative activities can help us feel more calm, and that calm state will allow us to come up with creative solutions to our problems.
💬 Conversation Starter: While painting, talk about meditation and ways that each of you relax and unwind. Consider ending the watercolor session with yoga or meditation led by an expert. 
🧩 3. Design a Puzzle
Cats, castles and cartoon characters are classic puzzle backdrops. Your team could assemble puzzles together, admiring the beautiful images. Or start from a blank puzzle, available from school supply stores.
Each team member can create their own puzzle to represent the group or write on and color your puzzle together to create a unique team puzzle. Consider each piece as key to your team, employee experience and culture. Then, break it apart and assemble it together, if you’re in person.
Puzzles are also an activity that sparks thinking and creating, according to The Baylor College of Medicine:
Puzzles are also good for the brain. Studies have shown that doing jigsaw puzzles can improve cognition and visual-spatial reasoning. The act of putting the pieces of a puzzle together requires concentration and improves short-term memory and problem solving. Using the puzzle as an exercise of the mind can spark imagination and increase both your creativity and productivity.
💬 Conversation Starter: There are lots of metaphors to explore. Talk about the unique pieces of your organization and the ways they connect and collaborate with each other to bring together your culture. Discuss what pieces you can transform to adapt your culture while still staying true to your original purpose. 
🪨 4. Draw Cave Paintings
Take a different approach to a strategic planning session by drawing. In Harvard Business Review, Kenny White, Chief Creativity Architect at Funworks shares how to “Use Art to Reignite Your Team’s Motivation.” He recommends:
Tell your team that in 2,000 years, an anthropologist will stumble upon cave paintings they’ve drawn. Ask them to illustrate this particular moment in time as best they can on a single sheet of paper. Condensing reality in a single artistic expression gets at the heart of what’s occurring, rather than the details, and perhaps some will even choose to represent it in emotional, sensory ways that are often absent in the workday.
💬 Conversation Starter: Embrace the stick-figure illustrations and talk about what each of you envisions for the year and the future ahead! Provide desk frames to everyone so that they can have a version of their goals to look at daily for inspiration. 
🖍️ 5. Color in a Coloring Book
Coloring brings brightness, cheer and creativity to life! It’s for any level of artist. Your team could purchase color books with different themes, each picking a page that resonates with them.
If enough time allows in advance, consider creating a custom coloring book for your organizations with submissions from your colleagues to create a book that symbolizes your culture. Finally, consider focusing on mindfulness with Illustrator Positively Present’s Workbooks or collection of coloring pages (note the personal v. professional usage rights).
💬 Conversation Starter: Using color as a metaphor, talk about how you bring joy and cheer into an employee’s day. Share highlights of happy stories. And talk about the scientific power of color. One research study found that coloring and drawing reduced people’s heart rates and made them feel less anxious. 
💡Bonus Ideas
Sew and Learn the Basics of Coding with a Needle and Thread From IDEO Alumnus Matthew Epler
Paint a Mural at your office or at a local school
Tie-Dye t-shirts together
What Arts and Crafts ideas would you add to the activities list? This article is a double feature! It’s part of a series on Rituals (Annual Report, Growth & Learning, Prioritization, Smile File and Wrap Up Your Day) and Summer Camp (Storytelling, Nature, IDEO Conversation and Sports).
☎️ The Switchboard Exchange
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Creating The Company Picnic Poster from The Herman Miller blog
How The Bear on Hulu can be an L&D resource from Lori Stockel, VP, Global Head of Learning & Development - Godiva Chocolatier
- writes in about the power of decision-making from wilderness expeditions training
What Chicken Soup for the Soul can teach us about finding conviction from
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So many inspiring ideas, not only for the workplace but also for adding a creative ritual to anyone’s life. Now I’m itching to pick up a paintbrush! 🖌️🖌️🖌️