Imaginative Play Creates Ownership

Ultimately, the child as creator exercises a whole range of capacities that set the Stage for original thinking. We find the imprint of creative practice in the blending of experiences and ideas, the classifications of real and imagined things, the organization of systemic patterns and narrative sequences, the modeling of worlds, the generation of artifacts, and the synthesizing of all that is known and felt into one grand design.

The creating self "owns" the processes and products of make-believe, the elabora¬ tions of narrative, and the systematic arrangements of people and place. More, it revels in aesthetic satisfaction for what has been wrought. In his design of medals, uniforms, and maps that brought to life the long-evolving world of Possumbul, Dan felt "ravished by my world, especially by its beauty and its order." And, interestingly enough, that aesthetic wonder may have something to do with yet another characteristic shared by Hunt, Day, and Folsom—-the fused perceptions of synesthesia.

Michele Root-Bernstein, Inventing Imaginary Worlds, From Childhood Play to Adult Creativity Across the Arts and Sciences (2014)

• creativity
• imagination
• world play
• worldplay