Kid Prompts KID ART!
Back in February, as I mentioned when I posted Thea’s episode, I had the incredible honor and privilege of Zoom-ing into my friend Bob’s 5th grade class (of which Thea is a member) and talking to the kids about making television, interviewing, art, and all things creativity. At the end of our chat I gave them a prompt, made up of some things we talked about during our chat:
“An axolotl being interviewed while boxing.”
Recently Bob sent me the results and they are INCREDIBLE:
The huge range of perspectives, interpretations, puns, additional characters, all of it just filled me to the brim. Of course, I had to add my own to the mix as well:
It doesn’t matter which direction it’s in - they give me a prompt, I give them a prompt - I just love collaborating with kids. I find their work naturally hilarious, brilliant, captivating, and endlessly entertaining to look at. Each time I look at this array of drawings I see something new, and each time I am newly moved that they would spend such time, effort, and care on something I came up with.
OpenAI recently released an image generator that will ostensibly do exactly what I do for these kids - you put in a prompt, you get a drawing. But simultaneously it can never do what I do for these children, just as no computer could replicate what the kids who did these drawings have done for me: the utterly human task of taking time for another humans, for no other reason than the joy of the act of creation itself.
Make some art for someone today. A doodle on a napkin; a scribble on a placemat. Art is not product, but the act of doing - of synthesizing the impossible experience of personhood into form through materials. It is time on paper. It is effort in color. In a world that would ask you to manufacture, make for others instead.
If your kid is a fan of Kid Prompts - see if they’d like to send me THEIR drawing of any of the episodes’ prompts, and I will share it here and on my social media! I would love to see how kids inspire not only me, but one another!