But when I ask them to donate some of their own art, they scuttle away in fear.
"I'm not an artist."
"I can't draw to save my life."
"I don't have anything that's good enough."
Sound familiar?
Sir Ken Robinson once gave a TED talk about how schools kill creativity. He points out that, as children, we all knew how to be creative. We drew bold, wild lines irrespective of paper edges and painted with our fingers. We sang high-pitched rhymes and bounced around to music. We expressed ourselves creatively with very little thought as to whether we were making "good art."
We just had fun.
But somewhere between the ages of five and twenty-five, most of us abandon our creative urges. We stop being writers and dancers, and become people who can't draw to save our lives. We think that if we're not making "good" art, then it's not art at all.
Here's the thing: We don't care about "good" or "bad" art. We just want you to have fun. Because this is what we're about: spending time creating art for someone else, and having fun while doing it.
Papergirl is about giving yourself the chance to be creative again and to have fun with no strings attached. More importantly, it's about giving other people the chance to receive a gift they didn't expect, and to know that somewhere out there, a stranger took the time to make this for them. And that is more than good enough.
-- Lillienne Zen