KUUMBA - Creativity - The Creative Intellect

Day Six of the Kwanzaa holiday is all about creativity, and leaving the world a more beautiful place than you found it. However, this is not just in the art-for-arts-sake sense, as much as in the form follows function sense of aesthetics. Consider that in the 1960's and 70's, during the Black Power Movement, you had an entire branch called the Black Arts Movement where Black writers, musicians, and visual artists used their talents to support and convey the social, political and cultural concepts of the movement as well as encourage Black people to re-embrace many of the aesthetic and cultural values of African cultures.

Creativity also leads to paradigm building in the social and political sense as well. The vision, planning and creation of new institutions or ways of resolving issues faced by the community is also creativity. Peope like the late Elma Lewis and the late James Spruill in Boston or the late Rosetta LeNoir and the late Edmund Cambridge all understood this principle as all of them founded schools and training programs for up and coming performing artists. It was not just about their own desires to be actors, dancers, directors, playwrights, musicians, and singers; but they found a way to provide training and experiences in these fields for the next several generations. In turn, many of the artists that they trained went on to train other aspiring artists. That is true "Kuumba" in motion.