How I Learned Creativity

How the world around me became my creative education

My creativity did not come from school. It came from people and the environments I grew up in. I learned how to see before I learned how to design. I learned how to move before I learned how to direct. I learned culture before I learned creativity.

The first teachers were the people around me. Friends, classmates, neighbors, family, co-workers. They taught me how to read a room, how to be funny, how to belong, how to borrow ideas, how to remix, how to pay attention to details, and how to survive socially. None of it was presented as creativity. It was presented as life.

The second set of teachers were the environments. The street, the mall, Manhattan, and movie theaters. These places taught me how the world actually worked. They showed me taste, style, posture, speed, and scale. They exposed me to people who dressed differently, moved differently, listened to different music, and spoke in different codes. It felt like the city was running a curriculum that no one acknowledged but everyone participated in.

Queens was the base layer. It was a neighborhood of languages and cultures and food and music all colliding in public space. Spanish and English existed side by side. Bachata and hip hop came out of the same cars. Rice and plantains lived next to pizza and bacon egg and cheese. You do not call that creativity as a kid. You just call it home.

From there, culture did the rest. Music videos on MTV taught me how visuals could elevate a song into a world. Movies taught me how stories could shape how people imagine other people. Sports taught me how communities could form around identity and performance. Food taught me how taste could travel through generations without anyone writing down a recipe. Language taught me how tone and rhythm could change the meaning of a sentence without changing the words.

None of this looked like formal creative training. There were no sketchbooks, no figure drawing classes, no art camps, no museum trips, and no lectures on design history. There was exposure and imitation and experimentation and curiosity. There was learning by watching, listening, and trying to keep up.

The first time I realized that creativity was a skill, not just an aesthetic, was when I started working. Co-workers became another classroom. I was a personal assistant to a creative director. I had to run errands and pick up boxes and sit in rooms where ideas were being pitched by people who spoke in references I had never heard before. I did not understand the language but I understood the energy. That was my introduction to the professional side of creativity.

When I finally touched Photoshop for the first time, it felt like I had found the missing tool. The book taught me the software. The world had already taught me the rest. Color, taste, humor, composition, identity, and storytelling were not new ideas. They were already in my head from years of exposure. The software just gave me the ability to shape them.

This is why I have never believed in creativity as a gift. I believe in creativity as a form of literacy. You learn it the same way you learn language. First by listening. Then by mimicking. Then by understanding. Then by creating. People teach you the vocabulary. Environments teach you the context. Culture teaches you the rules and how to break them.

I learned creativity from Queens. I learned it from Spanish and English existing in the same sentence. I learned it from hip hop and bachata and merengue and reggae and dancehall. I learned it from movie theaters and malls and sidewalks and trains. I learned it from food and flavor and rhythm and jokes and sneakers and sports. I learned it from people who had nothing to do with the creative industry.

I did not learn creativity to make art. I learned it to make sense of the world. The professional side came later. The industry vocabulary came later. The portfolio came later. The titles came later.

The creativity was already there.