Heart-warming Crayola campaign reminds adults of their childhood creativity
By Rupert Cole on Friday, May 3, 2024
Some creative campaigns are turned around in just a couple of weeks, and some, like Crayola’s ‘Campaign for Creativity’, take much, much longer.
40 years ago, Crayola started collecting children’s artwork and displaying it in museums and galleries. Now, the crayon maker is returning those original pieces to those who created them and sharing their stories about the effects of fostering creativity in children.
The campaign aims to inspire parents to allow more creative moments into their children’s lives, in order to help nurture their lifelong creativity. Crayola’s ‘Campaign for Creativity’ consists of a heart-warming series of short films featuring the stories of three adults who participated in the Crayola art program as children.
In addition to the short films, Crayola has released research around parents’ perceptions about creativity, which reveals that 9 in 10 parents say creativity is important for their child, and that encouraging this in children is essential for their development.
More than 60% of parents, however, don’t think that their children get enough creativity activity, and 33% struggle with balancing creative moments and other things which compete for their time throughout the day.
To further this campaign’s reach, Crayola is taking to social media and enlisting the public to help track down and reunite adults who participated in the Crayola art program as kids with 50 additional pieces of artwork.
This is just the first wave, with Crayola hoping to return all 1,000 pieces of art remaining in its archives from what was once one of the largest collections of children’s artworks in the world.
Victoria Lozano, EVP Marketing at Crayola, said: “These films capture just a few of the stories we’ve encountered that bring to life the enduring value of childhood creativity. They also illustrate the pivotal role parents have in helping their children develop lifelong creative mindsets essential for whatever path they take in life.”
