By Hannah Richardson
BBC News education reporter
Dr Belton said children needed time to stand and stare.
Children should be allowed to get bored so they can develop their innate ability to be creative, an education expert says.
Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that
children should be constantly active could hamper the development of
their imagination
She quizzed author Meera Syal and artist Grayson Perry about how boredom had aided their creativity as children.
Syal said boredom made her write, while Perry said it was a "creative state".
The senior researcher at the University of East Anglia's
School of Education and Lifelong Learning interviewed a number of
authors, artists and scientists in her exploration of the effects of
boredom.
She heard Syal's memories of the small mining village, with few distractions, where she grew up.
Dr Belton said: "Lack of things to do spurred her to talk to
people she would not otherwise have engaged with and to try activities
she would not, under other circumstances, have experienced, such as
talking to elderly neighbours and learning to bake cakes.
"Boredom is often associated with solitude and Syal spent
hours of her early life staring out of the window across fields and
woods, watching the changing weather and seasons.
"But importantly boredom made her write. She kept a diary
from a young age, filling it with observations, short stories, poems,
and diatribe. And she attributes these early beginnings to becoming a
writer late in life."
'Reflection'
The comedienne turned writer said: "Enforced solitude alone with a blank page is a wonderful spur."
While Perry said boredom was also beneficial for adults: "As I
get older, I appreciate reflection and boredom. Boredom is a very
creative state."
And neuroscientist and expert on brain deterioration Prof
Susan Greenfield, who also spoke to the academic, recalled a childhood
in a family with little money and no siblings until she was 13
.
"She happily entertained herself with making up stories, drawing pictures of her stories and going to the library."
Dr Belton, who is an expert in the impact of emotions on
behaviour and learning, said boredom could be an "uncomfortable feeling"
and that society had "developed an expectation of being constantly
occupied and constantly stimulated".
But she warned that being creative "involves being able to develop internal stimulus".
"Nature abhors a vacuum and we try to fill it," she said.
"Some young people who do not have the interior resources or the
responses to deal with that boredom creatively then sometimes end up
smashing up bus shelters or taking cars out for a joyride."
'Short circuit'
The academic, who has previously studied the impact of
television and videos on children's writing, said:
"When children have
nothing to do now, they immediately switch on the TV, the computer, the
phone or some kind of screen. The time they spend on these things has
increased.
"But children need to have stand-and-stare time, time
imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating
their experiences through play or just observing the world around them."
It is this sort of thing that stimulates the imagination, she
said, while the screen "tends to short circuit that process and the
development of creative capacity".
Syal adds: "You begin to write because there is nothing to prove, nothing to lose, nothing else to do.
"It's very freeing being creative for no other reason other than you freewheel and fill time."
Dr Belton concluded: "For the sake of creativity perhaps we need to slow down and stay offline from time to time."
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