Creativity

I am sifting and sorting books to decide which to get rid of, largely so I can by more with a clearer conscience. One was on creativity and 'creative quotient', which prompts this post.

What is creativity? The statements and definitions are scattergun, and lead me to the conclusion that creativity is seen as anything that is not boringly simple. I don't wish to summarise all the points made, but rather have some new thoughts about creativity. I would stress though that formalising these vague notions into a creativity questionnaire is a no-hope exercise.

First, creativity is not the same as artistic. Being able to draw a line and recognisable representations is a skill: doing something unexpected with it approaches what we are looking for in creativity. Creativity is about the brain making surprising associations, especially ones which are meaningful.

The route to creativity is to free the mind from conventional thinking. Ambiguity is feared by people who wish to know for certain, but ambiguity is central in creativity. Easy certainty is the enemy of creativity. However, education encourages certainty, looking for right answers, which may be simplified by the adults involved to be understood by the children. In so doing, the ambiguity is removed. The children are given a sanitised account.

The key to creativity is to allow children to be inventive; and adults also, remembering that their impulse to convention has been developed throughout their lives producing self-consciousness when doing anything unconventional. This suggests an unregimented curriculum with time for experimentation, art, drama, literature, and making things. This is exactly what we do not have currently.

Knowledge today requires creative response. Science cannot tell us what it means by real. History cannot give us answers, but can only repeat old simplifications. Geography cannot open up the problems of land ownership and empire. Land ownership not only throughout the old empires but also closer to home may have legal title but not moral title, after land grabs, dispossessions, and hegemony of the powerful. In Scotland, my own forebears, the Macmillans, where dispossessed and took refuge in Canada (from the Camerons, incidentally). Aristocracy have accumulated wealth and acres in ways neither just, proper or moral.

So, we need to open up the curriculum, develop new ways of looking at what has always been asserted. It is wrong, and the curriculum is based on and reaffirms lies.

Creativity is mental, intellectual, and spiritual. It describes new ways of interpreting the world and expressing new ideas. The status quo, the powerful, the wealthy, the vested interests have much to fear and will resist it. But our youngsters will be managing the world in 20, 30 and 40 years. We need to help them develop the sort of vision which will help them improve the world.