Abstract
This paper looks at creativity in the context of education and
economic and social value, and seeks answers to the following questions: What
is creativity? Why is creativity important? How do creative minds work? How do
we foster individual creativity? How do we build communities of creativity? It
argues that in an age of uncertainty and flux what individuals and
organisations need, if they are to flourish, are creative minds. The paper
seeks to identify what creativity is, why it is essential for human success and
ways to enhance individual creativity and build communities of creative
learning.
Imagination is more important
than knowledge. For knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the whole
world. Albert Einstein
Although interest in creativity goes back to the ancient world (eg
Plato’s Ion) what is now thought of as the ‘creativity movement’ began
in America after the Second World War. There were two impulses for this. First
was the successful launching in 1957 by Russian engineers of the first
artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. How had Soviet Russia been first to succeed in
the space race? Why were so few home grown American scientists at the forefront
of space research? In the US national survival seemed at stake and an
explanation was urgently sought. A plausible explanation was seized upon - the
problem was lack of creativity. Soviet engineers had been more creative in
their search for solutions. Their creativity provided lift-off. The concept of
creativity led to an explanation, lack of creativity, and to a solution, the
need to train the scientists and engineers of the future to be more creative.
There was a national call for more creativity in schools. A wave of creativity
research followed (Smith1959, Vernon 1970), an interest that is now worldwide.
A second impulse for creativity then, as now, was a reaction
against prevailing values that were seen as excessively bureaucratic and manipulative.
Translated into the classroom this meant wanting to shake education free from
excessive testing and rote learning and encourage more student-centred learning
(Fisher 1990). In business it meant wanting to create cultures of change and
innovation (Amabile 1988, Ekval l996). Interest in the value of creativity has
gone hand-in hand with research into the lives of highly creative men and women
(Gardner 1993, Gruber & Wallace 1999), and research into the processes of
thinking itself (Claxton 1998). What is this concept called ‘creativity’, why
is it important and how is it best developed?
What is creativity?
The trouble with ‘creativity’, as with intelligence and other
brain-based functions, is that it is ethereal and elusive. Years of research
has gone into trying to specify what creativity is but despite all the
checklists, models and tests, researchers admit that we do not know how fully
to explain the creative power of the brain (Sternberg 1999). We lack a proper
language to describe the brain activity associated with creativity. We know
creativity when we see it but the mental processes involved are difficult to
describe. As a student once said to me: ‘If I knew what creativity meant I’d
know if I was creative.’ What follows is an attempt to describe what creativity
is and how it can be fostered.
If we ask ‘What is creativity?’ we are asking, in a Socratic
sense, what all examples of creativity have in common in virtue of which they
are creative. More exactly we are looking for the necessary and sufficient
conditions for creativity. The basic assumption here is that creativity is a
type of thing, something with an essence or nature. Of course creativity may
not have an exact nature. We can say with precision that all triangles have in
common in virtue of which they are triangles, but the concept of creativity may
be fuzzy at the edges – there may be borderline cases. However a good
definition of ‘creativity’ will help us to identify what it is we are talking
about, why certain things are clearly creative and others are not.
Creativity is an elusive and contested concept. The term has been
used so widely that its meaning has become diffuse and uncertain. There have
been many attempts to define it. Creativity has been described, for example as
‘the ability to solve problems and fashion products and to raise new questions’
(Gardner 1993); ‘a state of mind in which all our intelligences are working
together’ (Lucas 2001); and as ‘imaginative processes with outcomes that are
original and of value (Robinson 2001). For Cropley creativity is characterised
by ‘novelty, effectiveness and ethicality’ (Cropley 2002). Part of the reason
for this diversity of definitions is that creativity can be seen as a property
of people, processes or products. I shall argue that the processes that
underpin creativity in mental processes also underpin the evolution of life.
The basic processes of creative evolution, whether of ideas or of
species, are:
To create is to generate something. At the simplest level
creativity is making, forming or bringing something into being. To create is to
be productive in thought, word or deed. The first principle of evolution, and
of creativity, is that of generation - organisms must produce more progeny than
are needed. The same principle applies to ideas. The generation of ideas, of
experiments and innovations, is a necessary part of creative effort. When Linus
Pauling the Nobel Prize-winning chemist was asked how he had come up with so
many creative discoveries he replied: ‘It’s easy. You think of a lot of ideas,
and throw away the bad ones.’ Creativity is a process to do with generation or
bringing forth, whether it be new ideas, new designs or new species. However,
generation by itself is not sufficient for creativity. Bees make honey, ants
make nests, through instinctive activity. We should not confuse in education,
or in any other aspect of life, mere generative activity with creativity.
Secondly every organism or member of a species varies in some way
from every other one. This is the principle of differentiation. Ideas to be
creative must be varied. Creativity is not evidenced in mere repetition. Andy
Warhol the artist generated images of multiple copies of Campbell’s soup cans
in his art, but each work contained images that were variations on the original
design – hence creative. New knowledge and better adaptation derives from
exploratory processes that seek to vary what is given. Variation is the
exploratory process of evolution. Creativity, like evolution, is founded on
experimentation, variations that sometimes succeed, sometimes fail.
Thirdly, where evolution succeeds in creative adaptation aspects
of these variations are inherited by offspring. Unique features survive. Bruner
(1962) says that creativity is ‘an act that produces effective surprise’.
It is uniqueness that provides effective surprise. Uniqueness can be expressed
through differing levels of originality. There can be greater or less
originality relevant to the individual or group. Some things are unique to the
individual mind, some unique to a group or community of minds and some
universally unique, as follows:
Degrees of originality
Creativity means generating one or more different or unique
expressive responses. A creative act, like an actor’s role, can express
differing levels of originality but it must produce an outcome that is to some
extent original. The majority of creativity researchers however claim that
creativity involves being both ‘original’ and ‘useful’ (Mayer 1999). To be
creative an act, idea or product ‘must be new and must be given value by some
external criteria’ (Gruber & Wallace 1999). A ‘product or response cannot
merely be different: it must also be appropriate, correct, useful, valuable or
expressive of meaning’ (Amabile& Tighe 1993). But it is not clear what the
criterion of ‘usefulness’ or social value adds to the definition. We need to
know what it is that makes creative acts ‘valuable’, ‘useful’ or ‘significant’.
Why must a creative act or idea be useful?
A creative act is of value if it reflects novelty, originality or
uniqueness. Creativity is important and of educative value because, in whatever
field it occurs, it adds something to human knowledge and/or experience. It
contributes to the fuller expression of life if it adds something new, whatever
that something is. That something new may not at the time be recognised as
‘valuable’, ‘useful’ or ‘significant’ by others. Sometimes creative acts go
unnoticed, sometimes their significance is not recognised. The existence of
creativity is not dependent on its recognition or acceptance by others. The
history or art and science is littered with examples of original ideas that
were, at first or for a long time, rejected. We would not want to say that
Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’, or the Copernican theory, were not creative even
though they may have been rejected as valueless by the great majority of people
at the time. A creative act or idea may or may not be given the seal of
approval by others, and may or may not be moral or have ethical outcomes.
To generate images or ideas takes mental activity, but of what kind?
Often this mental activity is called imagination. Imaginative activity is the
process by which we generate something that is original. Some have tried to
define creativity in terms of imagination (see Robinson above). But what is
imagination? Does all creativity involve imagination? Imagination is a word
used in many senses. It can simply refer to the creative powers of the mind.
This does not help in a definition of creativity. What imagination does is to
enable the mind to represent images and ideas of what is not actually present
to the senses. It can refer to the capacity to predict, plan and foresee
possible future consequences. In short imagination is the capacity to conceive
possible (or impossible) worlds that lie beyond this time and place. These
possible worlds may derive from actual worlds reproduced from our store of
memories. As Blake said: ‘What is now proved was once imagined.’
Imagination is both reproductive and productive. ‘Reproductive
imagination’ is this capacity to represent in the mind external objects that
are absent as if they were present, as when we bring to mind remembered
experiences, as in: ‘I can imagine being there now’ or ‘It happened like this’.
‘Productive imagination’ is the mind’s ability to form concepts beyond those
derived from external objects. It enables us to imagine possible worlds not
reproduced from memory but produced by combining, adapting or developing
existing ideas to form new ideas, for example when we create a fictional story
or think of a baboon in a pink dress.
‘Imagination rules the world’ said Napoleon. It is the faculty
that provides colour to our lives and underpins our curiosity and wonder. It is
essential not only to creativity but also to our capacity to respond to and
appreciate the creativity of others. It informs our emotional lives, including
our ability to understand ourselves and to understand others. The downside of
imagination is that it feeds fantasy and false belief. Plato banished artists
from his ideal Republic on the grounds that imagination distorts reality,
creates illusions and encourages people to feel rather than think. Imagination
can be used to serve evil ends so it needs to be informed by values.
Imagination can lead to false belief so it needs to be tempered by critical thinking,
reasoning and judgement.
Many writers have differentiate these two kinds of thinking – the
critical and the creative like this:
|
Critical Thinking |
Creative Thinking |
|
analytic |
generative |
|
convergent |
divergent |
|
vertical |
lateral |
|
probability |
possibility |
|
judgment |
suspended judgment |
|
hypothesis testing |
hypothesis forming |
|
objective |
subjective |
|
answer |
an answer |
|
left brain |
right brain |
|
closed |
open-ended |
|
linear |
associative |
|
reasoning |
speculating |
|
logic |
intuition |
|
yes but |
yes and |
We need both critical and
creative thinking, both analysis and synthesis, both the parts and the whole to
be effective in our thinking. We need reason and intuition, order and adventure
in our thinking. We need creative thinking to generate the new, but critical
thinking to judge it. The technological world enables us to access knowledge in
abundance, but creativity is in short supply.
Einstein claimed that imagination was more important than
knowledge. But why is creativity and imagination of such importance?
Why is creativity important?
‘The human spirit is in prison. Prison is what I call this world,
the given world of necessity… man is not only of this world but of another
world; not only of necessity but of freedom … the essential in artistic
creativity is victory over the burden of necessity.’ Berdyaev, The Meaning
of the Creative Act
What is, is - but it doesn’t have to be or stay this way. The
message of creativity is – you can do something with what you are given to
change it. The world as it is presented to us is not the only possible world.
Through our imagination we van use it as a model for other possible worlds.
Aspects of the world may be inadequate to our vision of what might be or what
should be. We may want to lift the world beyond some of the routine, mediocre
and sterile visions of the present. The artist Paul Klee expressed this
ambitious purpose when he said: ‘I do not wish to portray man as he is but only
as he might be’ (Klee 1948). The creative person embraces a philosophy, that of
free thought. Creative minds are able to think beyond the given, beyond the
world of necessity, and to engage in thought-experiments, thereby to
imaginatively to create possible worlds out of the raw materials of this world.
Such creative impulses are not just idle fancies. They are vital factors in
personal, social and economic success.
At an individual level creativity is needed to solve the practical
problems of daily life. To succeed in a world of rapid change individuals need
to be flexible, open to change, able to adapt to new ways of doing things,
resourceful in overcoming obstacles and resilient in the face of an uncertain
future. The challenge for schools and social institutions is clear. The focus
of education must be on creating people who are capable of thinking and doing
new things, not simply repeating what past generations have done (Fisher 1990).
We cannot limit people to doing only what they have done in the past if they
are to be equipped for a world of challenge and change. Creativity is an
essential element in personal intelligence and practical problem solving
(Fisher 1987). Creativity is also rewarding at an emotional level. It offers
individuals the spontaneous pleasures of play, self-expression and
satisfaction. During creative activity, freed from the burden of necessity,
many people experience their greatest joy (what Csikzentmihalyi calls ‘flow’, a
state akin to ecstasy). Creative activity in any sphere offers challenge and
what Yeats called ‘the fascination of what’s difficult.’ At an educational
level creativity enhances academic performance. Research shows when students
are assessed in ways that recognises and values their creative abilities their
academic performance improves (Sternberg & Lubart 1999). Students otherwise
turned off by school can find that creative activity rekindles their interest.
At a social level creativity add value to society by leading to
new scientific discoveries, new movements in art, new inventions and new social
programmes. The most important developments in civilisation have come through
the creative process. The world around us was built by practical people who
used their imaginations to build on the ideas of earlier generations, but some
of this socially constructed world is the result of sterile vision, inadequate
imagination, and disjointed ideas. Creativity is central to improving the
functioning and development of society, not only in obvious ways through the
arts, science, technology and a myriad manifestations but also through social
relationships. Watch any group of people engaged in any shared endeavour and
you will see friction, tension and conflict as well as cooperation, energy and
effort applied to the creative solving of problems. According to Richard Pascale:
‘Creativity and adaptation are born of tension, passion and conflict.
Contention does more than make us creative. It makes us whole, it propels us
along the journey of development.’ (Syrett & Lammiman, 2002, p47)
Creativity is developed through intellectual engagement, purpose, energy and
interactive tension with others. These positive, creative attributes are
essential to citizens living in an increasingly complex, changing and
challenging social environment. Creativity is also needed to manage conflicts
of interest and argument. It requires imagination to understand others, and
creativity to resolve conflict.
At an economic level creativity is necessary to produce new
products, new services and new jobs. In an increasingly competitive world
commercial organisations cannot be successful without an adaptable, creative
and skilled workforce. We live in a world where economic success is closely
related to the application of good ideas. The traditional means of economic
production was raw material, hard labour and money, but no longer. What
organisations need more than ever today is the application of creativity to
knowledge. The raw materials, labour, money and means of production are needed
but any manufacturer that relies on merely reproducing what they have always
produced will fail in the face of more creative competitors. To succeed
managers need not only to manage production but also to manage change - to be
concerned with utilizing technology in intelligent ways to improve design,
service support and logistics, to improve image and concept and improve
communication with people who matter such as fellow managers, suppliers and
consumers. These are the creative intangibles that add value to raw material,
whether in an educational or commercial setting. The hard stuff of facts and
materials needs the soft stuff of human creativity. However a survey in 1999 by
the Confederation of British Industry found that nearly half the firms surveyed
cited ‘lack of promising ideas’ as a constraint to innovation (IDES 2001).
Success lies in what we do with given materials - the way that creative minds
mould matter. We have good reason therefore to invest in creative capacity at
individual, social and national levels.
We live in times of high uncertainty, but as education and wealth
expand so do opportunities for leading richer, more creative lives. To realise
this potential for creativity we have to make up our minds what the good life,
the creative life really is. We are responsible for the creativity we apply to our
lives, our work and our community. We need to know what creativity is and how
to apply it – if we choose to. To be creative is to make a choice and to take
responsibility for that choice. You may prefer to let others make choices for
you – to let whatever institution or group you are in take responsibility for
choosing for you. You may respond: ‘I am here to do what the school, company,
government – or what my husband/wife/boss says’. But obedience to an
institution is not a substitute for responsibility, nor is it a recipe for a
life worth living. For ultimately it will not fulfil either the institution’s
or your potential for growth. The market, the institution, the organisation
whether it be the school, the government department or global market capitalism
is part of the given world. The point is how we respond to the given - to the
people, processes and products that surround us.
Creativity is important in relation to:
Creativity is about people. What teacher do you best remember from
your school days? Was it the one who followed the curriculum and lesson
objectives most closely, that was most punctual in marking books? Or was it the
someone that fired your imagination, that sparked in you a creative passion for
some form of learning? Research with a wide range of people, shows that it is
more likely to be the latter (Fisher, in press). What we need is teaching not
trapped in defensive or routine thinking, but teaching that is innovative. We
need our children to experience the unpredictable, to experience paradox and
uncertainty. We need lessons that produce effective surprise. Creative learners
needs creative teachers who provide both order and adventure, who are willing
to do the unexpected and take risks.
Creativity is about processes. Henry Ford once said: ‘How come
when I want a pair of hands I get a human being as well?’ Today the important
processing is not done by hands at the assembly line but in brains that
assemble ideas. The decisive factor now in personal, social, economic and
political affairs is the human brain’s capacity to generate, adapt and use
knowledge. Competition between companies, countries and individuals has become
a battle of brains. Competitive and cooperative advantage come from ‘brain
gain’, that is new questions asked, new solutions offered and new ideas
skilfully implemented. New problems, new products and new people need new
processes of thinking. We have what we are given – the necessary, messy raw
materials of life, and we only have our brains and the brains of others to
create value with them and from them. Creativity is the vital means for adding
value.
Creativity is about products. Why are certain products preferred
over others? Harley Davidson and Starbucks both outsell their rivals by producing
products that customers prefer. They do this not by producing machines or
services that are necessarily more competent and reliable than rival companies,
but by producing products that appeal to the emotions and to the imagination.
The coffee chain Starbucks offers more than a place to drink coffee. The
motorcycle company Harley Davidson offers more than machines that carry you
from one place to another. We respond to products and to people that have the
added value of creative appeal. They do not simply fulfil a function they add
fun to life and add to the sense of who we are.
Continuous innovation, seeking variation in the processes and
product of learning, is the heart of creativity and of education for
creativity. To educate for innovation we need to move from a knowledge-based
education to a brain-based education. The problems of tomorrow will not be
answered by the knowledge of yesterday. The knowledge is changing and the
questions that need asking are changing. Picasso once said: ‘Computers are
useless. They only give us answers.’ New problems will require the asking of
new questions, and the old answers may not suffice. Paradoxically the ability
to forget the old answers, to unlearn the old ways to make room for the new
will be a key asset. The future cannot be predicted – it has to be created.
Either you see things as they happen around you – or you make them happen. All
that we know is that the unexpected is likely. This creative/destructive flux
is not a good or bad thing. The future becomes what we make it. What is is. The
future ‘will be’, we just want to make it a better ‘will be’.
Three processes that underpin the evolution of life underpin
creativity are generation, variation and originality. Creative ideas are
generative. They spawn others and inherited characteristics persist but in
variegated form. Each form is unique in some aspect and natural selection means
that offspring will be more likely to survive if the inherited variations are
best suited to changing local conditions. Organisms, or organisations, that do
not adapt to changing circumstances die. Creativity offers a gift to the
future. Much creative effort will not succeed; some will survive only as long
as its span of usefulness. But something of an innovation may persist, may become
part of the creative inheritance that you hand on to the next generation. We
need minds that can create better futures. Creativity is of vital importance to
education, and any economic or social organisation and one way of studying
creativity is to study how uniquely creative minds work.
How do creative minds work?
Mulla Nasruddin was once attempting to repair something, without
apparent success, when an onlooker asked scornfully, ‘Do you know what you're
doing?’
Nasruddin replied, ‘No, that's why I'm doing it.’
One way to find out about creativity is to ask people about their
conception of a creative person. Whether they are lay people or experts in a
field, people have implicit theories about what it means to be creative. They
usually identify personality and cognitive elements like:
Another way to tease out the governing conditions of creativity is
to look at paradigm case examples of what the most creative people do, just
like in studying effective schools we might start by studying existing
effective schools, or study detergents by looking at the best-selling
detergents. Much research has gone into trying to understand creativity better
by looking at the way creative minds work (Gardner 1997). By studying exemplars
of creativity like world-famous writers, artists or inventors we might find a
set of necessary and sufficient conditions which defined their creativity. We
then might want to try to recreate those conditions in our homes, schools,
businesses and community. Geniuses create good ideas because we all create good
ideas, that is what our creative combinatorial minds are good at and can get
better at. We all have the mental resources to be creative.
The problem is that we cannot have access to the inner workings of
a creative mind. We do not know what determinate set of mental processes is at
work. What we can find out is what counts as a creative product in a given
field and the creative characteristics of their work. We can then investigate
the habits of creative people and the conditions under which creative people
flourish. Research into the habits of creative people reveals certain common
characteristics. These are that they:
Creative people tend to have lots of ideas. They do not limit
their thinking to a few ideas; they want more ideas and better ideas. The more they
have the greater the likelihood that some of them will work. Some ideas will go
wrong. As Edison, the inventor of the telephone said, he needed 100 ideas for
he knew that 99 of them might be wrong. Inside the oyster of an idea may be a
pearl. They do not discard ideas simply because they seem at first to be a bit
odd or unworkable. Output of ideas spurs further ideas, each of which may have
an unexpected potential. Creative people are rarely half-hearted. They make an
effort to keep thinking, to become absorbed, immersed and fascinated in the
subject in hand for the ideas to flood in. When Tolstoy was writing a novel he
said he ‘knew’ all his fictional characters inside out because he had thought
so much and generated so many ideas about them.
Creative people are able to overcome the mental blocks to their
thinking through being flexible and divergent. Some of these blocks include the
tendency to think that:
Being creative means not have to be stuck with one idea, one
approach, one way of doing things. It is having the ability to move from a
known way to a new way, being willing to change your ideas or views if you need
to. Creative people have a thirst for knowledge. They use imagination to play
with ideas. They are willing to experiment. The French mathematician Poincaré
said: ‘Experiment is the sole source of truth’. It is also the source of all
creativity. Creative people are curious, open-minded and have the confidence to
try new ideas.
Creative people strive for originality by thinking of novel ideas,
finding new solutions to problems or creating their own unique ways or plans
for doing things. They extend their thinking through a process of elaboration.
They are willing to improve on an original idea, so that what they add improves
on or takes further the original idea. Elaboration is shown in the number and
quality of different ideas used to add on to the original idea, expanding on
existing knowledge, extending an idea to make it more complex or build a unique
feature into a given situation. They try alternatives and don’t give up easily.
They have ‘stickability’ – they know that creativity often requires a
tremendous struggle for a vision to be realised. The painter Turner said: ‘My
paintings bring me nothing but pain. The reality is so immeasurably below the
conception.’
Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and
solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works.
Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of
creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a
frenzy of rapid activity. Here is Beethoven describing his way of working: ‘I
carry my thoughts with me for a long time, often for a very long time before
writing them down … I change many things, discard others and try again until I
am satisfied; then, in my head, I begin to elaborate the work … the underlying
idea never deserts me. It rises, it grows. I hear and see the image in front of
me from every angle.’ (Gruber & Wallace 1999)
Newton claimed that what enabled him to make discoveries in
mathematics and science was his ability to concentrate intently on a problem
for hours, days and weeks on end. Research shows that experts in any creative
field take about 10 years of practice before they produce a masterwork
(Sternberg & Lubart 1999). Creative excellence in any field seems to
require long-term interest and investment of effort.
The problem with studying paradigm cases of creative people who
have excelled in their field is that they are vulnerable to paradigm shift
(Kuhn 1975). Thus the analysis may fit well with the works of preceding artists
who were imbued with a reverence for the tradition they were working in, but it
may not fit the works of revolutionary creative thinkers. The old ways of study
may not fit new technologies. We may not be able to reinvent the future by
copying the traditions of the past. Creative people can learn from a past
tradition but may need to move beyond that tradition to achieve the most
creative expression of their ideas. They may need to move into new paradigms,
new ways of thinking.
Being creative is of course not all one thing. There are degrees
of change. There is change of degree and change of kind. Change of degree means
adding something extra or different to what already exists – doing the same
thing in a different way. Change of kind is of a qualitatively different order.
It is being unique in a new way, a way that has never been done before. It is
reinvention. Not changing what is but creating what isn’t. It is not being a
different sort of caterpillar. It is trying to be a butterfly.
Creative outcomes can be divided into two categories:
Evolution
This is the method of incremental improvement. New ideas stem from
other ideas, new solutions from previous ones, the new ones slightly improved
over the old ones. Many of the very sophisticated things we enjoy today
developed through a long period of incremental development. Making something a
little better here, a little better there gradually makes it something a lot
better, sometimes entirely different from the original. For example, look at
the history of the automobile or any product of technological progress. With
each new model, improvements are made. Each new model builds upon the
collective creativity of previous models, so that over time, improvements in
economy, comfort, and durability take place. Here the creativity lies in the
refinement, the step-by-step improvement, rather than in something completely
new. The evolutionary method of creativity also reminds us of that critical
principle: Every problem that has been solved can be solved again in a
better way. Creative thinkers do not subscribe to the
idea that once a problem has been solved, it can be forgotten, or to the notion
that ‘if it ain't broke, don't fix it.’ A creative thinker's view of life is
that ‘there is no such thing as an insignificant improvement.’
Revolution
The problems with evolutionary change are that it is slow and that
it may be inefficient. What may be needed is not a slight improvement in
performance but a different kind of performance. For example when the British
Leyland car firm was struggling in the eighties it hired an Italian design team
to enhance its existing models, and led to the launch of a model called the
Ital. It flopped. The company failed. People did not want a modified version of
a second-rate model they wanted a new and better model. This example reveals a
critical truth about problem solving: the goal is to solve the problem, not
to implement a particular solution. When one solution path is not working,
the creative person shifts to another. There is no commitment to a particular
path, only to a particular goal. Path fixation can sometimes be a problem for
those who do not understand this; they become overcommitted to a path that does
not work and only frustration results. Sometimes the best new idea is a
completely different one, a marked change from all previous ones. While an
evolutionary improvement philosophy might cause a professor to ask, ‘How can I
make my lectures better and better?’ a revolutionary idea might be, ‘Why not
stop lecturing and have the students teach each other, working as teams or
presenting reports?’
The trouble with creative people, whether they be teachers or
plumbers, is that they often find it difficult to explain their creativity.
Many creative breakthroughs occur through creative insight, when a problem is
intuitively seen in a new way or from a fresh viewpoint. ‘Logic is the
instrument of certainty,’ said Poincaré, ‘intuition is the instrument of
discovery.’ Creative people find it hard to say where creative insight comes
from. When asked where his music came from Elgar replied ‘out of the air.’
Mozart said of his musical ideas: ‘Whence and how they come I know not; nor can
I force them.’ What many creative people seem to need is a period of gestation
to allow what Guy Claxton calls ‘soft thinking’ to take place (Claxton 1999).
Creative people tend to take a positive view of failure, but for
some reason modern society has conceived the idea that it is an unforgivable
thing to fail, to make a mistake or to admit to mistakes. One chief executive
of a big American corporation warns all his newly hired managers, ‘Make sure
you make a reasonable number of mistakes’ (Nordstrom & Ridderstrale 2002).
Mistakes are educational and can lead to success – if it means trying something
again in a different way. The only way not to fail is not to try. We should
forgive our failures but not forget what we have learnt. The philosopher
Wittgenstein said: ‘If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would
happen.’ We have to fail faster to learn quicker to succeed more. Creative
people accept failure, try again, but try it differently. Thomas Edison, in his
search for the perfect filament for a light bulb, tried anything he could think
of, including whiskers from a friend's beard. In all, he tried about 1800
things. After about 1000 attempts, someone asked him if he was frustrated at
his lack of success. He is said to have replied: ‘I've gained a lot of
knowledge. I now know a thousand things that won't work.’
Bartlett (1959) described creativity as ‘adventurous thinking’,
which he characterised as ‘getting away from the main track, breaking out of
the mould, being open to experience, and permitting one thing to lead to
another.’ Human beings are forever caught, as Apollinaire once said, between
order and adventure, between the known path and the path less travelled. A
creative approach means generating ideas, seeking variation, and being prepared
to make the more adventurous choice. How do we foster adventurous, open-ended
and creative thinking?
How do we foster individual creativity?
Creativity has its roots in ordinary activities. When we edit a
sentence to make it sound more interesting, or add something new to a recipe we
are being creative. Without small acts of creativity great acts of creativity
would not be possible. When we take up a pencil to draw a sketch we are
emulating, in a small way, what Picasso, Titian and other artists and other
artists achieve. When we hum our own tune we are in the creative foothills of
musical composition. Such responses to great acts of creativity have their
genesis in the reactions of children who move to music or find shapes pleasing.
We foster natural impulses to creativity by building creative
capital. Creative capital is difficult to define and measure. It is made up of
what enables you to focus creatively on the task in hand and supports you in
that task. Creative capital has two aspects:
Focusing on the creative task is necessary. Any individual,
company or community of nations (such as the EU) that tries to tackle
everything everywhere, often as a result does nothing well, its energies sapped
by overload. A diffusion of focus means a diffusion of energy. Research shows
that creative people exercise their creativity in particular spheres. The
creative person is focused. In an age of multiplying activities the creative
person stops believing they can master all things and every situation. In a
global market companies need to specialise. There is no way we can attend to
everything with the same creativity, energy and enthusiasm. Creative people
focus on those areas in which they can make a difference.
There seem however to be certain key features that are common to
all fields of creative endeavour. These help to build creative capacity in
individual learners and in ourselves, for as Gandhi said: ‘We must be the
change we want to see in the world.’
Some of the keys to individual creativity are:
The key to creativity is motivation – not having to but
wanting to, and having a purpose to do so. Motivation is what we need to add
value to creative effort. ‘Passion’ is a word often used to describe the way
creative scientists and artists feel about their work. We need to know that
what we do is worthwhile. Individual creativity needs to be fed by internal and
external encouragement (Amabile 1983). Creativity needs the encouragement of
others. Encouraging adults in the classroom, at home, in the workplace and in
all positions of social leadership.
Another key to creativity is inspiration. It means being
inspired by oneself or others. Creativity thrives on curiosity, fresh input,
and rich domains of knowledge. According to Csikzentmihihalyi (1996) ‘the first
step towards a more creative life is the cultivation of curiosity, that is the
allocation of attention to things for their own sake’. It is possible to
stimulate curiosity by being more observant and asking more questions.
Curiosity is contagious, and there is no more important job a teacher, parent
or friend can do than to instil a sense of wonder about the world and human
experience. A creative climate must be created where models of creativity are
shared and celebrated. ‘ Those who have changed the universe have never done it
by changing officials,’ said Napoleon, ‘but always by inspiring the people’.
Curiosity thrives on fresh input both within the setting, be it
classroom or workplace and beyond the setting. That fresh input might be a
museum, meeting someone new, seeing a play, reading something that you don’t
usually have time to read, or doing something you have never done before. The
best kind of inspiration comes from involvement. We must involve people in
creative activities. Creative people look on life as a series of creative
projects. They seek out whatever inspires them – or they seek to inspire others
by exposing them to the most creative experiences they can find. They seek the
best in the field relevant to their interests. They are not content with the
second-rate. Inspiration from others provides the necessary spur to our own
thinking and creative effort.
A third key to creativity is gestation, that is allowing
time for creative ideas to emerge. Insight, intuition and inspiration are often
associated with creativity. Creative insight results from processes that are
unconscious and lie below the level of awareness. They take time to occur.
Modern Western culture celebrates the quick-fix, the sound-bite, the fleeting
image and neglects what Claxton calls the 'undermind ' (Claxton 1997), the
capacity we all have for quiet contemplation and time being set aside for
long-term thinking and unconscious working-through of ideas. We need time to
think things through at conscious and unconscious levels. This is as true for
Beethoven or Brahms (who started his first symphony at 28 and finished it when
he was 43) as it is for those engaged in everyday creative activity.
A fourth key to creativity is collaboration, the support
of a learning partner or community of enquiry. We need teachers and significant
others to learn from. Creativity is caught through example but it must also be
explicitly taught. We all have creative ability. Just look at how creative
children are. In adults, creativity has too often been suppressed through
education, but it is still there and can be reawakened. Often all that's needed
to be creative is to make a commitment to creativity and to take the time for
it. When I asked a child to define creativity he said: ‘It is something you are
free to do in your own way.’ When I asked him why this was important, he looked
puzzled for a moment then said: ‘It is what we are here for.’
How do we build communities of creativity?
‘How do you get a bigger brain?’ ‘You get a bigger brain by adding
to it what others think that you would never have thought.’ (From a discussion
with nine year olds.)
We are not the department, the commercial or educational
organisation we happen to be in, we are different. An organisation has no soul.
We develop our own souls through the human values we embody. An organisation
may promote a commitment to values through vision statements and the like, but
these can only be embodied in individuals. Reliance on the dominance and
technological power of organisations will not produce the financial, emotional
and human value we seek. But it is not the technology that is at fault but
rather our inability to create communities where more people have the
opportunity to develop their creativity and talent.
We live in a world whose institutions are increasingly dominated
by ‘competence control’. We are increasingly judged by external standards and
performance indicators. In such a world it becomes more difficult for
individuals to risk experiment and to achieve ends beyond the ‘competent’. But
moving beyond ‘competence’, beyond the routine, beyond the everyday is
essential if we are to move beyond where we are, and if we are to fulfil the
potential of individuals and organisations. Competence in performance, and all
that assists it, from information technology to flushing toilets, is essential.
But competence, technology and hygiene will only get you so far. They are
necessary but not sufficient for a life fully lived. Creativity needs to be
added to competence and the clue to how communities become more creative lies
in the workings of human brain.
The critical means of production in the modern world is small and
grey and weighs a little over one kilogram. It is the human brain. Creativity
is built in to the way the brain works. The human brain is a gloriously complex
and an intricate whole, its interconnectivity allows similar cognitive
functions to take place in different areas of the cortex. It is
inter-connectivity in nature that allows evolution, variation and differentiation
to take place. We build communities of creativity by building
inter-connectivity, not inter-connectivity of hardware but inter-connectivity
of the software of the mind.
Creativity, like intelligence and technology, is expanded through
building broad networks of connections. The case of technology offers a useful
insight. Think how little use a mobile phone or email would be if you belonged
to a network of one. According to ‘Metcalfe’s Law’ the usefulness of belonging
to a network increases exponentially with the number of users. Or to put it
more simply it is more than twice the fun if two are connected rather than one.
There is a law of increasing returns the more who are connected positively to
any creative pursuit. However there is also a critical mass, which like any
overloaded system will eventually cause it to explode.
We might call the inter-connectivity you have with others your ‘info-structure’.
It is the way that others inform you, give you feedback and stimulate your
activity – as well as the way you do it for yourself – that is your
info-structure. What is true of your brain is true of any organisation that
seeks to be intelligent or creative. It is more important than infrastructure,
the physical organisation, the given components of the system (brain or other
organisation). It is not what you have but what you do with it that is
important. And part of what is important about what you do is how you connect
with others and use the information they have to help you. Carl Jung said: ‘I
need we to be fully I’. Success in any grand project needs help from others,
means making alliances, means benefiting from the distributed intelligence of
others - developing the ‘info-structure’– interconnectivity with others.
It is important to note that creativity does not come from
nothing, nor does it represent a complete break with the past but builds upon
the ideas and actions of others. ‘Everything that a scientist does is a
function of what others have done before him: the past is embodied in every new
conception and even the possibility of its being conceived at all ‘ (Medawar,
quoted in Sternberg 1999). Einstein acknowledged that he could not have
conceived the theory of relativity without the discoveries of earlier
physicists. The same is true of artists. Stravinsky could not have written the
Rite of spring without the polyphonic and rhythmic experiments of earlier
composers.
Success depends on having a fertile ground where new ideas and
activities can take root, an environment in which ideas can be created, tossed
around, shared and tried out. For this you need creative partners, who you know
can multiply what you know and can do. It is others who help you realise what
Vygotsky called your ‘zone of potential development’ that halo of potential we
all carry around with us that we could realise if only we had that ‘significant
other’ to help us along the way. You need to find partners who help you be who
you might become. They raise your capability. They enable you to reach out
further than you might. Partnership can add to your creative power. Look at all
the great creative double acts, Gilbert and Sullivan, Gilbert and George and so
on. The creative environment is one in which you are connected with those who
can foster your creativity, and who give you the tools, time and space you
need. Learning partners are part of your creative capital.
Once things that were in demand needed a lot of stuff and a little
knowledge. What is valuable now takes a little stuff and a lot of knowledge. To
succeed we need access to the knowledge, intelligence and creativity of others.
We need knowledge partners, we need ‘info-structure’, we need to maximise our
collaborative conversations. One approach to developing collaborative
conversations is the ‘community of enquiry’ which facilitates the raising of
questions and serious, sustained discussion of issues in hand, where
individuals build on each others’ ideas, and difference of opinion is valued
(Fisher 1998).
Research shows that organisations create conditions which can
either foster or inhibit creativity (Amabile 1996). Creativity cannot be left
to chance otherwise it withers on the vine, or remains the private concern of
individuals. It is easy in any organisation for creative individuals to become
isolated. Indeed many highly creative people tend to be self focused, driven by
internal goals and this can be at odds with team-orientated activity needed in
organisational settings. Although innovation stems from individual talent and
creativity it is the organisational context that enhances and channels creative
potential into creative production. The characteristics of creative
organisations mirror those of creative individuals who in turn model the
micro-creative processes of the brain and mirror the macro-processes of
evolution.
These creative processes can be summarised as those in which
individuals and organisations are:
Motivated
Individuals are enthused, engaged and energized about what they do
with a strong sense of:
Inspired
Working in an environment supportive of creativity which:
Given time
Time given for creative thinking and activity, including:
Encouraged to collaborate
Encouraged to share creativity ideas with others, including:
An organisation, whether it be a company or school is basically a
communication system. To maximise creative potential learning organisations
need to develop policies that promote communication, collaboration and
creativity. They need to think big but work small. They need to be informed by
a motivating vision, and inspired by the models of creativity around them. They
need to foster experiment and provide the security to take risks. They
stimulate the generation of ideas, value diversity and seek what is unique and
original. They allow time for projects to develop, seeking depth of
understanding and breadth of application to real world domains. They work
through collaborative projects that derive from a core curriculum or agenda,
but whose outcomes are not predefined. They are as much concerned with problem
identifying as problem solving. They focus on drawing on a range of
perspectives, contexts and inter-disciplinary links in seeking innovative and
tangible outcomes.
In all organisations, as in all individuals, there are obstacles
to creativity. In schools the main obstacle to creativity is a too heavily a
prescribed curriculum. Ideally schools need to have something like a 50% core
curriculum for the generation of basic skills and subject knowledge, and 50%
creative curriculum which allow teachers the freedom to create varied, diverse
and creative learning opportunities for students. Some of the characteristics
of a creative curriculum would include:
Another obstacle to creativity is feeling over-stressed. People
need the stimulus of challenge, but ‘there is a wealth of evidence to suggest
that when people feel threatened, pressurised, judged or stressed, they tend to
revert to ways of thinking that are more clear-cut, more tried and tested and
more conventional; in a word less creative’ (Claxton 1999). Creativity is
inspired by example. Creative children need creative teachers. Creative
teachers flourish in environments which value individual and collaborative
creativity, where there is freedom to express their creativity and so provide
creative inspiration for their students.
The style in which creative teamwork is undertaken is critical to
its success. Freethinking, freedom from censure and creative tension are some
of the common characteristics. The role of the team leader is crucial in
providing inspiration, access to time and resources and a safe environment in
which experiment and contention can take place. Creative leadership is about
enabling others to engage in creative discussion and make creative decisions.
Teams have most creative potential when they reflect intellectual diversity.
The best creative groups engage in collaborative conversations in which all can
have their say, and in which all is open to question. Left to their own devices
organisations tend to split into divisions or groups who do not share
information or insights. It is essential for innovation that communities of
enquiry, workshops or think tanks be created that bring together diverse
elements to focus on specific challenges, questions or goals. Creativity needs
individual and collaborative thinking time, and space for experimentation and
play. Creativity happens when you move out of the comfort zone, when you are
challenged and in contention with yourself or with others. As Nietszche said
‘One must have chaos within one, to give birth to a dancing star.’ We need the
stimulus of fresh input, creative teams need new recruits, new challenges.
There must be inter-connectivity within and beyond the group, like those
creative schools which make both local and global links.
This paper has sought to show why creativity is central to
education and to social and economic success, and that it is possible to
enhance creativity in any individual or group. Educational organisations can
produce more creative learners if they focus on developing not only core skills
and knowledge but also the skills and attitudes that underpin lifelong learning
through a focus on creative projects. Creative organisations treat creativity
as a collective force; encourage experimentation and communities of
collaborative enquiry. Creative minds are developed by building communities of
learning. Enhancing the creative capacity of individuals and communities
enables possible worlds to become better worlds. A more creative future is
within our grasp, we can live more creative lives and together we can create
those possible worlds that match our dreams.
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This paper presented at
Teaching Qualities Initiative Conference, Hong Kong Baptist University, 2002
© Robert Fisher