The Process of Creativity
The following is taken from Duane and Sarah Preble’s ARTFORMS, 5th edition. Footnotes and endnotes are omitted for ease of reading.
Erich Fromm said, Creativity is an Attitude. We all have the potential to be creative, yet most of us were not encouraged to develop our creativity. We can do so by becoming willing to explore new relationships and insights.
The source of all art, science and technology --- in fact, all of human civilizations --- is creative imagination, or creative thinking. As scientist Albert Einstein declared, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
What do we mean by this ability we call creativity? Psychologist Erich Fromm wrote:
In talking about creativity, let us first consider its two possible meanings: Creativity in the sense of creating something new, something which can be seen or heard by others, such as a painting, a sculpture, a symphony, a poem, a novel, etc., or creativity as an attitude, which is the condition of any creation in the former sense but which can exist even though nothing new is created in the world of things…
What is creativity? The best general answer I can give is that creativity is the ability to see (or to be aware) and to respond.
Creativity is as fundamental to experiencing and appreciating a work of art as it is to making one. Insightful seeing is itself a creative act; it requires open receptivity --- putting aside habitual modes of thought.
Studies of creativity have described traits of people who have maintained or rediscovered the creative attitude. These include the abilities to:
wonder and be curious
be open to new experience
see the familiar from an unfamiliar point of view
take advantage of accidental events
make one thing out of another by shifting its function
generalize from particulars in order to see broad applications
synthesize, integrate and find order in disorder
be in touch with unconscious sources, yet be intensely conscious
know oneself, have the courage to be oneself in the face of opposition
be willing to take risks
be persistent: to work for long periods ---- perhaps years ---- in pursuit of a goal
The creative process of ten begins when on is inspired by an idea or faced with a problem. It can start with something as simple as “fooling around.” There are as many ways to create as there are creative people, but creative processes generally have certain sequential characteristics in common:
1. Preparation - Framing or formulating the question(s) may be the most important step; information is gathered and open-minded exploration takes place.
Shaughnessy, M. F., & Wakefield, J. F. (2003). Creativity: Assessment. In N. Piotrowski & T. Irons-Georges (Eds.), Magill's encyclopedia of social science:Psychology (pp. 459-463). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press.
Richard Florida, in The Rise of the Creative Class, describes creativity as a separate entity from intelligence, and I totally agree. He also describes it as something acquired through experience. I have always been a nerd, but that doesn’t make me a creative genius—and my tunnel vision hasn’t helped either. Florida mocked me with these words: “Creativity is favored by an intellect that has been enriched with diverse experiences and perspectives.”
...nced, the information our subconscious soaks up. Creativity is what combines our consciousness with our subconscious, which helps us with things such as problem solving, strategizing, and art.
Shaughnessy, M. F., & Wakefield, J. F. (2003). Creativity: Assessment. In N. Piotrowski & T. Irons-Georges (Eds.), Magill's encyclopedia of social science:Psychology (pp. 459-463). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press.
In Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk video, he had many major points that relate to the definition and importance of creativity. A major point how creativity is as important in education as literacy. According to Sir Ken Robinson, “we should treat it with the same status. He explains is that education is used to prepare use for the future, but the future is unpredictable.”.
In conclusion to some up this essay the term ‘creativity’ will always cause a debate in the educational system as. There will always be difficulty defining it as many use the term too loosely to have a definitive meaning. It requires risk taking, it is difficult to portray creativity when schools are so obsessed with right or wrong answers for ways of doing things. Society teaches us the risks are bad because the government and its policies interfere with our own choices and decisions.
Creativity is a complex process to be studied, however a lot of recent researchers in Neuroscience and Education have worked in this topic and have established interesting finding. Involving a great amount of the brain in networks, it is not totally clear the biologic process. However, it seems that the problem in the educative field is not the neurobiology but the neuromythology of creativity. In a first part, creativity will be defined following educative and neuroscientific point of views and limitations in experimentation. In a second part, the neurobiology of creativity will be presented and associated with its cognitive meaning.
At the turn of the century, and more recently, problem solving took first place along with creative thinking (Gruber, 2011). This essay will prove that the current education system tends to eventually pull children away from creativity. It will demonstrate how there is a greater amount of creativity in younger children as opposed to older children. This will be shown through the theories of Howard Gardner and Jean Piaget. In order to prove that education has moved away from a creative focus, this essay will examine the three phases of creativity, multiple intelligences and the U-shaped curve by Gardner, as well as Piaget’s constructivist theory and beliefs on retrogression, which is the idea of growing to show how we eventually pull away from visual art (Nolley, 2010).
What exactly is creativity? To be creative is to understand and connect the small details of our experiences, both good and bad (creative something). Creativity involves a person using his or her original ideas to create something. Artists such as poets, writers, painters, designers, and more use creativity on a regular basis. They use creativity to come up with new ideas and create original works of art. A poet would use his or her creative abilities to write and produce a poem just like a painter would use creativity to paint a painting.
Creativity, it’s a broad topic of just new things and ideas among people. The definition of creativity is the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. PBS describes creativity as, “The new ideas and new connections between ideas, and ways to solve problems in any field or realm of our lives. The concept of creativity is often hard to grasp because creativity isn 't a tangible thing its just and idea. Also, because it’s hard to differ between a truly original idea and an idea that is just shaped from others. With all this being said, it can be hard to figure out where creativity comes from.
Since we are born we have imagination and as we grow up this imagination may increase or decrease. Creativity strongly relies in our imagination. Depending on different circumstances people learn to express their creativity openly while other people close themselves and believe they do not have creativity. Creativity is a natural talent that every single human has. Creativity can be used to solve a complex problem in a different manner or just to find innovative ways to have fun. Creativity is thinking out of the box. Even though creativity cannot be taught from scratch there should be a class that is specific for creativity.
Creativity is a skill parents can help their children develop. Since creativity is a key to success in most of what we do, creativity is a core skill that should be practiced with children. Creativity is not limited to artistic and musical expression—it is also essential for science, math, and even social and emotional intelligence. Creative people are more flexible and better problem solvers, which makes them more able to adapt to technological advances and deal with change—as well as take advantage of new opportunities. All in all, creativity is the ability to form new ideas, often from old ideas. Therefore, the factors that affect creativity are not inherited.
In defining Creativity, Franken (1993) refers to the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; it is the tendency to generate ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. Creativity and
All throughout time people have used their imaginative minds to express some form of art, whether it be painting, drawing, sculpture, and dance, theatre, music or technology, this has happened all around the world. Furthermore, I think that the youth of the world have the biggest imagination because everything to them is new and they can’t help but imagine “what if” or “how”. Therefor that’s the power of imagination, and preferably for me I use it for art. Art to me is almost like an escape from everything negative in my life. Many say that art is beauty, and we say beauty ...
Creativity is a way of bringing new idea into existence or to come out with a product through an imaginative skills or ability. With this, there must be a preexisting idea that will serve as a platform to act. All innovation begins with creative ideas. Creativity is the foundation of innovation.