What is Creativity? How can we develop & nurture it? Why should we?
Creativity is not just about being able to doodle or create a pretty picture. Creativity is about being interested to discover, being open to new ideas; it is showing imagination and purpose. Being creative improves a child’s self-esteem, motivation and achievement. It is about being challenging and questioning, making connections, seeking ways of putting things together, exploring ideas and reflecting critically on ideas, actions and outcomes.
A 2002 report by Durham University defined creativity as being “The capacity to imagine, conceive, express, or make something that was not there before. Creative thinking is a process through which knowledge, intuition, and skills are applied to imagine, express or make something novel or individual in its contexts. Creative thinking is present in all areas of life. It may appear spontaneous, but it can be underpinned by perseverance, experimentation, critical thinking and collaboration.”
When teaching art, music, drama, dance or cultural history, engaging children in a novel and engaging way will help children nurture their individual creativity. A teacher being creative won’t necessarily help a child be creative! The crucial thing is that the child is encouraged to participate in a way that makes them explore their own thinking and create something novel.
The impact of robots and AI
In 2020 the World Economic Forum estimated that by 2025 over 85 million jobs would have gone, being replaced by robots. AI is now compounding that. The child who embarked on education five years ago might have been being prepared for a job that almost certainly won’t exist by the time that child finishes school. Already children need to be taught how and when to use AI to write or solve a problem, and understand the limitations of AI at this point in time. By the time todays primary children finish school, what jobs will be open to them?
The University of Oxford (2015 report by Bakshi) suggests jobs involving emotion and empathy are more future-proof such as doctor, scientist, IT/media specialist, journalist, lawyer, designer, novelist, teacher. As well as the ones where dexterity and skill cannot easily be replaced – plumber, decorator, carpenter, gardener etc.
Once one starts to question the relevance of much of our current education system, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that our exam based conveyor belt is a ride to disappointment. It is highly tailored to children from literate backgrounds, designed to help them pass exams and demonstrate their fitness for the next stage of exams so they will be able to go on and do another set – and then perhaps find, as a graduate, that they don’t have employable skills. So what then? En route to those who do graduate, over half of children will have stepped off the conveyor belt, never having found it relevant to what they need for life.
So the crucial thing about schooling needs to be the style and way in which it facilitates the change from toddler to young adult, the process not the conveyor belt. It is that process that encourages communication, persuasion, co-operation, motivation and negotiation that prepares children to make non-routine decisions, to behave independently but collaboratively. It is that process that puts the well-being of the child in the community, and focuses on the development of the whole child, that is more important than the next set of exams. It follows that focusing on creativity, an expectation of originality, and independent thinking in the group, should serve the child well for a lifetime in a range of occupations.
What do artists suggest has stimulated their creativity? *
Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo, spoke about being a writer and growing up in a house full of music where everybody played an instrument or sang. From when she was a child, her family would act out her stories and this stimulated and developed her creativity.
The artist, Patrick Brill, has spoken about drawing with his mother as a child and the importance of her valuing his creativity. The Oxford Maths Professor, Marcus du Sautoy, has spoken about art and drama and music at school being key to his creativity. He played music, acted, played in the school orchestra and fell in love with maths when he started to play an instrument; in maths, acting and music he said “somebody has done some of the creation, but you move it on to add your own creativity to bring it alive”.
The sculptor, Amish Kapoor spoke about how his mother would start paintings but not finish them, so he finished them for her. All through his childhood he enjoyed making things and now says “one has to have the courage to sit in an empty studio and wait for something to happen, and work and play and experiment, and try some daft ideas out. For me anyway, one has to dare”.
What is common to all these, and other experiences is, as children, they grew up in environments where the arts were valued as part of everyday life; they had time to experiment with their ideas (playing?), and they collaborated with others.
What does the research show?*
A number of academics have written about the difficulties schools have in helping children find and develop their talents (Ken Robinson – The Element: How finding your passion changes everything (2009)) and what helped people who have made creative breakthroughs whether as scientists, engineers, or mathematicians (Howard Gardner: Creating Minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (2009)). Other academics have written about the ways in which the brain develops and how life experiences can influence the creative ability in all walks of life.
An article by CATS founder, Christopher Stockwell
*The original collation and analysis for this is accredited to Dr Karen Hosack-Janes, Senior Lecturer in Education at Oxford Brookes University