What is creativity?
Before we go too much further into Relate, I just want to make clear what I mean when I use the word ‘creativity’.
When writing about creativity, I mean the act of combining the imagination, intellect, intuition, and emotional intelligence to create or develop something. This act of creation might be the making of something completely new or novel, or it could mean the interpretation or crafting of something in a way that takes imagination. So, for example, it could be the writing of a new play or the interpretation of a role and performance within that play.
Creativity has become something of a buzzword, meaning many things to many people. Like many buzzwords, it has practically been bled of meaning. I have often heard the word creativity used as a synonym for ideation. But creativity is not just this, as important as the getting-of-ideas is to creative work. Creativity can be about imagining new concepts or exploring new conceptual territory or synthesising pre-existing ideas, knowledge, or techniques. Meta-cognition – reflection and the act of thinking about thinking, imagining, and intuiting – is just as important to the creative process as ideation. So too are skills that allow you to design plans for creative projects or understand how to meld your ideas and activity with other people as a creative collaborator.
The creative things I am going to (share in following excerpts) are the ones that belong to your personality or your inner world. These could be cognitions, like imagination, or qualities, like exercising patience, or skills, like solving problems. They could be things that are obviously creative, like ideating, or things that can be usefully applied to creative work, like project scoping. What I am not going to focus on are technical creative skills, like drawing or stage-lighting or fashion design.
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