Global Creativity Agenda

[Robert Alan Black]

OK, Creativity Champions - what do we need to do to make everyone on this planet as creative as she can be - so a person can create, invent and contribute to their fullest potential? If you give examples, please supply a URL.

[ChaRene]

Interesting question! I believe children are born into this world with the most creative minds imaginable! We, as adults, tend to stunt their creativity as they age. I can remember teaching my children to paint and draw before they could write their own names. Once they both started school things became less creative in their world and focused on learning ABC's and the like. As a graphic designer and artist, I was perplexed! How could that happen? I can remember teaching them both that it was ok to paint a tree red and the sky purple. I encouraged their creativity and still do. I see that as they are becoming more confident and mature their creativity is returning!!! It is our job to inspire creativity in our homes, in everything we do, and hopefully our children will find their way and CREATE!

[Robert "Alan" Black]

First, as Paul Torrance, JP Guilford, Moe Stein, Alex Osborn, Sid Parnes and hundreds to thousands of CPSI leaders and participants over the past 54 years and ACA members for 20+ years have accepted.....all human beings are born with capacities to be creative and can continually use and expand them.

What I have discovered is that if we S.P.R.E.A.D. creative thinking throughout our lives, our families, our workplaces, our communities human beings around the globe will reawaken and use their creative thinking traits and skills while further develop them.

Support
Promote
Recognize/Reward
Encourage/Educate
Apply
Develop

creative thinking in everyone.

Plus many other ways.

Having taken and having had the opportunity to travel around the globe virtually and physically I have discovered ongoing examples that all people are creative yet ALL CULTURES tend to squelch it with their various rules, laws, version of conformity for the sake of safety, consistency, status quo, etc.

[Robert Alan Black]

I love this! Let's SPREAD the love, the joy, the power, the discovery. Let's support the dreamers, question-askers and creatives in our midst. But can this be done through affirmative PUBLIC POLICY or is it a strictly PERSONAL imperative?

[Robert Alan Black]

Ah, but can this be done systematically - via PUBLIC POLICY or other social imperative? Or is just up to each person to live and lead in the manner you're suggesting?

[Robert "Alan" Black]

Tom

The more it become internal, inherent and less it becomes PUBLIC POLICY the better.

Imagine this scene:

Teacher beginning new Fall semester.

Mandate from Washington, DC

Thou shall infuse creativity into all your students every day.

Imagine the results, the outcome, the ways people would screw that up.

"NO CHILD NOT CREATIVE" would become the slogan, the mantra.

rather than

EVERYONE OF US IS BORN CREATIVE LET'S REJOICE IN THAT!

Alan

Tom Tresser said:

I love this! Let's SPREAD the love, the joy, the power, the discovery. Let's support the dreamers, question-askers and creatives in our midst. But can this be done through affirmative PUBLIC POLICY or is it a strictly PERSONAL imperative?

[Alejandra Benitez]

Hi Tom
At the individual level, I found very effective as first step, to open the possibility and the desire to be a different and more fulfilling version of oneself, than the present one. I agree with you the there is a lot of unused potential in everyone. And the reason I think it works this approach, is because the person is led to consider or recover lost or hidden dreams and also to imagine alternatives in possible worlds. By doing this it is possible to recognize the gap and this opens the path to creativity.
If this process is led in organization, they have to be prepared to host the expansion of new talents and proposals.
A different way could be launching huge projects with room for everyone, with a demand for stretchting and sharing of knowledge, talent and ideas.
One seed was planted at CID www.creativityday.org

[Wayne Morris]

Nice article in the latest Scientific American MIND. Robert Epstien, one of the 3 people interviewed suggests 4 creative 'competencies' that all can learn and that can be taught?? encouraged?? enabled??
1. Capturing - preserving ideas as they occur
2. Challenging - giving ourselves tough problems to solve
3. Broadening - the more diverse your experience the more interesting the interconnections
4. Surrounding - the more interesting and diverse the things and people around you, the more interesting your ideas become
I like them.

[Kam Yew (Dr.YKK)]

I suggest that each one of us create at least one 2-3 video on one aspect of creativity on YouTube and other video sites, perhaps collectively under the Creativity Champion label. Anyone can broadcast the video for us? I don't know how yet but one of you out there will know. The video...must be ...well...creative in its presentation to attract viewers interest.
Dr.YKK [e-mail]

[Robert Alan Black]

A great idea. If people start creating videos add them to the YouTube Creativity Champions group at http://www.youtube.com/group/creativitychampions. I'll showcase them on this site. Thanks!

[Chris Barlow]

The dilemma, the oxymoron --of education and creativity

As I understand it, the word dilemma comes from the ancient Greek, meaning two horns. The analogy is that if you are standing in an open field facing an angry bull, if you dodge one horn, the other gets you.

Creativity can probably be defined as discovering opportunity outside assumed/learned limits.

Education is about teaching the truths, the limits, that society and science have discovered to be useful.

In teaching, it is hard to distinguish error from creativity. If a student gives an"out of the box" answer, does that mean they are creative, or that they don't see the box I am trying to teach them?

One escape is to teach skills of deliberate creativity, which can be taught, practiced, discussed, measured, evaluated. Part of that learning is to choose the right mental approach for the situation. So a student who wanders off in flexible fluent thinking while a group is trying to understand how to do square roots is in fact in need of correction.

One of my big concerns it that in a world where creative collaboration is essential for the most important problems, solo freedom creativity from ignoring the realities of others is not very likely be useful, because no one person ever understands the whole problem.

Please note in my experience teaching graduate business students, when it comes to free thinking, US students far outstrip students of countries like China and India where drill and memorization give them such high scores on tests. Those countries are desperately trying to figure out how to get their students to be more like Americans, while the teachers of American students wish they were a little better at staying focused...

On the other hand, I can argue from my experience that training in creativity at an early age can be very detrimental to absorbing the knowledge available in the educational system. Since I have no problem quickly getting highly educated "uncreative" engineers and managers to perform and collaborate in very creative ways, maybe we should eliminate all creativity training in the lower grades... ;-)