“Electricity is not only present in a magnificent thunderstorm and dazzling lightning, but also in a lamp; so also, creativity exists not only where it creates great historical works, but also everywhere human imagination combines, changes, and creates anything new”  Vygotsky, 1930

The way we live

My thoughts on creativity align with Vygotsky’s (cited in Glăveanu, 2011). Sometimes creativity is big and dazzling.  Sometimes it is simple and small. Both have value. Both can positively affect how we live and work. Unfortunately, many of us have had our creativity inhibited, and we’ve not yet experienced the immense potential benefits. My creativity manifesto underlies my intention to identify, acknowledge and overcome inhibiting factors and promote our creative potential.

From little creativity, big creativity grows

Like many others, I was a compulsively creative child. They were simple and small acts of creativity: making boats from dad’s timber off-cuts or building kingdoms by our creek. Such childhood creativity is sometimes called ‘small c creativity’: acts of creativity that change us, but do not impact society (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007). Acts of creativity so small that Sawyer (2003) dismissed them as not constituting creativity at all. I wholeheartedly disagree with such dismissal. It risks creating “a vicious cycle where not legitimising such creativity leads to not encouraging or even discovering it” (Glăveanu, 2011). I now appreciate small acts of creativity, even independently of their importance as the foundation of later, larger acts. After a decade working in a university fine arts faculty, engaged in discussions of ‘big and dazzling’ creativity, this has been a revelatory shift for me. I’m now eager to nurture the simple and small, as well as the big and dazzling.

We can re-awaken our innate creativity

Even in adulthood, we should engage in simple and small creative acts. Acts that embrace a broader concept of creativity, not limited to artistic ventures. I ascribe to the broad view of creativity as anything deemed to have value because it is novel or original and useful or adaptive (Batey, 2012): value as global as impacting humanity’s capacity to survive, or as personal as pleasure. Again, I agree with Vygotsky that creativity is “everywhere human imagination combines, changes, and creates anything new”(Glăveanu, 2011, p.122).

Unfortunately, I’ve heard too many accounts of creativity, in both act and thought, being discouraged and going undiscovered. It is personally comforting, but disconcerting, to have discussions about the damaging impact education and socialisation have had on many of us. Research by Zhou and George (2003) found that we could re-awaken our creativity using five complementary routes: identification, information gathering, idea generation, idea evaluation and idea implementation. Inherent in their work is the belief that we are all creative and, with supportive processes like theirs, we can all connect with that creativity.

Having the courage to be imperfect can enhance our creativity, and through creativity, we can develop the courage to be imperfect

Despite my creative childhood, as I got older, I became self-conscious and self-critical. Like others, I started to believe that creativity was for talented others. Works of revered philosophers: Socrates and his divine inspiration, Kant and the artistic genius, Schopenhauer’s great artists and the sublime, and Nietzsche’s Dionysian spirit (Paul, 2014), all imply a type of creativity that is beyond my reach. Professor Teresa Amabile, a Harvard creativity specialist, described her own ‘demoralising’ childhood experience of repeatedly being asked to mimic works by great masters, like Da Vinci. Confronted by the gulf between her work and theirs, she soon decided she wasn’t creative: she was 7 years old! (Goleman, Kaufman & Ray, 1992).

I believe the lofty legacy of great philosophers and great artists is a huge hurdle that we must overcome to inspire creativity in others: one that I’ve just begun to overcome myself. Alfred Adler states that: discouragement, fierce competition, unrealistically high standards and over-ambition lead to feelings of inferiority and self-criticism (cited in John, 2011). These factors too often limit creativity. We can help develop the courage to create by helping individuals embrace creative imperfection.

Creativity contributes to our wellbeing

As a result of negative thoughts and experiences that undermine creativity, many of us don’t encounter the benefits. There are oh-so many: from increased confidence to improved skill development, from greater innovation and problem-solving to increased engagement with the arts (Matarasso, 1997). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2008) describes ‘flow’ as a state of optimal experience where external distractions and self-criticism recede from consciousness and we become fully immersed. Flow experiences result in feelings of ecstasy and serenity, inner clarity, a sense of accomplishment and intrinsic motivation (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). Creativity is a vital source of Flow. By increasing the frequency and intensity of flow experiences through creativity, we can improve our individual wellbeing.

Our creativity is a valuable expression of our selves

Reflecting on the wellbeing potential of ‘flow’ and my emerging value of ‘small c’ creativity, I developed a personal project to focus on creative processes rather than creative products. Embracing my limited skills and love of re-use, I bought a stack of old National Geographic Magazines and began making small, simple, imperfect collages. I have made fifty of them! They have unexpectedly become a visual diary: a wonderful way of getting to know my self. A wonderful way of exploring my mid-life crisis! One of Rollo May’s oft-quoted ‘ponderings’ on creativity in ‘The Courage to Create’ (May, 1994) particularly resonates in relation to this project: “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself” (May, 1994 p.12). Rollo May maintains that an assertion of our self is essential if our self is to have any reality. Both ‘big C’ creativity and ‘small c’ creativity offer a powerful opportunity to express and know our selves.

The way we work

My above-mentioned mid-life crisis was exacerbated by a career crisis. Despite having held leadership roles since adolescence, I completely lost confidence in my ability to lead. The role that triggered my crisis was a creative role in a creative institution where I found it increasingly difficult to be creative. So I resigned. As a consequence, I have been attuned to those factors that affect our ability to work creatively. I have dedicated a section of my manifesto to their improvement. I hope to dedicate a section of my life to it too.

Inspiration can be found everywhere: if we’re open to it

There is a correlation between creativity, divergent thinking and openness to experience (McCrae, 1987). The more open we are, the more we experience and the more creative we can be. I’ve always been open to experience: I tend to find inspiration everywhere I turn. Perhaps this abundance of inspiration led to my appointment as the Inaugural Artistic Director of Art Month Sydney (a contemporary art festival). This was the most creative team I’ve been a part of: the creative outcomes were beyond our own expectations. Through recent contemplation, I attribute this to a culture that was immensely open to experience. The Art Month team would certainly rank highly across all six dimensions of openness: active imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety, and intellectual curiosity (Costa & McCrae, 1992). By supporting and encouraging these dimensions in all work places, we can potentially improve all creative outcomes.

What inhibits one person’s creativity may enliven another’s

I’m fascinated by ‘big C’ creatives: how they live, how they think and how they work. This was actually a central theme of our Art Month 2102 program. I’ve learnt that, not is only is it valuable for individuals to understand the factors that inhibit and enliven them, it is vital for their workplaces to be flexible enough to allow for such variations. With hindsight, I now appreciate that such inflexibility was one of the key problems in my crisis-inducing workplace. There are great examples of these contrasting factors in Conversations with Creative Women by Tess McCabe (2013): some interviewees report needing chaos while others need order, some want unlimited freedom while others appreciate constraints, some like collaboration and others prefer isolation. Acknowledging and accounting for these individual variations can help creativity flourish.

There are many ways of being creative

Not only are there variations in our creative processes, there are also variations in how we assess a creative product. Multiple Intelligence theory by Howard Gardner (2000) has changed the way I understand myself, my child and even those I work with. Through embracing Gardner’s intelligences, I’ve developed a broader appreciation of others’ creative processes and creative outcomes. Creativity is potentially present in all of the intelligences: Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical intelligence, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalist. Appreciating these various measures is enormously valuable and empowering.

We can (and should) improve the conditions for creativity

There is an ever-increasing amount of literature about creativity in workplaces: much of it dedicated to uncovering the contributing conditions. As noted in my prior points, I don’t believe there is a specific set of conditions that will equally benefit every workplace and every person in it. I do believe, though, that we can encourage workplaces to think about the unique combination of factors that do (or perhaps don’t) work for them. Teresa Amabile offers a useful starting point to build on: improve motivation to innovate, ensure sufficient resources (finances, time and personnel), enable challenging work and offer supervisory encouragement. Further improving the conditions for creativity will benefit performance and wellbeing in any workplace.

Reflecting on my own personal and professional creative journey and further exploring literature from philosophy, neuroscience, management and psychology has been transformative. Writing this manifesto has consolidated my thoughts and reawakened my passion for being more creative in the way we live and the way we work. My creativity manifesto is a pragmatic means of serving this passion.

[This was developed for ‘Critical and Creative Thinking’, part of the University of Melbourne, Executive Master of Arts]

References
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