Defining Creativity

What is creativity? Is it really that hard to explain? No. There are many many definitions of creativity but they all basically mean new generation of ideas or ways of doing things. It's not defining creativity that is hard, it's being creative that is hard. This is what our lecturers are trying to teach us in our creative studies class - defining creativity.



This is a very interesting speech by Sir Ken Robinson about creativity which was shown during the lecture. Sir Ken Robinson talks about how education is killing creativity, how people are educated out of their creative capacities. He made a lot of interesting quotes in this speech. The one that really grabbed on to my mind is this :

"Kids will take a chance. They are not frightened of being wrong. Now I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is that if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

I really think what he said above is rather interesting. I personally think too that everyone is afraid of making mistakes. We are being taught to be afraid of making mistakes ever since childhood. Mistakes are the worst thing we can make. That is why we're afraid of making, creating or doing something new or different. Why should we be afraid of being different or original? As long as we don't cross the line of insane or crazy, we're doing fine. But we are all educated to be afraid of mistakes.

Right now I really am thinking very hardly. I always ask myself this question when I'm doing my works, "What if other people thinks my work is weird?" Asking myself that question always gets me stuck for a time in my works. I SHOULD be asking myself this question instead, "How do I explain that my work is creative?" I still don't have a good answer to that but at least I'm asking myself the correct question now.


If you are unpredictable, you are creative.