Thursday, March 28, 2019

A year since I posted--bad bad blogger

Sorry--I have been consumed with weirdness, not the least of which is our, shall we say, unconventional president.

Anyhow, recently I got in a confab on Linked In with Allen Gannett, author of a new book called THE CREATIVE CURVE. I understand it's great, but since I lost sight in my right eye (stupid doctor tricks), I rely on audios and have not listened to it.

But Allan and a guest recently got involved in a back-and-forth about whether everyone is creative.

I used to teach a 6-part course on Creativity at Smithsonian Resident Associates back in the day. Then, I subscribed to the idea that was going around that 10% of people are "creative." I would then say most people enter the creative process as appreciators, although some seek training in how to be more creative (thus my course and Allen's book).

What do you think of this?

Allen and I got in a discussion of what creativity and "being" creative means...I say it means people who can't NOT do so-called creative things--they MUST write, they are driven to draw or paint, etc. They are wired to crave this.

I do think people can be taught to think about creativity in more detail and look at things "out of the box," to use the cliche du jour. Creativity can be expressed as doing old things a new way, never-done-before things any old way, combining ways of doing things between disciplines...and many other approaches. For instance, people can learn to draw the space between objects, and not the objects themselves--and if they do it accurately, the objects appear.

What is your take? You don't have to agree with me--I may not even agree with me any more,