Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category
On Karl Marx, Chaos and Creativity
A more mundane lesson is that some creative people thrive on chaos. Every pop-psychology nostrum about creativity – the importance of balance, of cultivating undistracted focus, of getting plenty of exercise – is undermined by the many chaotic creatives whose lives looked more like Marx’s. It’s clear that disarray and anxiety were what energised his work; his very lack of balance and calm are what enabled his originality and volume of output. None of which means balance and calm aren’t nicer ways to live, of course. It’s just a reminder that, contrary to the message of virtually every currently popular book on how to “think like Leonardo”, “train your brain” for creativity, “do great work”, etcetera, the most creative work isn’t a matter of methodically implementing certain techniques (and thus, the implication goes, within the reach of us all). Nor is it necessarily compatible with a peaceable life. You want creativity tips from Marx? Be constantly anxious, angry, underslept and broke. Why not try implementing this approach at your Silicon Valley startup, or your edgy Soho marketing agency? The effects could be revolutionary!
On Intuition, Creativity and Learning
The comfortable truth is that the human brain is “plastic” or elastic if you prefer, and adults can adopt and practice the learning techniques of children in order to improve our creative and intuitive capabilities. If intuition and creativity are the best expediters for advancing and integrating our intelligence and behavior capabilities, while creating the best probabilities for innovative progress, then a real paradigm shift calls for sustaining our integrated learning processes throughout life – rather than dis-integrating the natural process of integration evident in early learning, only to discover subsequently, in adulthood, that we are faced with the imminently arduous task of creatively re-integrating our individual abilities when they should have already become intuitively integrated. The next step in cognitive evolution is to realize the common denominators between creativity, intuition, intelligence, and behavior as the interconnecting basis, or integrated foundation for whole brain development. When we tie together the basic building blocks of creativity with early development while realizing that creativity and early development are one in the same with intuitive development – especially, intuitive language development as the primordial tool for defining and instructing the true essence of human abilities – we can neither misdefine the significance of preschool as merely a quaint passage of life in the early stages of development, nor can we undervalue that every type of ability, every stage and experience of learning, and every person’s identity rely on the unlimited possibilities of creativity.
Enhancing Creative Incubation
New research shows that reducing brain activation can increase creativity. Have you ever had a sudden inspiration? The proverbial “Aha” experience? These “insight moments” tend to happen when you’re not actively working on a problem—they come to you when you least expect it. You might be exercising, gardening, or taking a shower. Ideas come at these surprising times because of incubation—when you take time off from work, it frees up your conscious mind and allows your subconscious mind to “incubate” on the problem. Psychologists have long known that incubation contributes to creativity. This is also why play is so closely related to creativity—because when you’re playing, your mind is open and wandering more freely.
Read also: Raise Your Left Hand for Greater Creativity!
Connectivity and Innovation through Jazz
Good jazz and high performance business depend on creativity, agility, empathy and flexibility. The similarities don’t end there. The business lessons of jazz focus on high performance teamwork, multitasking, cross-functional awareness, innovation and responsiveness to change. Jazz translates seamlessly across cultures and serves as a social model that can be leveraged to teach business the skills of collaboration. Experiencing the business impact of jazz will deepen your human capital’s understanding of the integration of diverse skills and roles. The Jazz Impact Experience will stimulate your company to create and imagine new possibilities, through a live, interactive experience. Jazz Impact is a fusion of insights and parallels drawn from the world of business illustrated through the experience of jazz. Through live music and interactive engagement, Jazz Impact delivers perspectives and techniques that will have an immediate effect on your people and your business.
Amplifying Creativity
The new book, Creative Intelligence, shows that creativity is a learned behavior that gets better with training — like sports. You can make creativity routine and a regular part of your life. That’s true for big companies as well as small startups, corporate managers as well as entrepreneurs. Creativity is scalable.
So here are four specific ways to lead a more creative life and boost your creative capacities. Creativity is not about blue rooms and brain waves but about social engagement and mining the existential.
Is there a Creative Class?
One of the many implications of this work is to cast light on some of the most influential work in this field, by the American writer Richard Florida, and in particular its claims for a new ‘creative class‘. More than anyone in recent years he has promoted what to me are important truths about how the world works: the growing importance of creative roles, sectors and jobs; the need to shift urban regeneration away from its fixation on physical improvements to a focus on people; and the links between cultures and milieu and economic effects.
Unfortunately the argument that there is a single creative class has crumbled under investigation.
Trusteeship, Wisdom, and the Creative Future of Education?
What role does, and should, creativity play in education? What role can and should creativity play in designing the school of the future? This article explores the ascendance of creativity in education in the late 20th and early 21st century, exploring tensions in policy developments which both ‘universalise’ creativity and yet appear also to ‘particularise’ it within a specific set of social, economic and cultural arrangements and values. Arguing that the marketisation of creativity in particular is ultimately disastrous at personal, local, national and international levels, the case is advanced for an umbilical connection between creativity and education futures, in ways that highlight the role of wisdom, and creative trusteeship.
Read also – Creativity, Wisdom, and Trusteeship – Exploring the Role of Education
An analysis of research and literature on Creativity in Education
Creativity in the classroom: schools of curious delight
The third edition of this well-known text continues the mission of its predecessors–to help teachers link research and theory regarding creativity to the everyday activities of classroom teaching. Part I (chapters 1-4) includes information on theories of creativity, characteristics of creative individuals, talent development, and motivation and creativity. Part II (chapters 5-8) includes strategies designed to explicitly teach creative thinking, to weave creative thinking into content area instruction, and to organize basic classroom activities (grouping, lesson planning, assessment, grading) in ways that support students’ creativity. Within each chapter reflection questions and sample lesson plans help the reader adapt ideas to their own teaching situations. In addition to general updating, there is new material on cross-cultural concepts of creativity, on teaching for creativity in an age of standards (including lessons tied directly to state standards), and on collaborative creativity.
Apprenticeship in Thinking: Cognitive Development in Social Context
This interdisciplinary work presents an integration of theory and research on how children develop their thinking as they participate in cultural activity with the guidance and challenge of their caregivers and other companions. Consider the relation of guided participation and creativity, and the roles of challenge and sensitivity of other peoples’ support of children’s effort. The author, Barbara Rogoff, a leading developmental psychologist, views development as an apprenticeship in which children engage in the use of intellectual tools in societally structured activities with parents, other adults, and children. The author has gathered evidence from various disciplines–cognitive, developmental, and cultural psychology; anthropology; infancy studies; and communication research–furnishing a coherent and broadly based account of cognitive development in its sociocultural context. This work examines the mutual roles of the individual and the sociocultural world, and the culturally based processes by which children appropriate and extend skill and understanding from their involvement in shared thinking with other people. The book is written in a lively and engaging style and is supplemented by photographs and original illustrations by the author.
