Note

Robert Fisher

Abstract

This paper looks at creativity in the context of education and economic and social value, and seeks answers to the following questions: What is creativity? Why is creativity important? How do creative minds work? How do we foster individual creativity? How do we build communities of creativity? It argues that in an age of uncertainty and flux what individuals and organisations need, if they are to flourish, are creative minds. The paper seeks to identify what creativity is, why it is essential for human success and ways to enhance individual creativity and build communities of creative learning.

Introduction

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the whole world. Albert Einstein

Although interest in creativity goes back to the ancient world (eg Plato’s Ion) what is now thought of as the ‘creativity movement’ began in America after the Second World War. There were two impulses for this. First was the successful launching in 1957 by Russian engineers of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. How had Soviet Russia been first to succeed in the space race? Why were so few home grown American scientists at the forefront of space research? In the US national survival seemed at stake and an explanation was urgently sought. A plausible explanation was seized upon - the problem was lack of creativity. Soviet engineers had been more creative in their search for solutions. Their creativity provided lift-off. The concept of creativity led to an explanation, lack of creativity, and to a solution, the need to train the scientists and engineers of the future to be more creative. There was a national call for more creativity in schools. A wave of creativity research followed (Smith1959, Vernon 1970), an interest that is now worldwide.

A second impulse for creativity then, as now, was a reaction against prevailing values that were seen as excessively bureaucratic and manipulative....