Can creativity be learned?
At age 89, the Nobel Prize–winning author Doris Lessing had this to say about creativity: “Don’t imagine you’ll have it forever. Use it while you’ve got it because it’ll go; it’s sliding away like water down a plug hole.” Although this advice seems reasonable enough, it neglects a pressing question: How do you get ‘it’ in the first place?
In this week’s newsletter, I bring you Atlantic stories on the science of creativity—and how to find inspiration.
“Can creativity be learned? ” by Cody C. Delistraty. Prevailing theories on creativity focus on methodology, or amount of practice. But new studies suggest artistic talent may be more hardwired than we thought.
“A new theory linking sleep and creativity ,” by Ed Yong. The two main phases of sleep might work together to boost creative problem-solving.
“The perks of being a weirdo ,” by Olga Khazan. Not fitting in can lead to creative thinking.
“Mapping creativity in the brain ,” by Kylah Goodfellow Klinge. New research sheds some light on the neuroscience of improvising.
“Secrets of the creative brain ,” by Nancy C. Andreasen. A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ, and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness.
Thanks for reading!
Last Word
“Very much an important lesson young people, in particular, need to learn.” — Ilene Hurwitz Schwartz, responding on LinkedIn to “The fine art of failure”
Repurposed Sr. Engineer at Comcast
1 年You cannot teach creativity. You can teach the craft. All art firms requires a high level of understanding the craft. Learning the craft is a lifetime pursuit. Creativity is an emerging product of the craft.
Director, Executive Education @ Harvard Business School
1 年Speculating about the upper limit of creativity is interesting, but also beside the point for most of us.?In any area, we spend most of our time operating well below our upper limits – what Dynamic Skill Theory might call the difference between or optimal and functional levels of performance.?We could spend a long time trying to turn ourselves into the next Albert Einstein, Toni Morrison, Miles Davis, or Frida Kahlo, and never get close even on our best day. Or… we could focus on using more of the creative capacity we already have and using it more consistently.?That means things like recognizing the creative opportunities in our work, engaging in practices that activate our creativity, building our craft so we can bring those ideas to life, experimenting & iterating, collaborating with others on creative work, and so on. Those are all things that can absolutely be learned and practiced.
Fine Artist / Educator / Designer
1 年My Master thesis tackled the question of whether creativity could be taught. As a college professor, I interviewed creative individuals and worked with a psychologist, proving that certain traits can be strengthened, and therefore creativity enhanced.
Photographer
1 年It's a curse, who wakes up in the middle of the night because they thought of another way of doing something-an artist. It's an illness of sorts, borderline-for sure not a normal path, but for creatives the only path.
Principal at See Context I Co-founder at The Delta Project I Working to design systems change
1 年It can definitely be unlearned. Creativity is part of human nature, but I think our bottom-line, zero-sum systems do all they can to squash it and try to standardize it.