What is creativity?
Sandeep Pankade
Associate Professor| Director- Gramaudyogik Shikshan Mandal | Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad)|Corporate Trainer| Design Skill Coach| Laughter Yoga Trainer
What does the word ‘creativity’ suggest to you?
You may think of creativity as something exceptional: being a generous, making something out of nothing, producing a work of art, or thinking of totally new ideas.
Creativity is often seen as rare: some magical power that only a few people possess. When I say that I train creative thinking to students, one of the most frequent responses from students is “I’m not a creative, that would be no good for me, that is not my hobby.”
The fact is that we all are naturally creative. We all have a vast reservoir of potential in our minds. When we are exposed to creative thinking, it alerts and helps us to recognizes about this extra ordinary hidden potential we have with in us. Creativity is indeed magical: but it is a magic we can be used by all of us in many situations of our life to solve problems or to help other in their problem solving.
Creativity is a journey. Creativity is our ability to tap into our inner pool of resources i.e. knowledge stored with in, the insights, information, inspiration, and combination of this all. Creativity requires passion and commitment and it generates the awareness of what was previously hidden and point to new way of life.
Fig. 1.1 The creative journey.
long ago, the great mythographer, Joseph Campbell defined creativity as “Creativity consists in going out to find the thing that society has not fount yet”. The creativity is a journey as described in fig 1.1. It includes exploration, discovery, and making something useful out of it and the cycle continues.
The perspective of Joseph Campbell is described (Fig. 1.2) in the way as follows:
Fig. 1.2 The perspective about creativity.
Going out: Creativity involves beholding beyond the boundaries of our usual way of thinking and understanding. It requires exploration and deep study. We must project our self into areas we do not know in much details.
To Find: Creativity is a process of discovery of uncovering. It involves much of looking rather than just thinking. The process of discovery is much interesting and involves thrilling.
The thing: Creativity is what we find is already there. We simply had not noticed it before or recognized its potential. Creativity certainly not makes something from unknown. It is already there.
That society has not found yet: Creativity is always adding value to our lives or our work. It may in the form of new product, an artwork, a new service, a new theory, new design, a hypothesis, a new procedure, a relationship with another person or a new way of lifestyle. Creativity gives something of benefit. Being creative, means going out, exploring, finding something new and bringing it back to be used. Remarkably interesting!!!!
Creativity is two stage journey- Going out and returning. The first stage includes the metal excursion from a situation to explore the potential and second stage is return with new idea and develop something useful to society.
Sandeep Pankade