What makes a person creative?
You’ve covered a lot of different ideas in the last 3 weeks. Now it’s time to reflect, reaffirm and dig a little deeper.
In 1938, Dr. Donald MacKinnon, at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR), set out to research the subject of creativity. Up until that point studying creativity seemed illusive and immune to investigation. Yet, MacKinnon and his team were able to divide creativity into 4 categories:
The Creative Person - Being recognised by experts as having contributed something of original value to the culture.
The Creative Product - Something that is original and also valuable.
The Creative Process - The creative act as a sequence of various stages.
The Creative Situation - These are factors that support creative work - the absence of serious threat, the readiness to take risks, the awareness of one’s feelings, openness to ideas of others, etc.
Creativity, whether it’s a product, process or in a situation, creates something new. But, if we were to ask not just what is creativity, but how can we be more creative, we need to look beyond MacKinnon.
In 1991, John Cleese gave a talk arguing that creativity was not a talent, but an operating process. He outlined 5 factors that you can arrange to make your life more creative.
Space (“you can’t become playful, and therefore creative, if you’re under your usual pressures.”)
Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.”)
Time(“Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original,” and learning to tolerate the discomfort of pondering time and indecision.)
Confidence (“nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making mistakes.”)
Humour (“The main evolutionary significance of humour is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.”)
Creativity is a state that one practices rather than an innate ability. What would it mean to harness your analytical and creative ability to their utmost? What could you contribute?
In the 50’s, researchers identified architects for their multi-dimensional creative abilities. Just like you, and other current day, creative professionals, they saw these people working at a crossroads of creative disciplines, a combination of analytic and artistic creativity. As professionals, architects had to be savvy as engineers and businessmen; as aesthetes, they also acted as designers and artists.
Frank Gehry said that in architecture there may only be room for 10-15% of creativity, and yet there is so much he is able to express in that space:
A bonus video, if you liked the last one - Architect, Santiago Calatrava
- Looking back at the comments you gave to group members, would you be satisfied with their depth and contribution had you been receiving them?
- What boundaries did you set for yourself that may have prohibited you from taking more risks or learning more?
- Considering the 4 dimensions of creativity where do you think you have room to improve?
For this week we’re going to work together to craft the goal of your final project and what you might learn along the way. The mentors and you will work through each student’s stated project, squeezing out as much good learning juice as we can.
You can choose from the following topics:
Identify an area of weakness or interest that we haven’t covered and build a project around that. This might involve multiple ideas.
Use what you’ve learned so far in an unconventional way. Maybe you want to make an autonomous crawling thingamajig. Or create an abstract motion design piece.
You’ve created 3 projects and learned a lot along the way. Revisit one of these setups and push it even further. Build on what you’ve already done instead of having to start from scratch.
Answer the question, “What happens next?”. We know that nothing is every complete, but what would you do after you’d finished the bullet aspect of the destruction sim? Maybe that’s getting it into your game or adding some smoke and particle sims.
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