Creativity E-Book

Darren Henley

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 89

Beschreibung

Creativity is a powerful force in shaping and defining all of our futures.Creativity enables us to fulfil our human potential and to make positive changes to the world around us.Creativity drives innovation across the arts, technology, science and engineering.Creativity boosts our economy, empowers our communities, enhances our education system and enriches our everyday lives.Creativity is the catalyst that will enable the next generation to invent tomorrow.Enriching lives and places, Creativity builds a stronger society filled with happier, healthier people. For children born into a world of unprecedented technological, political and environmental change, those whose Creativity has been nurtured will be best equipped to flourish.This book argues the importance of Creativity for everyone. It is not the sole preserve of arts-based subjects, but at the heart of medical, scientific, engineering and entrepreneurial progress too. Identifying the education system as the best route to ensure cultural benefits are open to all, Darren Henley argues that Creativity should be at its heart. It is only by equipping children with the Creativity to make the best use of their talents, and providing them with expert teachers who can nurture those abilities, that the next generation will have the skills necessary to invent tomorrow.

Leseprobe

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

– MAYA ANGELOU

CONTENTS

A WORD ABOUT THIS BOOK

INTRODUCTION

1: CREATIVITY AND THE ECONOMY

2: CREATIVITY IN OUR COMMUNITIES

3: CREATIVITY IN OUR LIVES

4: CREATIVITY AND EDUCATION

NOTES

FURTHER READING

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A WORD ABOUTTHIS BOOK

Imagine a world without creativity.

Nothing new would happen; there would be no original ideas; no new inventions or advances in science and medicine; no new products or services; no new books, shows, music or art; no solutions to new problems.

We would be frozen in a hellish form of suspended animation where our only reference points were what had happened in the past and what was happening right now in the present. There would be no hope of any difference or change in the future.

It is shocking, then, that we so often take creativity for granted, consistently undervaluing the positive impact that it can have on our lives – both as individuals and as a society. This book is my attempt to explain why creativity matters to our economy, our communities and our everyday lives, and why it should be given much more emphasis in our education system.

It is not an official Arts Council England publication; these are my personal opinions, but it is inevitable that my views are constantly shaped by my experiences at the Arts Council. I see the power of creativity every day; it’s the catalytic ingredient that helps us to effect positive change in the world around us. We should do more to understand it, to talk about it, and to cherish the conditions that enable it to flourish. This is my case for creativity.

INTRODUCTION

Before dawn on a July morning in 2016, 3,200 people of all shapes and sizes assembled in the ancient port of Hull, stripped naked, painted themselves blue and paraded through the deserted city, sometimes lying down in the street like beached whales, sometimes posing in lines like frozen waves, and sometimes filling the city’s squares like an incoming flood. A man stood on a stepladder shouting at them and taking photographs. They were clearly having a good – if chilly – time; but there was a prevailing air of serious intent, and the whole thing had some kind of underlying plan.

What on earth were they doing? And what is the relationship between this weird, woad-coloured event and our hopes for a better and brighter future?

It was of course a work of art. One of those extravagances that serve no obvious purpose yet can be mesmerising to watch, leave a lasting mark on participants and set in train a series of far-reaching consequences.

This work of art was Sea of Hull, created by Spencer Tunick for the Ferens Art Gallery in the lead-up to Hull’s year as UK City of Culture in 2017. Using people like water, he marked the old hidden waterways of the port, recalling its past. The work had the liberating feeling of a tide released, and an urgent sense of a world that might yet come to pass should the sea ever reclaim Hull. But above all it was human; it had poignancy, defiance and hope.

Those who took part came from all walks of life and most had not had much to do with art of any kind before, never mind taken part in anything quite so extraordinary. Many have since talked about the sense of significance the project gave them. How powerful it felt to overcome their reservations, to share their vulnerability and their humanity and to be collectively part of something. To do something different; something absurd, beautiful, passionate and historic.

In a city that had spent decades not always getting the luckiest breaks, and where people were fed up of being told what to do and what to consume, those cold blue humans had begun to feel the revivifying power of creativity.

As I write, it’s still early days in Hull’s resurgence, but I can say with some certainty that Sea of Hull was the curtain-raiser to a hugely beneficial twelve months. To my mind, Hull’s year as UK City of Culture was an unmitigated, rip-roaring, awe-inspiring, life-enhancing success. It’s a city that I know and love, having lived there for three years as a student in the early 1990s.

Hull has changed for the better and it’s a real living, breathing case study of why creativity matters. Its year in the spotlight has managed to change perceptions about the city – locally, nationally and internationally. It has boosted the economy, attracting visitors, investment and jobs. It has broken down barriers between the city’s communities. And it has had a direct impact on individual citizens – with more than 95 per cent of Hull residents seeing or participating in one of the many events that took place during the year.1

Like Sea of Hull, creativity flowed into people’s lives and changed them.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY CREATIVITY?

Creativity isn’t an easy concept to define. Some might describe it as the realisation of something entirely unique; some would say that it is an aspect of character, and that you either have it or you don’t; and others would give it a supporting role in other activities such as making a presentation in a business meeting, playing the piano well or being able to make a scale model of the Houses of Parliament out of matches.

We may well disagree about what creativity means as a process, but there is more consensus on what its results look like. For example, we think of ourselves as being a creative nation, because across the arts, technology, medicine, science, engineering and manufacturing sectors, we have produced innovative ideas that have challenged existing paradigms and moved us forward.

The force of creativity, coupled with industrial might, has long underpinned the wealth, influence and sense of worth not only of our nation, but also of communities and individuals. I’ve seen this for myself during a non-stop journey travelling the length and breadth of England over the past few years, witnessing the power of creativity in all its forms. In my first eighteen months as chief executive of Arts Council England, I encountered cultural activities and organisations in 157 different villages, towns and cities across England – and although I’ve now stopped counting the different places, I haven’t stopped travelling, observing and learning since.

I don’t for one minute think that creativity is the sole property of the artistic and cultural world. When I think of creative people, I think of individuals with creativity at the heart of the work that they do – and that applies to scientists, engineers and business people just as much as it does to artists. They use their imaginations; they innovate. They believe that creativity matters in their work. The anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that there’s just as much creativity going on in the science laboratory full of test tubes and Bunsen burners as there is on the stage of a concert hall packed with violins and trumpets:

“It’s not just artists who believe that creativity matters in their work.”

Science emerges from an especially creative problem-solving system that can lead to the augmentation of existing solutions.2

Professor Roger Kneebone is the co-director of the Centre for Performance Science based jointly at the Royal College of Music and Imperial College London. The centre’s research is aimed at tackling major challenges of performance across the arts, education, medicine, engineering, natural sciences, business and sport. A trauma surgeon by training, Roger’s research brings artists and scientists together to come up with new ideas and new ways of working. The expertise of the scientists and medics informs the creativity of the artists; and the expertise of the artists helps the scientists and medics to think and act more creatively.

Roger is a passionate advocate for artists and scientists working together in pursuit of new understanding, as well as being a strong believer in the value of creativity in the education of both scientists and artists. He maintains that there is a fundamental misunderstanding that people who do science don’t need art, and that creativity is wrongly drummed out of students at medical school and through their scientific careers. He argues instead that creative thinking should be embedded in scientific education, rather than seen as something separate. It is a thoughtful, innovative approach that he applies to his own work. As a former war zone surgeon, he believes that the calm of a stark white surgical suite does not represent the best learning environment for other surgeons training to do the same. Instead he uses immersive theatre techniques to recreate the kind of dramatic, high-stress conditions his students are likely to encounter in an area of conflict.

“Creative thinking should be embedded in scientific education, rather than seen as something separate.”

Like Roger, the most creative people – the people who really make change happen in society – are those who are interested in new ideas and new ways of working, no matter what their academic training. In short, they are keen to invent a new tomorrow, rather than simply repeating yesterday on an eternal loop.

CREATIVITY CAN BE NURTURED

Although I don’t believe that creativity is the sole preserve of the arts, it’s true that my thoughts on the subject have been largely informed by the world in which I work. I joined Arts Council England in 2015, and all that I have seen in this role has fired my curiosity about the value and potential of the cultural world that we support; what it teaches us about creativity and how that can help shape the lives of future generations.

In the public mind, the arts may epitomise creativity, but I think this can create a misleading impression of what creativity is and what we can do to encourage it. People tend to think that artists spend their days effecting a kind of magic, reaching into the void and pulling out a work of genius – whether it be on canvas or in clay, in a novel or a play, a musical score or a piece of choreography.

The truth is that the work of an artist is rarely so dramatic or revelatory. Most creative practice in the arts is built on the mastery of structures and processes; on understanding form, narrative and technique. As musicians will tell you, it’s not the notes that make music – it’s the intervals between them. For an author or playwright, it’s not just the words, it’s the order they come in.