If you have looked around this site, you will already be aware that I am a visual artist with an interest in creativity, what it is and how it works. You may not be aware however, that this is not a settled question, and that is what makes creativity so fascinating, that it is so difficult to pin down, define or study, even though it is something we all experience in soma different ways.
I have tackled this issue and published a theory about it called the O(map), which you will be able to order from this site from June 16th 2022. (insert link to landing page). I will continue to post blogs about creativity once a week here, ways in which it affects my life and work, because how it shows up is remarkable in myriad ways, and when it shows up, is all the time, even if you don’t realise it.
I am a keen observer and inquisitor of my own experience, and the O(map) theory has given me a certain understanding and way in which to articulate what is often ineffable about creativity. It is also my intention to report on what is current in my life and work. For the sake of both immediacy and accuracy, I can address questions/observations/discoveries/ that can be made as I make them, so as to examine with authenticity in the moment what is going on, rather than speculating or rationalising occurrences once the experiences have passed.
This first blog is the first chapter of my book, and it is about the very big problem of definition. If you did not know there was such a problem, or that the problem of defining creativity was of no great consequence, well, the extent of it may come as a surprise to you. Either way, if you find creativity as fascinating as I do, I hope you will enjoy the questions posed by this first post and drop in now and again to this blog for an in-depth look at the vagaries of this marvellous, powerful and mysterious phenomenon.
The Problem of Definition
What is creativity?
Everyone knows what creativity is. Just like everyone knows what life is, what love is. These things are universally experienced and stand for their own meaning without any great need for further explanation. They are the definition of themselves. I came to realise, in my capacity as an art teacher and arts facilitator, that not everyone had the same understanding of what creativity is.
I was confounded when someone would say, “I am not at all creative’ or, “I haven’t got a creative bone in my body”. What understanding or definition is at play for someone to believe that they are not creative? My understanding has always been, that every human being is creative. It can’t be helped. It is our nature. It comes with the territory of being sentient, conscious.
Leslie Owen Wilson Ed.D, addressees the problem of definition on his website, The Second Principal. He states,
“Defining creativity simply is [equally] as frustrating as trying to corral liquid mercury. Succinct definitions for creativity appear very subjective for both the one doing the defining and the one reading the definition. Most of us know something is creative when we see, hear, or experience it, even if we cannot say why. It just is.”
Even if we accept that creativity can be universally understood and subjective at the same time, there must be some identifiable ground of commonality. If we all know it, but in different ways, then what is it we all know?
In 2010, IBM conducted their now famous and widely cited worldwide survey of 1,500 top CEOs from the public and private sector, across 60 nations. Creativity was voted the number one most important quality for leadership, as well as, the number one most desired ability human beings can have when planning for the future. It begs the question, what understanding of creativity is at play here?
Are we to assume that every individual, even at the top echelons of management worldwide, assumes a definition of creativity subjectively? If that is the case, how reliable can we consider the results of this survey to be, and what meaning can they infer?
As an artist, I felt no vagueness or confusion about my own subjective experience of creativity, but as an art facilitator and aspiring creativity educator for non-artists, I hoped to find a well-tested and agreed upon definition that would be academically or scientifically verifiable and acceptable to an analytical mindset. So, I looked it up. Where? Everywhere.
There wasn’t one single definition. There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands. Dictionary definitions differed from each other and from academics. Various experts and institutions of the creativity research community gave it a go and no two were alike. Even E.
Paul Torrence, the acknowledged father of creativity research admitted to being confounded by the problem of definition. He believes that every different definition lends insight to what creativity is, and has adopted three specifically that are useful depending on what it is you are focusing on. Namely, a research definition, an artistic definition and a survival definition.
He believes that the “truly creative is always that which cannot be taught. Yet creativity cannot come from the untaught… the elements of a creative solution can be taught, but the creativity itself must be self-discovered and self-disciplined”. After a lifetime in the creativity research game, Torrence could only admittedly, allude to the slippery nature of the problem of defining creativity.
Artist definitions, while being strikingly individual, rang true for me, but there was little in them you could put under the microscope. In fact, you could say, these purely subjective definitions simply compounded the mystery. What was interesting to me, was the sheer variety of definitions. Despite that, and after a while, I began to see a pattern. I noticed that definitions fell, broadly speaking, into two camps that are occupied generally, (but not always), by artists and non-artists.
Between them, there seems to be two distinct ways of understanding and defining creativity that are so far apart as to be contradictory. So much so, you’d have to wonder, are they even talking about the same thing? For the sake of comparison, here’s a selection. In red, are objective definitions found in the public domain from cultural bodies, researchers, dictionaries, academics etc. In blue are subjective definitions, mainly from the artistic community.
Oxford English dictionary:
“Creativity is the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; Inventiveness.”
Cambridge English dictionary:
“The ability to produce original and unusual ideas or to make something new and inventive.”
Common definition from Webster’s:
“Creativity is marked by the ability or power to create, to bring into existence, to invest with a new form, to produce through imaginative skill, to make or bring into existence something new.”
Business Dictionary.com:
“Mental characteristic that allows a person to think outside the box, which results in innovation or different approaches to a particular task.”
Creative Ireland. Irish government initiative:
Defines creativity as “a set of innate skills: the capacity of individuals and organisations to transcend accepted ideas and norms and by drawing on imagination to create new ideas that bring additional value to human activity.”
Recreate (Organisation for creativity through reuse):
“Creativity is a combination of imagination, original thinking and taking a unique approach to make something new and inventive.”
Ken Robinson:
Does education kill creativity? (most watched Ted Talk of all time). “Putting your imagination to work. The process of having original ideas that have value.”
Alex Grey. Artist:
“Art is the creative echo of the creative force that birth the galaxies. Creativity is the way that the comes evolves and communicates with itself. The great uplifting of humanity, beyond its self-destruction, is the redemptive mission of art.”
Elizabeth Gilbert. Writer:
“Because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment, not entirely human in origins.”
Anton Webern:
“Works of art that endure forever, the great masterpieces, cannot have come about into being as humanity…imagines. Man is only a vessel into which is poured what “nature in general” wants to express.”
David Bowie:
“…and these words were just streaming out and there were tears running down my face. But I couldn’t stop, they just flew out. It’s an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although, forcing your hand is more like it.”
Johannes Brahms:
“Straight away, the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in my mind’s eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies and orchestration.”
Carl Jung:
“From the living formation of instinct flows everything that is creative: Sense, the unconscious is not merely conditioned by history, but it is the very source of the creative impulse.”
Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi. Psychologist and author of Creative Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention:
“Creativity is any act, idea or product that changes an existing domain or product that changes an existing domain into a new one. What counts is whether the novelty he or she produces is accepted by that domain.”
E. Paul Torrence. Creativity researcher:
“Fluency, flexibility, originality and sometimes, elaboration.”
Creativity research journal inaugural edition:
“Originality is vital but must be balanced with fit and appropriate.”
Martin Dale.
Creativity researcher:
“It must be original, it must be useful or appropriate to the situation in which it occurs and it must actually be put to some use.”
Steinberg and Lubert, Creativity research journal:
“Creativity is as much about and an attitude toward life as it is a matter of ability. Creativity is often obvious in young children and less so in adults because their creative potential has been suppressed by a society that encourages intellectual conformity.”
Patent office definition:
“Novelty, usefulness, non-obviousness.”
Anthony V. Kharkhurn. Creativity researcher:
“Creativity is a four-criterion construct which includes attributes of novelty, utility, aesthetics and authenticity.”
Tina Speeling. Head of creativity research at Stanford University:
“Creativity is a six-criterion arrowing construct: Culture/Attitude, Imagination /Habitat,
Knowledge/Resources.”
Julia Cameron:
“The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union. The heart of the mystical union is the experience of creativity.”
Pearl S. Buck:
“Add to this cruelly delicate organism, the over-powering necessity to create, create, create, so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange unknown inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
Dylan Thomas:
“Creativity is the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
Ernst Hemingway:
“The stuff comes alive and turns crazy on ya!”
Ben Kingsley:
“I try to reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.”
Rollo May:
“Creativity occurs in an act of encounter and is to be understood with this encounter at its centre.”
Salmon Rishdie:
“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational or conscious one.”
Steve Jobs:
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty, because they didn’t really do it. They just saw something.”
Oliver Sacks:
“Creativity involves the depth of a mind and many many depths of consciousness.”
Michael Carpenter:
“For me, creating art is accessing a tiny sliver of divinity, with is all positive loving energy. When I go to a place of negativity and fear, I find my access is denied.”
John Cleese:
“High creativity is responding to situations without critical thought.”
Kaufmann. Creativity research journal 2003:
“The field of creativity research was declared somewhat of a scientific disaster area. There is considerable fragmentation that characterises the field of creativity, both on the level of theory, measurement and empirical research, as well as difficulty in pointing to core ideas and research findings. One of the main reasons for this discrepancy seems to stem from a failure to define the construct itself.”
This is a small but wide-ranging sample of definitions. It is fair to say that everything included here has some pertinence to creativity or the creative process, but none of them can really give us an understanding by way of definition as to what creativity actually is.
No two definitions are the same in either camp, which is not surprising in the blue group, where definitions are from individuals and therefore subjective, but it is quite surprising to find such a variety in the red group, where definitions are collectively academically formulated and supposedly informed by research.
Kauffman was on the money when he pointed out the nub of the problem; how can you research something when you cannot even agree on a definition of what you are researching? Putting definitions into two camps in this manner is an attempt to begin to deal with what Kauffman describes as, “considerable fragmentation,” so that we can observe and examine some patterns.
Let us first look at some definitions of creativity in the public domain in red group. Starting at the top with the definition from the Oxford English dictionary: “The use of imagination or original ideas to create something.” Ken Robinson’s definition is quite similar,
creativity as, “putting your imagination to work. The process of having original ideas that have value.” Imagination, ideas, originality and value are common elements of definitions in the left-hand column, yet are strikingly absent from any definition from the blue group. Robinson, a leading figure in advocating for creativity in education, states that imagination is primary, is key to the whole process. It is a popular view amongst educationalists and academics.
However, I have yet to find a definition of creativity by an artist that even mentions the word. In fact, a well-known artist friend of mine emphatically told me that imagination plays no part what so ever in her work processes. I have always understood imagination and indeed, ideas, as an optional part in certain creative processes. In the form of the imagined, I believe it to be a kind of raw creative product, and as such, I understand imagination as secondary and instrumental to creativity, not as fundamental, cause, key, or ignition. That’s a pretty big difference in opinion, so needless to say, we will be taking a detailed look at this issue at a later stage.
The requirement of value/utility, implies that creativity is a tool of some kind; useful for goal orientation or problem solving. Most creativity research starts here. Torrance’s research definition describes creative thinking as a process of sensing difficulties, problems and gaps in information. He believes that this is creativity in everyday life, that it is how we usually experience and employ creativity.
Value is determined in terms of usefulness in relation to achieving an identifiable goal, and how well that aim is achieved. In cultural organisations, where I had expected definitions to be closer to those expressed by artists, creativity is often discussed in terms of types of value. Creativity that delivers value in terms of personal and societal wellbeing. Creativity as generator of commodified value, culture as product that is marketable and consumable. Value and utility as you will have no doubt observed, is also absent from any definitions by artists in the blue gruop.
The first major pattern to emerge from the red group is that a calculation of use/value, is critical to creativity, so at this point, it may be helpful to categorise creativity where definitions contain such stipulations, as linear creativity. Linear Creativity is goal orientated. Creativity as a tool or faculty available to the will of human beings to be deployed and directed towards the achievement of some goal.
The sense from artists that creativity is something that is undirected by human will, that it is something that might even conceivably originate outside of the individual in some way, is quite a contradictory orientation, an opposite attitude. In the interests of a descriptive distinction, we will call that, spiral creativity. Spiral creativity is to be understood as having no goal orientation.
It identifies no calculable value. Rather than trying to shoehorn creativity into one definition that discounts inconvenient bits or into several depending on what is useful for our purposes, I believe what we have here is a spectrum phenomenon, with the polar opposite orientations of linear and spiral creativity at either end of the spectrum. This way of looking at it is a major shift in our point of reference and has considerable implications for the nature of our discussion on creativity. It means, as we continue our deliberations, elements of the definitions under scrutiny may obtain a contextualised significance in relation to spectral considerations.
Anthony V Kaharhurin includes the necessity for authenticity rather than originality in his definition, running against the grain in that originality is a stipulation common to linear definitions and a criterion in creativity testing, although, not without contention. Authenticity recognises creativity as a personal matter, accessed and expressed through the mind and body of an individual. It is about our individuality, our make-up, mental and physical. It recognises that our capabilities, motivations, and values – shaped by nature and nurture – are uniquely our own. Creativity operating through an individual is bound to this uniqueness.
The individual is what is fundamentally original, so to be authentic is to also be original. Considerations of originality lie in comparisons between individuals, so it is something that belongs to the public domain and can be understood as being impersonal and objectively scrutable. This consideration when we are encouraged to strive for it, can separate us from authenticity where creativity is fundamental and most potent, leading us to generate novelty for novelty’s sake. Novelty is an aspect of linear, goal orientated creativity.
The goal is to be different. Originality only counts in a collective sense, but collectives are made up of individuals – therefore I believe that authenticity trumps originality in terms of being a fundamental and primary consideration when it comes to understanding the nature of creativity. I believe that the problem for researchers in including authenticity lies in the fact that it cannot be reliably or verifiably tested. It can at best, be only sensed.
Let’s continue with a look at another common element found in the definitions of the red group. For example, in the Patent office’s definition of what makes something creative – “Novel, valuable, and non-obvious.” The identification of non-obviousness as a fundamental element of creativity is rooted in the premise that divergent thinking is the basis for creative thinking.
This core assumption was identified by E. Paul Torrence and formed the basis for verbal creativity aptitude tests. Torrence tests for creative thinking, or TTCTs, are still widely used by creativity researchers today to measure creative aptitude. A typical divergent thinking test is where a common object is presented, like a tin can or a brick for example, and you are asked to name as many non-obvious uses for the object as you can in a limited amount of time.
Another expression for this is, thinking outside of the box. Typical answers for the brick might include a door stop, a weapon, exercise weights, etc. Creative aptitude is measured by how many non-obvious uses you can name in the time allotted (quantitative data) and just how non-obvious they are judged to be (qualitative data).
If we proceed with an understanding of creativity as a spectrum phenomenon, we can see that a test of this nature is a test for linear creativity. We are being asked to focus on a use for the brick, so all the answers and outcomes will be the preserve of linear creativity. Divergent thinking tests, test for divergent thinking. They are more likely to reveal a capacity for remote associative thinking and analytical thinking. They will not reveal a capacity for spiral creativity, because they have not set a task that would require it.
In order to use the brick to test for spiral creativity, we must remove any requirement of use or value. Instead of setting a task/goal, we might make a proposition or ask a question of some kind. For example; “observe this brick closely and identify patterns and things that it reminds you of and say why.” Or, “If this brick was once set into a wall in a mosque in Aleppo, how did it come to be on this table?” It would be pointless to set a time limit for these exercises. Time limits would only interfere with immersive attention, and with the preponderance of details, narratives, and metaphors. The answers given in either of these propositions could not, and would not, correlate in any way with a divergent thinking test.
A problematic issue for divergent thinking tests which test exclusively for linear creativity, is the possibility that results might be underpinned and even dependent on a capacity for spiral creativity which might be a more fundamental and even more primary aspect of the creativity spectrum. This can be examined on a certain level with correlations between both, but a poor showing in both, will not reveal that a lack in one causes a lack in the other, just that there is a lack of creative aptitude over all.
Spiral creativity may also be virtually untestable empirically. Quantitative data may not be relevant and Qualitative data may be like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps we need to recognise another spectrum here within the perimeters of testing between objectivity and subjectivity, recognise that it is possible to design experiments and tests that have greater objectivity about linear creativity, but not possible to be objective enough about
spiral creativity where subjectivity must be met with subjectivity. Instead of scoring in terms of less or more creative, would it not be more relevant and accurate to look for kinds of creative aptitude by observing and recognising where particular responses fall on the creativity spectrum?
Let us just look at another TTCT-f
These tests are scored on fluency, originality, elaboration, abstractness of titles, and resistance to premature closure. There are also thirteen criteria called creative strengths added to the scoring: emotional expressiveness, storytelling articulateness, movement or action, expressiveness of titles, synthesis of incomplete figures, synthesis of lines or circles, unusual visualisation, internal visualisation, extending or breaking boundaries, humour, richness of imagery, colourfulness of imagery, and fantasy. What is judged to be more creative, is clearly the most linear of the samples given. Micky mouse is judged to be more creative than the chain.
I find this score quite puzzling because Micky mouse is a famous cartoon previously created by someone else. There is no actual invention by this participant. I know chains are not new and this may have scored a zero on originality, but a chain contains the possibility of representing a depth of conceptual interpretations that may have been intended and missed, depending on how equipped the adjudicator is with an interest or ability to see them.
When I saw the chain, it brought to my mind the paradox of something at once open-ended and binding, a pictorial echo of the circle itself, both contracting voluminously and expanding quantitatively by repetition. I found this a more satisfying and interesting interaction than Micky mouse. The chain opened in me an opportunity to look creatively.
When I looked at Micky mouse, I saw nothing more than Micky mouse, the image so specific that there was no room for any possible participation in apprehending it, or any other possible interpretation other than the very finitely and definitely represented icon. Similarly, with King. King is just King; the image stands for the person of the title. But Face is not only a generic face, it is also an action, (face, as in to face) which the full frontal is doing. For me, Face delivers the larger experience of looking and interpretation, because I am able to see both simultaneously.
How do we know what was intended? Titles are not explanations.
These tests always take two to complete, both examiner and examinee play a role. There is no absolute possibility of real objective results in terms of less or more despite the long list of criteria that accompanies them. There is a recognised margin for interpretation, but it is not seen as significant because these tests examined over time, have revealed illuminating correlations about creative aptitude in longitudinal studies.
I believe, they principally reveal an aptitude for creative thinking as their title and objective suggests, which reveals itself most visible in linear terms if we adjust our understanding of creativity as a spectrum. Can we achieve deeper understanding, by identifying where on the creativity spectrum these images fall, by also taking into consideration, what these images illicit during adjudication in terms of interactive experience?
It would appear to me, that the more explicit the image, the more linear it is, the less the adjudicator is allowed interaction. On the flip side, the more possibilities for implicit meaning embodied by the image, the more involvement available to the adjudicator in terms of meaning passing between. Are there paradoxical relationships that need to be taken into consideration, a balancing of a kind of yin and yang between examiner and examinee?
I filled out the third column. I changed nothing, invented nothing, made no pictorial representations, suggested no narrative, neither expressed nor articulated emotion or humour.
I used the diagrams exactly as presented and attempted to follow the instructions to the letter, even allowing the instructions to stand also as titles. I attempted only to see them and their visual relationships and relate them to the task. How would my sample compare in terms of less or more creative with the other two samples? I struggle to see more or less creative under the given criteria as relevant or useful in understanding how these images are creative and how they compare.
I began to question TTCT testing initially only because I made such a poor showing when I did some tests, and I know myself and experience myself and identify myself, as creative. Why did I test so badly? The problem of definition as far as I can see, seems to lie in the search for a scientific understanding of creativity, taking place with as much objectivity as possible.
If you can’t test it, it isn’t scientific. Spiral creativity cannot be objectified sufficiently for testing by quantitative or even qualitative measuring because even with a range of criteria, the examiner plays as much of a role as the examinee. Also, the examinee may be test resistant, suspicious, anxious, and uncooperative by nature, which are common traits in artists.
This difficulty is understood by educationalists, the discipline which has been the most active in contributing to creativity research and creativity frameworks in the last 20 years. While successive creativity frameworks have been proffered and adopted by educational systems globally, there are none that test for creative aptitude or skills as part of an educational qualification. It is accepted by educationalists that creativity is ubiquitous, but that it looks different and so is defined differently in every situation.
That acknowledgement aside, even in an educational context alone, there is still such a range of descriptions/ definitions, that Professor Bill Lucas at the university of Winchester and director of the centre for real-world learning, has described the mess as, “the language soup of creativity.” He even went to the trouble of alphabetising that soup in a webinar in which he was presenting an overview of current creativity frameworks, in June 2020. Here are the ingredients of said soup:
Ability, attribute, attitude, capability, capacity, character, cognitive skill, competence, competency, disposition, habit of mind, key competence. Key competency, knowledge, life skill, meta-skill, non-cognitive skill, skill, soft skill, trait, transferable skill, transformative competency, transferable skill, transversal skill, transferable competence, twenty first century skill.
Much to my amusement, as if to add insult to injury, other participants even added a few more ingredients that they felt needed to be included and there was an acknowledgement that there may even be several others worth consideration.
Professor Lucas was very clear when he stated categorically that “it matters how we understand and describe creativity.” He went on to outline no less than ten separate creativity frameworks that have been developed over the past 20 years outlining the difficulties for framework makers and the commonalities and differences between frameworks.
The commonalties included that creativity was increasingly referred to as a human attribute, that common core concepts were entered around originality, novelty, value, experimentation, and problem solving. That creativity was conceived both as a product and process. Most frameworks focused around schools and education, around everyday creativity and not just the exceptional outputs of genius. The differences lay in degrees of status accorded to creativity.
Tensions between divergent and convergent thinking. Some frameworks defined creativity in one way or another while others did not attempt or employ a definition at all. A few frameworks included collaborations and the implication of creativity as a social phenomenon while most did not. Some consider creativity as ubiquitous while some held onto to an association with the arts specifically. His final comment on differences was simply that “the framing of creativity and the language used to describe it, vary astonishingly.”
From my perspective, this astonishing variance in the language of creativity research has come about because of a hyper nuanced attentiveness around the linear end of the creativity spectrum, something you can only say if you recognise that creativity might be a spectrum in the first place. It is symptomatic of a search for what is missing, what is ungraspable and unavailable on the linear end, and so this way of looking at the problem of definition is ever turning over its own references in ever more elaborate descriptive combinations, as if turning the individually coloured squares on the same fixed location of a Rubik’s cube.
If creativity were recognised as presenting as a spectrum; research, frameworks, experiment, and testing, would be broadened considerably, structured differently and designed accordingly. Processes and relationships, when calibrated for spectral differences, would yield identifiable spectral results. Where on the spectrum – and by what conditions, influences, or applied process did it get there – would make for very different enquiry and deliver according to a spectrum theory, very different, but perhaps clearer more appropriate research data.
Definition matters. What we have currently in the public domain in terms of definitions of creativity is not only unresolved, it is misleading. Across the board in research terms, it appears to be focused primarily around linear creativity. Linear creativity is like seeing the world as flat. It isn’t truthful because it isn’t the whole picture. It just looks that way.
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