There is an ongoing debate on whether children are creative or not. Most experts argue that children are not creative because they believe "creativity involves changing a way of doing things, or a way of thinking, and that in turn requires having mastered the old ways of doing or thinking". This belief cannot define that children are not creative. It doesn't account for the fact that children can potentially be more creative than adults for their use of being able to create stories, drawings, etc. from no previous experience. It is unbelievable on where their imagination can lead them.
From experience with working with children, ages 5-11 in particular, I have seen an incredible amount of imagination that implies their use of creativity. One of my favorite moments with working with children, that defines their creativity, is when they can draw the most unrealistic object or person and be able to explain to me what their drawing's use is or what is going on in their picture. I believe children are creative and we should better define children's creativity.
From reading about the different myths of creativity in Explaining Creativity by R. Keith Sawyer, it made me begin to think about all of the views we have about creativity. When I began to read the discussion on the myths, I quickly realized that I had actually thought about each and every one of these conceptions. They all seemed too familiar.
One myth in particular stood out to me, the myth which states that everyone is creative. I believe that everyone has the potential of being creative, but humans do not have the same opportunities to show their creativity. With different opportunities, we each are only allowed to share our creativity when the situation arises. The way we evaluate creativity also has an affect on how we determine if everyone is creative. Let's just assume everyone is creative, but some people aren't called on to use it.
I recently came across a fascinating story about a boyfriend who created a new approach of writing a love letter to his girlfriend. Whoever knew that creativity in communication was key?
The girlfriend moved across the country to begin graduate school. An idea sparked the boyfriend to see if he could create something that would virally reach her. The boyfriend decided to ask his friends in the band, famously known as The Daylights, to write a song called "I Hope This Gets to You". They also created a clever (and creative) hand-choreography music video to go along with the song. After creating the song and video, he hoped that the internet would do the rest, not knowing how fast their creation would spread. The social web took over, made the video go viral, and then quickly reached its final destination. Only after two days of going through the web, his girlfriend announced the discovery!
Using his creativity, the boyfriend was able to send this message to his girlfriend by simply showing her how much their relationship means to him. The communication creativity involved in this is unbelievable and took a simple spark of creativity to spread. Another aspect of creativity shown in this, is the creativity taken to create the video. It's a simple hand cheorgraphed clip that matches perfectly with the lyrics.
