Creativity

I taught a class on creativity last week. Getting ready for the class involved all the hard work and little of the fun of the creative process.

I studied, outlined, formatted, redid, researched, changed my outline and finally a product. A creative product.

My class started with me sharing a dictionary definition of creativity. I then gave the class this assignment:

"Working in your table groups creatively define the words creativity and innovation."

The groups talked, brainstormed, and in only 15 minutes each had come up with very standard, formal, predictable definitions of creativity and innovation.

I asked them if they thought their definitions were different from the dictionary and they pointed to the different words and said emphatically, "Yes!"

So I gave them the assignment again. Using the exact words.

"Working in your table groups creatively define the words creativity and innovation."

They stormed, they steamed, they fumed and then they once again came up with very ordinary, expected, torn right from the pages of the dictionary definitions.

The discontent in the room was rising. They had come expecting something fun and instead were frustrated and irritable. One participant joked that I was a petty tyrant and if I would just tell them what I wanted, they would do it, the class would be over and everyone would be out of their misery.

Petty and tyrannical, though I may be, I am no quitter.

This time I asked all the participants with glasses to come to the front of the room. I then had everyone switch glasses and said dramatically to the class, "Creativity is looking at things from another perspective."

After they sat down I gave them the same instructions.

"Working in your table groups, creatively define the words creativity and innovation."

Things were getting tense in the room. The body language clearly communicated that I was not only a petty tyrant but a crazy women with some mischievous intent with my insane and persistent utterings.

And in about 10 minutes each group came up with a definition of creativity that felt like a black hole sucking all the energy of the group into a vortex of resentment. Some different words but nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing - well creative.

I did not know what to do. We had been together for 1 long hour and 30 tedious minutes.

I said it again. Yes - I dared to once more issue the challenge.

Creatively define the words creativity and innovation. And I left the room and the groups to their own devices for 15 minutes.

When I returned the room had been rearranged into a circle of chairs. The spokesperson said that "Creativity is a willingness to learn from each other, a decision to be open and to consider other ideas."

You know, it was not a major breakthrough, but it was a beginning. The mood lightened and we had a discussion about the hard work of creativity.

Later that week I was working on a project for my website and I could not figure out a process. I worked on it until in desperation I determined that it was too confusing. And then my class came back to me and I remembered how long it took them to step outside of the traditional definition form and I got right back to work.