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What is Creativity- and Can I Become Creative?




Creativity is like a superpower that lets us come up with new and useful ideas.


It's not just for artists and musicians; it's also for scientists who discover new medicines, engineers who invent gadgets, and even for us when we find clever ways to solve everyday problems. For eons, scientists have been digging deeper into what makes people creative, and here's a quick look at what they've found.


What Makes Us Creative?


Imagine creativity as a toolbox. The tools inside include our ability to think of lots of different ideas (like coming up with all the ways you can use a paperclip), our knack for mixing old ideas into new combinations, and our skill in picking which ideas are the best.


Researchers like Kaufman and Beghetto introduced a cool idea called the "Four-C Model of Creativity" in 2009. They said creativity can be really big (like inventing the internet) or small (like finding a new way to organize your room)【1】.


How Does Creativity Happen?


Think of the creative process as baking a cake, but in your brain. First, you gather all your ingredients (this is like learning all about a problem). Then, you let the dough rise (this is like thinking deeply about the problem, sometimes without even realizing it). Suddenly, you have your "aha!" moment when you know how the cake (or your idea) will turn out. Lastly, you bake it to perfection (this means testing and improving your idea). Scientists have found that different parts of the brain light up during these stages, showing that creativity really is a full-brain workout【2】.


Learning and Creativity


You don't have to be born a genius to be creative. It's like a muscle you can train. The more you know about a subject, the more creative you can be with it. This is because having a good knowledge base gives you more ingredients to mix into new, exciting ideas.


Educational researchers like Sawyer in 2006 have found that schools can help kids be more creative by encouraging them to work together on complex problems and think in new ways【3】.


Creativity Everywhere


Today, understanding and encouraging creativity is super important, not just in schools but in workplaces and communities too. It's all about looking at problems in new ways, being open to experimenting, and not being afraid to fail because sometimes, the craziest ideas turn out to be the best ones. And even more importantly, it helps us connect with one another & with ourselves.


In Simple Words


Creativity is all about coming up with ideas that are both new and useful. It's a process that involves thinking in different directions, mixing and matching old concepts in new ways, and then picking the best solutions. Whether you're a student, a teacher, an engineer, or anyone else, being creative is about seeing the world in new ways and asking, "What if?" It's a skill that everyone can develop, and it's more important today than ever before.


Here we see that creativity isn't just about having big, groundbreaking ideas; it's also about the little innovations that make our daily lives and work more effective and enjoyable.


So come & be creative with us at Oiler Studio. After all, it's just muscle training...


References


1. Kaufman, J.C., & Beghetto, R.A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The Four C Model of Creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1-12.

2. Modern neuroscience studies on creativity (referenced generically due to the wide range of studies in this area since 2000).

3. Sawyer, R.K. (2006). Educate for creativity. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, 205-226.


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