CREATIVITY:
Being Different
and
Making a Difference
Timothy Emlyn Jones
Burren College of Art
Topics for the day
Introduction
Creative exercise
Talk: What is Creativity?
Discussion
In Praise of Bad Weather
“There is no such thing as bad weather,
only the weather we have:
and only the life we have.”
Introduction
“Every human being is an artist”
Joseph Beuys, 1921-1986
Introduction
“Every human being is an artist”
Joseph Beuys, 1921-1986
Social Sculpture: the forms that people make together
Introduction
Kunst = Kapital
Introduction
Universal human creativity
The holocaust
The space race
The cold war
The knowledge economy
Pelagianism vs Original Sin
Humanism
Child Psychology
Introduction
Today is not about art and artists.
It is about you and me
and everyone we know.
Introduction
and the happy* children we once were
*hap = one’s luck or lot
Introduction
Scribble
WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
What is Creativity?
Does it exist?
What is Creativity?
Reification
Abstract property of an event or person
Language game
A synonym for goodness
A quality of people and their things
What is Creativity?
“The ability to bring something
new into existence”
Frank Barron
Newness + Significance
Change / Making difference
Three Types of Creativity
Newness
Significance
Creation
Something out of nothing
Genesis
The imitation of God
Berdyaev
Eighteenth Century Genius
Romanticism
Imagination
Eighteenth Century Scientist
Classicism
Enquiry
Eighteenth Century English Class
Purity vs Utility
Imagination vs Experience
Aristocracy vs Trade
PB Medawar
Legacy of the Eighteenth Century
Theory vs Practice
Pure Science vs Applied Science
Fine Art vs Design
Creativity vs Innovation
Twentieth Century Creative
New kinds of thinking
Edward De Bono
John Adair
Twentieth Century Creative
Praxis
Antonio Gramsci
Twentieth Century Creative
Unusual person
Thinks differently
Neurotic
Bohemian
Special Person / Guru
Specialist activity
Inspiration
a turning point in a long process
(not a light bulb enlightenment)
A breathing in of new air
Evolutionary Process
Cultural Context
Individual Initiative
Expert Evaluation
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creative Process / Bisociation
Arthur Koestler
Social Factors
Motivation
Reward
Attention / Influence
Teresa Amabile
Accelerating Evolution
Drawing
Brainstorming
Dreaming
Synetics/Analogies
Play
Collage
Questions
Design Method
Divergence
Transformation
Convergence
John Chris Jones, 1969
Otto Scharmer, 2009
Creative Thinking
Join the dots with only 4 straight lines
Creative Thinking
The “right” answer
(now join them with only one line)
Creative Thinking
Creative Thinking
Make an egg stand on end
Creative Thinking
Creative Thinking
Obvious after the fact
(but it was never just thinking)
Mental State
Immersion in your passion
Flow
Mihalyi Csikentmihalyi
The ghost in the machine
Gilbert Ryle
Mental State and Knowledge
Knowledge-that
Knowledge-how
Tacit knowledge
Knowing
Gilbert Ryle / Paul H Hirst / Michael Polanyi / Louis Arnaud Reid
Mental State and Intelligence
Three Centres
Head – Heart – Gut
Gjurdjieff
Triune Brain
Paul D MacLean
Multiple Intelligences
Howard Gardner
Mental State and Intelligence
Mental Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence
Visceral Intelligence
Mental State and Intelligence
Mental Intelligence
thinking
Emotional Intelligence
feeling
Visceral Intelligence
intuition
Mental State and Intelligence
5 paths to truth
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Episteme, knowledge
Techne, producing
Phronesis, practical understanding
Sophia, theoretical wisdom
Nous, intuitive grasp of first principles
Mental State
Energy follows attention
Mental State and Intelligence
Thinking
Doing
Imagining
Understanding
Seeing
Mental State
Welcoming:
ambiguity
doubt
confusion
irrationality
anxiety
error
failure
risk
change
Potential Obstacles
to Creativity
Purposiveness
Accountability
Transparency
Logic
Clarity
Control
The Bottom Line
Strategy
Transgression
Disobedience
Strategy
Do you enhance creativity
or
Just get rid of the obstacles?
Strategy
A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf
Strategy
A Life of One’s Own
Marion Milner
Strategy
The bottom line
is that
The Bottom Line
is not
the bottom line
Strategy
Creativity is not an add-on:
it transforms the system;
it transforms the people;
as well as the task within it:
Between Strategy and Policy
A set of ideas that in the last 100 years
mutated from revolutionary politics
to enlightened organisation theory
Two Bases for Social Policy
The happy child
(the celebration of awareness)
Ivan Illich
The naughty child
(the degradation of humanity)
The Christian Brothers
The Secret
The status quo can be different
Benchmark
Surprise
Difference
The social construction of reality
Feminist perspectives and the embodiment
of knowledge
Pluralism
Berger & Luckmann
Luce Irigarary / Julia Kristeva / Helene Cixous
Difference
Identity does not determine difference
Identity follows from difference
Gilles Deleuze
Difference
Difference of personality
(strategies for gaining and giving attention)
Personality Type
Difference of mode of intelligence
(strategies for making sense)
Personality Sub Type
Questions
•
How do living and working environments influence creative difference?
•
How do personal and professional relationships work for or against creative
difference?
•
How do organisations promote or hinder creative difference?
•
How do schools enhance or hinder creative difference?
•
How do I make a difference?
•
How do I come to understand these things?
Questions
• How do different personality types create
newness and significance, and with what
obstacles?
• How do they make sense of change?
• How do you behave if real change isn’t
acceptable to your organisation?
Questions For Social Policy
Why promote something so anti-social?
How can society be so anti-social?
What is Creativity?
Today’s Question Re-Phrased
What is Creativity
for me/us/them?
(and how do we transform ourselves
in order to lead it)