When people use the word ”creativity” it's a fairly natural thing to let your mind go to painting or performing arts or maybe making music or poetry and fiction writing.
Still life with cat and apple...
But what is creativity really? And, moreover, are we given to put too narrow a definition around what we might consider creative?
As we look at revitalizing the Creative Coin Community, how will we define what's included in "creative?"
I think back to many many years ago when I was part of a weekend retreat, and one of the group exercises we had to complete entailed first writing about, then presenting and describing our creativity.
One of the people I had made friends with felt very stuck because he was certain he was not creative in any way. We sat and talked about that for a while, and I tried to elicit from him some of the things he enjoyed doing without trying to put a ”creative” or ”not creative” label on anything.
As the conversation unfolded he started talking to me about how he had been watching the stock markets for a long time (this was back in the early 2000s) And have become quite good at ”day trading.”
He'd actually studied the patterns for long enough that he was able to write a small piece of code that automated his day trading to the point where he didn't really have to pay attention to it and would have time enough on his hands to pursue his interest in woodturning.
Curator Cat being creative with his Hooman!
Even so, he was struggling with the idea that his woodturning projects were actually ”creative.”
”They're just very functional things like bowls and trivets and serving spoons,” he insisted.
I explained that I could actually relate to that, because I had spent many years being a technical writer and didn't think of that as being particularly creative because it wasn't — after all — the writing that came out of my own head, but somebody else's writing-to-order. But even so, the bottom line was that there was definitely an element of creativity involved in taking abstract ideas and presenting them in such a way (in user manuals for example) that everyday people could understand them and use them.
Creativity lurks pretty much everywhere!
I also pointed out to him at the very process of creating a piece of code that made it possible for him to not have to work at a regular job was pretty damn creative in and of itself!
So, when the time came to present our creative endeavors to the group, Richard spoke about both his creative coding as well as his woodturning. And nobody questioned that for even a moment!
So what IS “creative?”
In my opinion it's certainly far more than art, or music, or performing, or poetry, or digital imaging, or writing fiction, or sculpture... if it is done with the creative spirit I would go so far as to say that makes it creative!
Thanks for coming by! Please leave a comment if you feel so inclined!
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Curator Cat, November 28, 2021