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What do people need to learn (and do) in order to systematically
enhance their individual and collective creative competencies?
The first step to improving your creativity is understanding and
accepting the fact that you are a creative person, and that you are
capable of being even more creative -- you can improve your creativity with
practice and
concentration, but first must come a basic belief in your ability to be creative. Read Affirmations every morning and evening.
Second, to become more creative you must
nurture and learn to listen
to your inner 'voice', your intuition. When involved in a pursuit requiring creative
solution, be open to a wide variety of possible solutions. Be aware of your own
personality and belief limitations that might blind you to possible solutions; know
yourself well.
Don't be afraid of failing with any given avenue of
exploration; even a negative result from one line of questioning can lead to a new idea or
new possibility.
Be open to alternate solutions as they occur
Keep a journal of some kind to record ideas as they occur to
you.
Learn to recognize your own abilities so that you have some
sense of the areas of a given problem that may give you difficulty or require more energy
to solve. Sometimes tackling the difficult areas first is wise so that your energies are
high; other times, leaving the less well understood problems until later in the process
can allow your 'backbrain' or subconscious time to gestate solutions.
Increasing creative ability also involves practicing both divergent
and convergent thinking processes. Learn to discipline your mind to create many
possible solutions to a problem at the beginning of your effort -- to brainstorm ideas, to
be open to many avenues of solution, to record the distracting sidelines to the process
that may occur to you.
You must also be aware that at some point in the creative process you
must begin to sort through these various ideas, evaluate their utility
to the problem at hand, and converge on a solution. Do not be distressed if you
must discard what seems to be a good idea or solution due to the constraints of the
current problem or project. Save those ideas for another project or later work of art.
Creativity is an inner state, but it is also a social aspect of life.
We do not create for oneself, otherwise our work will be kept in our mind. Even people
that hide their works are socializing it by putting them down on paper, canvas, etc. It is
important to understand the social implications of creativity. It is very interesting to
watch pop artists go on stage, music being the most social form of art.
There are artists, in front of 2,000 people, that could be performing
in their closet and that would give the same result, while some others are
"giving" themselves entirely. Some are giving a good technical performance,
while some others are not technical but more imaginative. There are dynamics in there that
need to be studied.
Creativity is socially framed, as much for our individual expression
and our social expression of it. A technique is just a technique if it is not understood
in the social context which gives meaning to the creative person it has helped. As far as
I know, it is very recent that there are researchers that are interested in the social
aspect of creativity.
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