Can Creativity be Taught?

This past week, I was involved with a LinkedIn discussion about creativity. “Can it be taught?” was the discussion topic. Of course, as a creative professional and someone who loves to be creative, I jumped at the chance to express my opinion.

This discussion board, in particular, was a learning and development discussion group and it was leaning, as you might guess, toward the “being taught” perspective. However, quite a few people reached out and commented that all people have the ability to be creative.

One person, James, felt strongly that “Creativity cannot be taught, only encouraged, and cultivated.” He felt that as we are in the early stages of development, the synapses could be modified and molded. “As one grows and matures our thought processes and methods of problem solving become relatively static and unchanging,” he wrote. His example was that in the early stages of development, anyone could learn to play piano scales. However, creativity comes much later as a person develops a sense of style.

Another person, Bernice, commented about Howard Gardner’s 
concept of “Big C and Little C” creativity to help explain why there is so much emphasis in this discussion on the ability to "teach" or train for creativity. “Gardner applies ‘Big C’ creativity to the extraordinary accomplishments--those that break the paradigm--Beethoven, Freud, Darwin, etc., ’Little C’ creativity applies to solutions 
in their pursuits of daily life, business, the arts.”

Others in the discussion felt that creativity meant to go beyond traditional borders and “think outside the box.”

Deborah mentioned a web site, www.crinid.com that talks about creativity and ideation. There is some great stuff there.

What do you think? Do you think creativity can be taught and that everyone has the ability to be creative even though they may have it repressed? Or do you think that being creative is something you just have or don’t have? Or is it something in between?

This discussion topic on LinkedIn drew nearly 200 responses in less than three days. So, people must feel passionately about it. How do you feel?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Ciao!