HANDOUT # 1: CREATIVITY zrej

The term creativity refers to mental processes that lead to solutions,ideas, concepts, artistic expression,theories or products that are unique and novel.

Because it is such a diverse subject in which there are so many different ways in which creativity mani-fests itself, and because in so many people it is to a great extent unexplored, creativity is very difficult to measure.

The French mathematicians Poincare and Hadamard defined the following four stages of creativity:

Preparation: the attempt to solve a problem by normal meansIncubation: when you feel frustrated that the above methods have not worked and as a result you then move away to other thingsIllumination: the answer suddenly comes to you in a flash via your subconsciousVerification: your reasoning powers take over as you analyze the answer which has come to you, and you assess its feasibility.

The creative functions are controlled by the right-hand hemisphere of the human brain. This is the side of thebrain which is under-used by the majority of people, as opposed to the thought processes of the left-hand hemi-sphere which is characterized by order, sequence and logic.

Because it is under-used, much creative talent in many people remains untapped throughout life. Until wetry, most of us never know what we can achieve, for example, one in three people in Britain have a desire to writea novel, yet only a very small percentage of these people progress any further than the initial stage of justthinking about it.

We all have a creative side to our brain, therefore we all have the potential to be creative. However, be-cause of the pressures of modern living and the need for specialization, many of us never have the time or oppor-tunity, or indeed are given the encouragement, to explore our latent talents, even though most of us havesufficient ammunition to realize this potential in the form of data which has been fed into, collated and processedby the brain over many years.

Writers, indeed all artists, must use both halves of their brain. They must use the right side of the brain tocreate things and the left side of the brain to organize things. The creative and intuitive right side is able to copewith complexity and is where insights originate, while the left side controls language, academic studies and ratio-nal intellectual work.

The problem is, especially since in many people the left half of the brain is possessively dominant, gettingthese two halves of the brain to pass information back and forth and work together. In order to perform any cre-ative task it is necessary to encourage your right side to start its creative juices flowing, in other words, move yourmental processes, albeit temporarily, from the dominant left side across to the creative right side. This may soundfine in theory, but not so easy to put into practice.

So, how can the predominantly left-sided brain person encourage the right side of his brain to be morecreative? Since such a person is so dominated by the left brain, one way is to lull your left brain into a degree ofinactivity, or even bore it to sleep. This may, for example, occur on a long train journey trip. At such times, yourright brain has the opportunity to become more creative because it has less strong opposition from the fact clut-tered dominant left side. At such times, have a pocket tape recorder or jotter by your side and make a note of allthe thoughts that occur to you no matter how strange, irrelevant or random they may seem. Most ideas, or in-sights, occur at random just for an instant. If you do not record them they are gone just as quickly, and probablylost forever.

At night, too, ideas come to us and our mind often behaves in a seemingly strange way. Again, this isbecause our logical and analytical left side is at its most inactive, and our subconscious right side is to thereforebehaving in a mysterious and irrational way, giving rise to dreams and nightmares of which we often can makelittle sense.

Can creativity be learned?

The short answer is yes.

A study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and as we grow up we learn to be uncreative. Cre-ativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be managed.

Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking. You learnto be creative by experimenting, exploring, questioning assumptions, using imagination and synthesing informa-tion. Learning to be creative is akin to learning a sport. It requires practice to develop the right muscles, and asupportive environment in which to flourish.

HANDOUT # 2: the art of CREATIVITY zrej

Artistic Creativity: intensely personal, reflecting feelings and ideas of artist. Forever unique and original.

Scientific Creativity: constrained by self consistency, trying to understand nature,and by what is already known. Becomesassimilated into public knowledge.

Overview of Creativity The word creativity first appeared in English in the 1875 text History of Dramatic English Literature, by Adolphus

William Ward (Weiner, 2000, p. 89). Engel (1981)and Taylor (1989) state that the concept of imagination emerged from England and Germany during

the late 18th Century and it was viewed as a quality of the mind responsible for originality and is central to themodern Western concept of creativity.

Some terms related to creativityImagination:the process of recombining memories of past experiences and images into novel constructionsPerception:the conscious integration of sensory impressions of external objects and events,including how we perceive others and how other perceive us.Memory:the mental evocation of past experiences..the ninth intelligence

THE CREATIVE BRAIN

Some facts the different optical illusionExperiments:

1. Your mind runs on autopilot. Yoursubconscious is actually running more ofyour life than you think.

2. Eyes can be deceived. Every day, peoplearound the world report strange phenomenon- but are they sure they can trust the evidencegiven to them by their own eyes.

3. It is clear that static images can play strangetricks on our eyes. But people often say theyhave seen strange phenomenon that actuallyMoved.The pictures are static. Nothing is moving

4. So now we know that people seeing staticimages are deceived and often see movementwhen there is no movement. Is it possible that our mind can actually change aspects such as

colour? demonstrates clearly that everyday objects can easily be transformed by the human mind

5. Now we know that our eyes lie. Shapes can be seen when they dont really exist.6. Your brain starts to make what it wants of shapes.

Creative ThinkingIs a way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodoxsolutions.

Step 1: Be CuriousCuriosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.' SamuelJohnson

Step 2: make connectionsCreativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.' William Plomer

Step 3: challenge yourselfA person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.' Albert Einstein

Step 4: cultivate your ideasCourage does not always roar. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I willtry again tomorrow.' Unknown