The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

36 Recognis- Some of our conditions for creative work do not presenting and much of a problem. We can recognise easily enough whetherassessing something is the result of an individual's own conscious andcreativity deliberate work and whether it constitutes an addition toexisting knowledge or accomplishments. The psychologists,however, had emphasised the centrality of innovation andunconventionality. How were these to be tested?It was perhaps inevitable that some psychologists shouldthink it proper, in testing for creativity, to look for somethingthat could be counted. One of their criteria for creativity,therefore, was the sheer quantity of ideas produced. Themore unusual uses for a brick, the more words ending in'-tion', regardless of meaning, the more ways of describinga parcel one could produce, the more creative one wasreckoned to be. The other criterion related to the unconventionalityof what was produced. This led to a high premiumbeing placed upon the fanciful and the fantastic. Such thingsas 'skid-proof face cream' and pictures of 'square cows . . .and peopled with round-bellied, neckless mums and dads' 5are often seen by such people as evidence of creative thinking.37 Two Of course such things may be features of creative work, butmiscon- they are at best only partial indicators of creativity. Someceptionsthing other than mere quantity or mere unconventionalityis required. Part of the deficiency in the psychologists'approach comes we believe from the common misconceptionthat there is, as we have said, actually some separate mentalfaculty responsible for creative work whose absence orpresence in a person can therefore be measured. A secondmisconception associated with this (as we also noted) is thatsome people have this faculty or capacity for creative thinkingand that others do not. We hold both of these assumptionsto be wrong for two reasons. First, it makes no sense totalk of creativity as a general capacity: it is seen in relation tospecific activities — writing, painting, composing, philosophyor whatever. It does not follow that because a person isclearly creative in one particular sphere he or she will, forthat reason, be equally creative, or even at all creative inothers. Second, creativity can only be usefully discussed notmerely as a mental capacity but in relation to what a persondoes or produces. Talk about different degrees of creativityhas to be related to the criteria by which these products andactivities can be assessed in the public forum by those withthe knowledge and ability to make informed judgementsabout them. Among these criteria will be the quality of thework produced — our fifth condition — and the contextwithin which it is produced — condition six.31