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Recall this quote from our first set of readings from Cycle One:
What is the place of imagination in education? The word imagination does not appear in the government’s list of “Goals 2000,” nor does it turn up on lists of behavioral objectives or educational outcomes. There is no imagination curriculum or pedagogy of the imagination in our schools. Yet if, as the poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “the imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things,” then to neglect the imagination is also to impoverish children’s worlds and to narrow their hopes.
— Herbert Kohl
In his Foreword to The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories, by Gianni Rodari, 1996, p. ix.
Creativity is a learned function
While story can be seen as a fundamental construct for (i.e., the science behind) knowledge acquisition (see readings #4), that alone may not be enough. The art part of this (science meets fiction in the true sense of the word) is that stories create opportunities to be creative. That is where the critical thinking part comes into play.
Biz Stone (2014) –he is a co-founder of Twitter– wrote this about creativity and imposing limits:
-“A character with character limits characters“
Stone’s basic philosophy is to utilize constraints as a motivator with the idea of embracing constraints because they are provocative. They are challenging. They wake you up. They make you more creative. They make you better… In other words necessity is the mother of all invention.
He makes his point using the following anecdotes:
When Harrison Ford was shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, three months of filming in Tunisia gave him a terrible case of the runs. When it came time to shoot a long, drawn out sword battle, Ford, desperate to call it a day, suggested that when faced with the sword flashing enemy, he simply pull out his pistol and shoot the guy. This improvised solution became one of the film’s best, funniest and most iconic scenes.
When shooting the movie Jaws, Steven Spielberg wanted to build a giant realistic mechanical shark in order to shoot scenes of the scary beast attacking people. But making that full-sized shark became a budgeting nightmare, so he came up with a low-cost solution. He would use a first-person perspective (from the shark’s point of view) underwater, looking hungrily of the swimmers. Way scarier!
Hermann Hauser, the guy whose company created ARM, the tech firm that powers the chips that are practically in all cell phones, set his development team them off on a project to build a chip with no money, no time, and few resources. The result was a low-power chip turned that out to be perfect for cell phones… now that chip dominates the market.
The 140-character limit on Twitter was no accident. The beginning of the product was to expand on the status messages sent out in response to SMS messages received on your phone. The wanted to be able to customize the responses (away from my desk, available, etc.). At the time, most cell phones imposed a 165 character limit on messaging. SO, if you take away the 15 characters they allotted for the average user name, they were left with 145. To be consistent, they decided on the 140-character limit. In retrospect, the 140 character message has taken on an art form of its own. So, expanding that limit has never been considered at Twitter due to its iconic stature in the world of texting/tweeting.
Lastly, Stone offers this scenario to help children with their creativity:
When sitting at the dinner table with kids, hand them a crayon and ask them to draw something.. The usual response will be “draw what?” The parent then says “draw anything”… to which the child will most likely be to stare at a blank page and ask again… “draw what?”
If, on the other hand, the parent says “draw a dump truck” that would most likely do the trick. The final artifact may not end up looking anything like a dump truck .. but limiting ones options gives the child a place to start… in educational parlance, this is called advance organizers.
To prove our point here, take what we provide you in Activity #5 that comes later…. (the 30-second story): “The once was a man and then he died”.. the end
Yes, we do add some pressure/limits on your creativity by requiring it to be a 30-second story but we are actually playing not fair because we should give you some picture to start with .. (but in this case we won’t because I am dying to see what you come up with!). Your job just got harder.. What if we said that the man was born in Nantucket.. all of a sudden all sorts of preconceived images come into play, especially if you know anything about Limericks.
When working with students (or as a consultant who has been hired to come into a company to help the folks create their branding story), you start somewhere: in both scenarios, you start with a series of questions. Once answered you will spark curiosity and all sorts of taking off points.
Creativity is not all about the artsy kind .. in education and training we use the term to mean kick starting the brain-storming process.
Just know that the process of developing story is one of discovery. First of all, do not be afraid of failure. As the story creators at Pixar learned (Catmill, 2014), that as much as one wants to preplan story and create an error free environment, their motto is “be wrong as fast as you can” .. meaning that with all the planning, most stories re developed iteratively over time.. and it is often best to find the holes and fix them during the production process.. ending up being cheaper and better outcome.
Businesses also have the need to find employee candidates who are creative/critical thinkers. Companies like Microsoft, Apple Computers, and Google, actually hold competitions to find the brightest individuals. The scenes in the movie The Internship, for example, were not entirely contrived. About ten years ago a book appeared on the shelves that delved deeply into how Microsoft during job interviews would have candidates attempt to resolve hypothetical problems.
How Would you Move Mount Fuji: How the World’s Smartest Companies Select the Most Creative Thinkers became a best seller. Here is a dialog that discusses posts from folks who were posed that question:
Lastly, we cannot leave this topic without talking about the fact that major differences exist between education, business, and the sciences with regards to their views on brainstorming. When doing my research about the concept of brainstorming I discovered that the sciences view brainstorming in a completely different fashion. We will investigate this concept further in a module on cognition that will be a part of a later cycle.
Let’s look at some other ideas on creativity and its power as a motivator:
First is a very special Webpage (and is also where I borrowed the opening graphic at the top of this page). It talks about the Torrance Test for Creativity, which is a seminal instrument. Here is a short description of the test and it impact:
link to pdf: http://emeclasses.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-Power-of-Creativity.pdf
Next is a white paper describing computational reasoning in computing but also differentiates pure reasoning from creativity and, therefore, provides additional insights:
link to pdf: http://emeclasses.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/on_modeling_creativity_in_legal_reasoning.pdf
Here are some additional readings:
- Born This Way: Is Creativity Innate or Learned?
- Creativity at Work
- Creativity: Learned or Innate?
- Teaching Creativity
- Storytelling and the Creative Process
- 33 Great apps for storytelling and creativity
- 9 Creative Storytelling Tools That Will Make You Wish You Were A Student Again
- The National Storytelling Network
References:
Catmull, E. (2014) Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. New York: Random House.
Poundstone, W. (2004). How would you move Mount Fuji: How the world’s smartest companies select the most creative thinkers. New York: Little Brown & Company.
Stone, B. (2014). What a little bird told me; Confessions of the creative mind. New York: Grand Central.
When you are satisfied you have absorbed this material you can go ahead and complete the next set of readings by clicking the button below.