Now?
Ken Robinson
A creative process may begin with a flash of a new idea or
with a hunch. It may just start as noodling around with a
problem, getting some fresh ideas along the way. It’s a
process, not a single event, and genuine creative processes
involve critical thinking as well as imaginative insights and
fresh ideas.
But creativity isn’t just about coming up with new ideas;
some ideas might be completely crazy and impractical. So
an essential bit of every creative process is evaluation. If
you’re working on a mathematical problem, you’re
constantly evaluating it, thinking, “Does that feel right?” If
you’re composing a piece on the piano, part of you is
listening to what you’re doing and thinking, “Does that
work? Is that going in a good direction?”
©JACK HOLLINGS WORTH/GETTY IMAGES
What’s the biggest misconception people have
about creativity?
One is that it’s about special
people—that only a few people
are really creative. Everybody has
tremendous creative capacities. A
policy for creativity in education
needs to be about everybody, not
just a few.
The second misconception is
that creativity is about special
activities. People associate
creativity with the arts only. I’m a
great advocate of the arts, but
creativity is really a function of
everything we do. So education
for creativity is about the whole
curriculum, not just part of it.
The third misconception is that
creativity is just about letting
yourself go, kind of running
around the room and going a bit
crazy. Really, creativity is a disci-
