Newsweek magazine recently published an article that reported on a longitudinal study designed to measure creativity in the U.S (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html). Using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as their rubric they reported a steady drop in creativity from 1990 forward. For 30 years prior the index showed an increase. In the late 1970’s, when I was director of the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, we used the Torrance Tests as an evaluative tool in a program for middle school students funded by the US DOE Title VII. The activities we employed were highly imaginative, improvisatory and open-ended. The results were consistently sensational. In fact, our external evaluator questioned our test-taking methods, as he personally could not believe the percentage increases.
Reading this article, musing on my experience with Torrance’s work, plus my recent blogging and thinking about entrepreneurial creativity, I focused this week on isolating the creative “moment.” There’s nothing new about what I’m about to report, but nonetheless it’s critical that we artist educators know and be able to speak a creative language. When the commercial community wakes up to the fact that creativity is the germ of successful enterprises, they should turn to us for knowledge and inspiration.
When the composer, visual artist, poet, choreographer, playwright and other original creative artists make the often-terrifying leap from what is in their heads to something concrete, their imaginations instantly becomes enterprises. What follows is a process of critical examination and revision and eventually, completion and subjugation to external review.
Is this not the initial process of entrepreneurship, the transformation of an imaginative idea into something concrete and worthy of external review?
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