Type the key words combined with plus signs into the search engine (I use Google) and see what news or reports appear. The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, NPR.org, and many other sites regularly publish news on every topic you would find in the New York Times.
Here's my go, a rough draft:
On Being Creative
A recent article in the New York Times "Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline," by Laura
Pappano, reports that college degrees are now being
awarded in the study of creativity and that those who earn such degrees, by
some accounts, have proved themselves to be creative problem solvers, people
who can think out of the box, which might make them strong candidates in the
current job market as certain employers prize creativity. It may seem awkward to speak of majoring or
minoring in creativity per say, that is, separate from any specific field or
endeavor, and in fact in several of the courses mentioned the work required
appears rather academic, a traditional process requiring study of the
literature on creativity and representative individuals, personal observation
and self-reflection, analysis of a problem, discovery, and invention:
In Dr. Burnett’s
Introduction to Creative Studies survey course, students explore definitions of
creativity, characteristics of creative people and strategies to enhance their
own creativity. These include rephrasing problems as questions, learning not to
instinctively shoot down a new idea (first find three positives), and
categorizing problems as needing a solution that requires either action, planning
or invention. A key objective is to get students to look around with fresh eyes
and be curious. The inventive process, she says, starts with “How might you…”
If the course were Composition 101, similar strategies might be
used to enhance student awareness of how good writing gets done. The centrality of trial and error to all
creative endeavour is a key takeaway in creativity studies; one teacher dubbed
his course “Failure 101” to emphasize the fact.
Indeed, “his favorite assignment” sounds much like a writing
assignment: “Construct a résumé based on
things that didn’t work out and find the meaning and influence these have had
on your choices.” He asks students to
connect the dots in their life, and to redefine failure in the context of the
larger journey. We accomplish little if
we are unwilling to risk failure or to grope our way instinctively through the
psychological turmoil and darkness of inexperience, ignorance, and, at times, ineptitude. But we must till we find our footing, else we
risk accomplishing little and losing touch with that which gives life real zest,
meeting the challenges life poses.
Humans are naturally creative, we have had to be in
order to survive; our world is increasingly a world of made things and the best
of them, utilitarian or artistic, serve to make living easier and richer: a chair provides comfortable rest, a bowl,
fork and spoon practical means of conveying food to our mouths, clothing warmth
and protection, and story, poetry, music, film and all the arts ancient and
modern, above all, sustenance for our souls. The more we develop our creative capacities
the more potential we have to enhance our lives and those of others. The old myth is that creative endeavor
requires some sort of divine gift or genius, but giftedness may be greatly
overrated. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Human, All-Too Human (1878) about the
process artists must dedicate themselves to in order to achieve greatness:
Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the
flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration . . .[shining] down from heaven
as a ray of grace. In reality, the
imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre,
and bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point,
rejects selects, connects . . . All great artists and thinkers [are] great
workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting,
transforming, ordering. (qtd. In Shenk)
One has only to
read the history of any great artist to discover the artist’s commitment to a
process whereby natural endowments or talents were honed by experience and
training and a sense of purpose that outweighed the considerable difficulties
of achieving work of great merit. Stephen McCranie, a young commercial cartoonist,
writes and illustrates a blog called DoodleAlley detailing some of his creative “issues” in a fresh and
clear style, some of which the frame here illustrates.
Now I go to Youtube, a marvelous addition to the world of
made things, to watch the posts of the ice skating finals at the Sochi Winter
Olympics, where I will marvel at the athletic skill, power, daring, and grace of
reigning champion Yuan-Kim and others in faraway Russia. After that perhaps I’ll watch the director,
the actors and others speak of how they built spontaneity and risk into the
production of American Hustle (2013) to elicit the most creative
performances possible in a movie that celebrates characters who must
continually recreate themselves: “the
art and soul of survival.”
Shenk, David. The Genius In All Of Us. New York. Random House, 2011. Print.
