Everyday Creativity

The Nature of Everyday Creativity

Definitions of creativity typically include the combination of originality, uniqueness, or novelty with meaningfulness, appropriateness, or usefulness. For example, a chef might combine several ingredients in an unexpected manner, but unless the resulting dish is edible, such a novel combination of foods might be considered eccentric—not creative.

All forms of creativity require originality and meaningfulness, but expressions of creativity vary along a broad continuum. This continuum ranges from personally original and meaningful insights—what has been called “personal” or “mini-c” creativity—all the way to revolutionary examples of originality and impact, called eminent or “Big C” creativity. Everyday creativity dwells somewhere in between the two poles of mini-c and Big C creativity and pertains to the process of living life creatively.

The focus of everyday creativity is not so much on producing creative outcomes, but rather approaching everyday activities with a creative, open, and flexible mindset. Examples of everyday creativity include everything from an elementary teacher's innovative lesson planning to a sixth grader effectively deescalating a potential fistfight between two of his classmates.

A Rich History of Everyday Creativity

Ruth Richards and her collaborators have contributed greatly to increasing awareness and propelling the idea of everyday creativity. Their work adds to a rich history of educators, psychologists, and philosophers who have highlighted the importance of recognizing the everyday nature of creative, imaginative, and aesthetic experiences. Taken together, this body of work effectively highlights that everyone has creative capacity—necessary for coping with uncertainty, daily problem solving, and sometimes even survival. The expression of everyday creativity also has the potential to result in a healthier, happier, and more meaningful life experience.

Everyday Creativity in Schools and Classrooms

Schools and classrooms would seem like an ideal setting for cultivating and expressing everyday creativity. Although long-standing and successful efforts have been aimed at cultivating creativity in schools and classrooms, researchers have also documented how creativity frequently is overlooked and sometimes actively undermined in schools and classrooms.

This devaluing of creativity in schools and classrooms may not be too surprising when one considers commonly held misconceptions about the nature of creativity. For instance, many people believe that creativity only pertains to the arts, only certain people can be creative, and that those few “creative-types” are nonconformist and, therefore, potentially disruptive. Such narrow and problematic conceptions are reinforced by popularized images of creativity that focus exclusively on creative eminence and eccentric behaviors associated with eminent personalities. Consider, for example, the portrayal of Mozart in the 1984 film Amadeus. Given such narrow conceptions of creativity, it is easy to understand how teachers and students would feel that creative expression often is not appropriate for the classroom. Everyday creativity offers a broader, more positive and universal conception of creativity. In this view, creativity can be seen as having an additive relationship to the curriculum—imbuing the curriculum with personal meaning and individual expression.

...