Creativity and Cultural Policy

Chris Bilton

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415697606
• eBook ISBN: 9781317977599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Creativity has become a popular buzzword in contemporary cultural policy, yet the term remains poorly understood. In this collection, cultural policy specialists together with experts on psychology, creative enterprise and arts education, consider how 'creativity' is defined in a variety of settings, from 'creative management' to 'creative labour'.

The starting point of the book is to move beyond the notion that creativity is simply a product of extraordinary individuals and extraordinary thinking. In reality creativity draws together apparently contradictory thinking styles, processes and purposes which extend well beyond the mythical figure of the solitary genius.

This broad definition of creativity encompasses the contributions of managers, entrepreneurs and intermediaries to the creative process as well as the creativity of consumers and schoolchildren. In turn this implies a broad definition of cultural policy, taking in intellectual property law, education policy and corporate governance as well as policies towards the arts and creative industries.

This collection of articles offers new ways of thinking about creativity and about cultural policy. It will be of interest not only to students and practitioners of cultural policy but to anyone who is curious about the value and purpose of 'creativity' in contemporary culture.

This book was originally published as a special issue of International Journal of Cultural Policy.

The study of creativity: from genius to cognitive science

Robert Weisberg
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA

This paper presents a historical review of the spectrum of views taken by students of creativity. The review centers on the notion of genius, which assumes that creative individuals make conceptual leaps far ‘outside the box’. One modern variant of this view, the idea that creativity depends on on psychopathology, is discussed. This paper then considers the dominant view in psychology, which assumes that a group of cognitive and personality characteristics sets creative individuals apart, although we all possess these characteristics to varying degrees. Finally, the author examines the possibility that there are no differences in cognition or personality between creative and ordinary individuals. In this view, even the most radically new creative achievements are firmly built on the past, rather than being the result of rejection of the past. Evidence for this conceptualization of creativity is discussed and its implications for policy decisions are examined.

Creative thinking brings about new things. Our modern world has been shaped – for better or for worse – by the accomplishments of creative thinkers: artists, musicians, and poets; politicians; and inventors and scientists. Given the importance of creative thinking, it is notable that creativity has not always received full attention from psychologists (Sternberg and Lubart 1999). This may be because many believe that creativity comes about as the result of almost supernatural power – the power of genius. It is commonly assumed that creative thinking depends on breaking away from the past – from the habitual – based on the capacity to think ‘outside the box’. The genius is uniquely able to carry out such thinking. The genius view shapes much of modern psychologists’ thinking about creativity, and it also shapes much of the thinking about creativity in our culture, as shown by the ubiquity of the idea of ‘outside the box’ thinking in discussions of creativity in the media, and so on. This paper will review the ‘genius view’ of creativity from a historical perspective to show how components of this view influence current thinking on creativity. I also raise questions about the genius view and provide support for the opposite idea: contrary to the genius view, creative thinking depends on ordinary thinking, the kind of thinking that we all use every day. We do not need to postulate extraordinary powers of thinking in order to understand creativity. Finally, I will try to place my analysis in a broader context to make clear the more general relevance of my perspective.

I begin by defining concepts related to creativity, after which I present two case studies of creative achievement: Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix of DNA and Picasso’s creation of his seminal painting Guernica. These studies will provide a foundation for the remainder of the discussion. I then outline three streams of research on creativity, each of which takes a different tack in dealing with the question of genius. The first stream assumes that the source of new ideas – the power of genius – lies outside ordinary conscious thought: one possible source is madness. I call this stream out of one’s mind. The second stream – psychometrics of creativity – centers on measuring the particular thinking abilities and personality characteristics that contribute to creativity. In this view, too, the creative individual thinks farther outside the box than does the noncreative individual, and a specific set of thinking skills – divergent thinking – and personality characteristics – the creative personality – contribute to this ability. The third stream, the cognitive view, rejects the notion of genius. The cognitive view assumes that creative thinking is based on ordinary thinking processes, plus deep knowledge of the relevant domain: there are no differences in thinking between creative and noncreative individuals. Finally, I draw out some possible policy implications that follow from the cognitive view of creativity.

Questions of definition

The critical element in calling some product creative is that it be new, at least for the person who produces it. In addition, a creative accomplishment must be intentional. If you accidentally knock over a can of paint and the resultant ruined canvas is ‘discovered’ and exhibited in a museum, say, you were not creative in producing it. In discussions of creativity in an industrial context, a distinction is sometimes made between creativity and innovation. Creativity results in something new, but an innovation is a new idea that is brought to the marketplace as a new product. Thus, an innovation is the outcome of the creative process plus whatever additional factors come into play in bringing an idea successfully to market. I will be concerned only with the development of a novel idea in the first place and will not deal with factors that influence whether or not that idea becomes an innovation.

Value and creativity?

Most researchers also assume as part of their definition of creativity that a creative product must be of value (see Weisberg 2006): an invention must carry out the task for which it was designed; a work of art must be appreciated by an audience. I believe, in contrast, that one should separate the creativity of a product from its value. There are two problems with trying to use value as part of the definition of creativity. First is its variability: value is not constant. Sometimes a novel product only comes to be valued by later generations, as occurred with the paintings of the Impressionists. If we used value in the definition of creativity in art, therefore, we would have to say that the Impressionists were first not creative and then became creative (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1996). This seems to introduce unnecessary confusion into the definition: Were the Impressionist creative or were they not?

One could say that the variable aspect of value is related to its subjectivity. The second aspect of value is more objective: in the case of a scientific theory, say, we can say that it is valuable if it helps us understand a set of facts. This aspect of value, while not changing with taste, also turns out to raise problems. From a psychological perspective, there is no difference between the processes that bring about a useful theory versus a proposal that is rejected as useless. It is, therefore, more straightforward to keep separate the creativity of a product from its value. Even if a novel theoretical proposal is rejected, it is still creative. If this view becomes a dominant view a few generations later, its creativity has not changed.

Creativity as a social activity

Some argue that creativity is essentially a social activity, because the attribution of creative to some product is done by others, based on its value (see Csikszentmihalyi [1996] for discussion). I agree that creativity is essentially a social act, but as discussed above, I do not believe that the value judgments of others determine what is creative. Rather, we need other people to determine what is novel. A student in class recounted a story of an artist friend of hers who destroyed his work at the end of each day. She asked whether her friend was creative (his artwork, not his method of working). The answer is that we cannot tell, because we do not know if the work he produced was novel, since we did not see it. We need people other than the artist to see his work, not in order to evaluate each day’s work, but to determine its novelty.

It is true that when an individual produces some novel product – a poem, a painting, a mousetrap, a scientific theory – he or she typically hopes that it will be positively evaluated by others. All creative acts are acts of social communication, and value plays a critical role in the creator’s success as a communicator. However, once again I would make a distinction between the factors involved in defining a product as creative in the first place and the social-communicative aspect of the creative-actin-context. Value may play an intrinsic role in the latter, but it is not relevant to the former.

A related issue revolving around value concerns the role of society’s judgments in determining what is to be considered a work of art (e.g., Carey 2006). The question of whether something is a work of art is independent of the question of whether something is creative, however. We can agree that something is novel and has been intentionally produced – i.e., it is creative – without agreeing on whether it is a work of art. Indeed, the question of whether or not it is art does not have to be considered at all in determining whether of not the product is creative.

One reason that the criterion of value is introduced in definitions of creativity is because theorists are concerned with distinguishing creativity from what one could call ‘mere’ novelty. For example, a person suffering from schizophrenia might produce a ‘word salad’ when faced with a problem. This bizarre response might be novel, but should we call it creative? Introducing value as part of the definition eliminates that potential problem, because no one would value the word salad of the schizophrenic. However, if we include the individual’s intention as part of the definition of creative, as I did above, then we can avoid the trap of the word salad without including value in our definition: someone in a schizophrenic episode cannot intentionally engage in solving a problem, so anything he or she produces is, ipso facto, excluded from consideration.

Aha! and creativity

People use the term Aha! as a shorthand description of a creative act: ‘I suddenly had an Aha! and the problem was solved’. The Aha! reaction – or an epiphany – is a defining characteristic of a creative insight, where one suddenly ‘sees’ the solution to a long unsolved problem. The use of the term epiphany – and its relatives insight and Aha! – is derived from the religious, where one experiences a revelatory manifestation of the divine. In the case of creative thinking, the revelation is of the solution to a problem. The notion of insight was introduced in psychology over 100 years ago by the Gestalt psychologists, and since its introduction there has been debate concerning whether Aha! experiences are brought about through a mechanism different from that which occurs in other types of problem solving – sometimes called analytic problem solving – which are based on logic and/or retrieval of information from memory. Recent research indicates that there may not be a clear distinction between creativity based on analysis versus insight (Fleck and Weisberg 2004, Weisberg 2006), so I will assume that no special mechanisms are needed to understand Aha! experiences. Further evidence to support this assumption will be presented later.

With this background, we can now briefly examine how two creative advances came about: the discovery of the double helix and Picasso’s Guernica. These advances will provide information that will be used to test claims concerning the creative process made by different theoretical views.

Two case studies of creative thinking

Discovery of the double helix

In 1953, after approximately one and one-half years of work, Watson and Crick published the double helix model of DNA, with revolutionary effects on our understanding and control over genetic processes. Other research groups were at that time also working on the structure of DNA, and Watson and Crick were not the first to publish a possible structure. However, theirs was ultimately judged to be correct (Olby 1994).

In autumn 1951, Watson, a recent Ph.D. in genetics, came to Cambridge University where Crick was working on his Ph.D. in biology. Soon after Watson’s arrival, he and Crick realized that they both wanted to solve the problem of the structure of DNA. They made two early decisions that were very important in setting them on the path to success: (1) they began with the assumption that DNA might be in the shape of a helix, and (2) they decided to try to build a model of the structure of DNA. Where did Watson and Crick get these two critical ideas? Did they have some magical intuition that led them ‘outside the box’, along the correct path? No: both assumptions were based on the closely related work of Pauling, who had recently solved the problem of the structure of the protein alpha-keratin, which forms many bodily structures, among them hair and fingernails. Like DNA, alpha-keratin is a lar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The study of creativity: from genius to cognitive science
• 2. Manageable creativity
• 3. The most creative organization in the world'? The BBC, 'creativity' and managerial style
• 4. The English model of creativity: cultural politics of an idea
• 5. Craft labour and creative industries
• 6. Creative labour, cultural work and individualisation
• 7. The rise of 'user creativity' - Web 2.0 and a new challenge for copyright law and cultural policy
• 8. The rise of the Trojan horses in the creative industries
• 9. Social creativity: re-qualifying the creative economy
• Index