Originality; imagination, inspiration, ingenuity, inventiveness, resourcefulness, creativeness, vision are synonyms related to creativity. There are none of these qualities listed missing in the average mother bringing up a family

Every child expresses an innate creativity that comes into play as they discover their new world and how it works. From crawling to walking is a creative process. Learning language is a creative process. Learning to speak and write in order to communicate is a creative act. The child that screams as s/he takes their first steps is proof of the elation and happiness the act of creativity produces. So what happens to children when they grow into adults? What happens to their natural instinct to be creative? How come many 12yr olds think they can’t draw, sing make up stories etc.?

When people talk about creativity they are usually referring to the arts. People who paint pictures are creative. People who act are creative. People who write books are called creative. Nowadays businessmen are referred to as being creative. Footballers play creatively. Programs on TV are creative. Governments create new jobs. There are whole industries catering to creativity.You learn how to be creative in art school?

Creativity is another one of these words/acts that has been professionalized, classified and taken out of ordinary daily use. What I want to explore here is creativity in our day to day lives. Everyone is and can be creative. From the scientist to the housewife, from the skilled worker to the unemployed. Today most of us have to be creative in our own time for there is less and less creativity left in employment. The rationalization of both employment and schools is being designed not to encourage creativity in all workers and pupils but a privilege afforded only to the lucky few

Workers education

Not so long ago ship yard workers, engineering workers, woodworkers and people who worked with their hands could find uses to express their creative skills in the home, making things in metal wood. Fixing things. There were no need for DIY programs telling people how their homes should look; these creative skills were already at work in the home If we look back to the the 1930s there were workers education programs. There were scientists, philosophers, and physicians writing books on popular science and mathematics as part of their responsibility in helping ordinary people understand the world around them. And before then, during the Industrial revolution, community action and education helped in forming unions and reforming work practices that were akin to slavery. In the 1960s there was a movement and push towards liberating the public mind towards a more open and informed approach to education and politics. Most of the benefits, rights and liberties of these eras were win mainly by the struggles of ordinary working people. But of course to a great extent will be recorded in history books as the gifts and “creation” of our rulers.

Backward progress

To equate how the term creativity is used in today’s buzzing world of make-over’s and take- over’s The reason creativity has been professionalized institutionalized and rationalized is to infer; Only professionals can be creative. Only training creates creative people. And the only way ordinary people can connect with creativity is through inane house makeover programs on the television or the purchase of designer goods; technological play things, fashion, entertainment, mass spectator events and courses on trivia called further education. These things are more and more being sponsored by the public purse and to a greater extent being sold as educational. It is not useful to have ordinary people thinking or acting creatively by themselves. When ordinary people think and act creatively by themselves, not only can they design, build, and decorate their own homes. They can also stop slavery. When ordinary people think and act creatively they can stop children being forced up chimneys; organize themselves into cooperatives, demand standards, create unions, educate each other, become self sufficient and such like. So If you wish to control people never, leave them to their own creative devices much better if creativity is left to professionals

Empire

In the days of the empire, when slavery became unpopular the British, in places like Jamaica set the slaves free. The freed people wandered back into the open land made a shelter, grew some crops, and did a bit of fishing to sustain themselves and their families. It was a warm climate and they could be happy with very little. So the colonisers had to think. How can we keep control of and exploit the free workers? They did this by the creation of wants. (Chomsky)
Westernized housing, education, technology, machines, farming equipment, running water, clothing, household utensils, drugs, in fact all the gadgets and paraphernalia of western living. So through the creation of needs the colonisers undermine the creation of free living to slavery by another name, that of consumption. It doesn’t take to much of a stretch of the imagination to compare those colonisers then, with the commercial colonisers of our city’s today. So therefore creativity should be seen not as an professional aptitude but something that is inherent within most peoples capabilities, and the proof is evident in every reach of cultural society. All that is needed is for its potential to be recognized, realized and used.

 

A very interesting read to dip in and out of.

The Intellectual life of the British Working Classes