There is a strong tendency to believe that creativity is a gift with which only some people are born. It seems to run in families. We hear people say, ‘They are a very musical family’, and it seems that each new generation is as musical as the last. Perhaps the family has developed ways of encouraging the creativity of its children, so that they are, throughout their lives, creative learners. Perhaps more families could be musical, artistic, scientifically and humanistically creative, given more help in knowing how to encourage it.
We need to overcome the myth that creativity is a gift, an innate talent, that you are born either with or without. Creativity is an important part of every human life. We can cultivate creativity in every baby, toddler and child, and hope that it will continue into adult life. Human brains allow us to:
- move (sitting, crawling, lying down, or walking, running and jumping);
- learn though our senses and movement feedback;
- develop embodiment and a sense of self as separate from but connected to others;
- communicate in words, intonation, pauses, cadence and rhythm, gestures and body language;
- have ideas and thoughts;
- have feelings;
- develop relationships;
- play so that we are innovative, flexible and are not pinned down to one result;
- imitate by reconstructing what others do;
- make mental images (visual, auditory, olfactory, taste, tactile) and imagine;
- remember;
- represent, keeping hold of our experiences and going beyond the here and now;
- become a symbol user by making one thing stand for another;
- be creative, giving an existence to ideas, thoughts, feelings, relationships and physical embodiments.
All of these brain processes contribute to and help in the cultivation of creativity. They are each important in different ways. Creativity emerges out of the co-ordination of these broad-ranging processes.
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