Creativity Doesn’t Always Look Creative
Jen, Thinking Aloud
Founder of TICE
I have always believed in creativity.
Wholeheartedly.
Not just as something that belongs to art, music, drama or design, but as something that moves through how we think, work, communicate, solve problems, understand each other and imagine what might be possible.
But recently, through conversations with young people we have been interviewing, I realised something.
Believing creativity lives everywhere and being able to name where it shows up are not quite the same thing.
We have been asking a question that sounds simple enough: where do you think creativity lives outside of art lessons?
The answers have been fascinating. Many go straight to music, drama, dance, photography, fashion, creative writing or clubs they attend outside school. And of course, they are right. Creativity absolutely lives there. It lives in the rehearsal room, the sketchbook, the studio, the stage, the song, the image, the movement, the thing being made.
But then there is often a pause.
Some know creativity must live somewhere else too. They might say “other lessons” or “problem-solving” or “ideas,” but when asked to explain what that actually looks like, the language becomes harder to find.
And I do not think that pause only belongs to young people.
I think most of us would stumble there for a moment.
We know creativity matters. We talk about it in relation to education, work, innovation, confidence, enterprise and the future. We say we need creative thinkers. We say the world needs imagination. But ask us to point to creativity while it is actually happening, before there is anything finished to look at, and it becomes much harder to name.
That is not because creativity is absent.
It is because we have been taught to recognise it most easily when it becomes visible.
A painting. A song. A performance. A design. A poem. A poster. A photograph. A finished piece of work.
Something we can point to and say, “There. That is creative.”
We are much less practised at naming creativity while it is still moving. While it is still a question, a decision, a connection, a change of direction, a half-formed idea, a better way of explaining something, a moment where someone notices what everyone else has missed.
I could see it in the young person who was funny, quick and confident in conversation, yet still said, “I’m not creative.” The kind of moment that makes you smile a little, because the creativity is right there in front of you, moving through the room before anyone has thought to call it that.
Maybe that is because, somewhere along the way, creativity became attached to certain rooms.
The art room. The music room. The drama studio. The design classroom. The places with paint, instruments, cameras, costumes, glue sticks, fabric, sketchbooks and, usually, at least one cupboard that never quite closes.
Meanwhile, other subjects often get different labels. Maths is academic. Science is rigorous. English is analytical. History is knowledge-rich. Creative subjects are expressive, practical or vocational.
The labels are neat, but they are not always helpful. They can make creativity look like it belongs in one place, while problem-solving, experimentation, invention, interpretation and communication are quietly happening everywhere else under more “serious” names. As if creativity becomes less creative the moment it picks up a calculator, writes a hypothesis or walks into a room without paint on its hands.
This is where I think we have made creativity too small.
We have made creativity look like a subject, a personality type or a finished thing, when really it is a way of thinking, responding and moving through uncertainty.
A creative person is not only someone who can draw, sing, perform, design or make something beautiful. A creative person might be the one who asks the question no one else thought to ask. The one who can make sense of a messy problem. The one who finds the words that change the mood in the room. The one who joins two unlikely ideas together. The one who notices what is missing. The one who can sit with “I don’t know yet” for a little longer than everyone else.
That last part matters, because creativity often begins in uncertainty.
Sometimes creativity is not the final answer. Sometimes it is the willingness to stay with the half-formed thought, the awkward first attempt, the odd connection, the problem that has not yet behaved itself.
In other words, creativity is not always the sparkle at the end.
Sometimes it is the wrestle in the middle.
Margaret Boden, a cognitive scientist and philosopher, helps open this up. Her work describes creativity not only as producing something completely new, but as exploring possibilities, combining ideas and transforming the way we see a problem.
That feels useful because it lets creativity move beyond the “arty” stereotype without taking anything away from art.
A scientist designing an experiment is being creative. A mathematician finding another route is being creative. A historian questioning whose story is missing is being creative. A student in English choosing the sentence that finally says what they mean is being creative.
Not because those subjects need to become art lessons.
But because creative thinking has been there all along.
This is also why creative subjects matter so much.
Not because they are the only place creativity lives, but because they are some of the clearest spaces where creativity is named, practised and made visible. In creative subjects, people can see ideas developing. They can test, adapt, edit, respond to feedback, take risks and change direction. They can learn that a first attempt is not necessarily a failure. They can discover that uncertainty is not always something to avoid. Sometimes it is where the work begins.
But creativity was never meant to stay in one room.
If we only recognise creativity in art, music and drama, maybe the problem is not that creativity belongs there. Maybe the problem is that we have not helped people see how it travels.
So perhaps we do not need to keep asking young people whether they are creative.
Not at first.
That question can feel too much like a test of identity. It asks them to place themselves inside or outside a word they may already have misunderstood.
Maybe we need to help them notice the crossings.
The moment a maths problem needs imagination. The moment a scientific idea needs storytelling. The moment design needs empathy. The moment humour becomes a way of communicating. The moment a mistake asks for a new route.
That is where creativity often sits.
Not neatly inside one subject, one room or one kind of person, but in the movement between things.
And once we help young people see that movement, creativity becomes less of a badge they have to claim and more of a process they can recognise, practise and carry with them.
Because creativity is not only something a person has. It is something a person is allowed, encouraged or supported to use.
And perhaps that is the shift.
Not only teaching creativity as something that belongs to certain subjects, but recognising it as something that moves through how people think, speak, question, adapt, connect and make sense of the world.
Not only when it becomes a painting, a performance or a finished piece of work.
But while it is still happening.
References
Amabile, T.M. (1983) ‘The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), pp. 357–376. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.357.
Boden, M.A. (2004) The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Craft, A. (2000) Creativity Across the Primary Curriculum: Framing and Developing Practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.