The other day my imagination definitely got the better of me, and I guess could be interpreted as “extreme creativity of the mind”. It was late one night and only one of my housemates was in besides myself and had already gone to bed. Due to hearing about a lot of break ins recently I was already quite paranoid about it happening to my house and when I heard a banging noise, which I am still not sure what it could have been, I convinced myself that somebody was in the house. Consequently I spent at least the next 10 minutes panicking and freaking out and thinking that I could hear creaks from footsteps and whispering.

Turned out that the creaks were in fact from the water boiler, that sounds very similar to when people walk across the landing and the whispering was more than likely either simply a figment of my imagination or from the people living next door as the walls are ridiculously thin. When I went to check there was no sign of anybody or a break in, and my housemate was still asleep! So that was my slightly embarassing experience of the imagination taking over all sense of reasoning and logic!!!!

On a different note, after being introduced to teachers.tv, I decided to have a look for myself at some of the creativity themed videos that it has to offer. Just by typing in creativity in the search feature it produced such a huge result: http://www.teachers.tv/search/node/creativity

This in itself just shows what an important issue creativity has become in the way that children should be taught and how it shouldn’t be disregarded. I have a watched a few clips from the results but I intend to have a much more indepth look at what the website has to offer soon.

Few other items I have found:

Article by bbc on creativity: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7069614.stm

The possibilities of creativity in schools: http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/creativity-school-714

I now have realised as to why I have never written a diary on a regular basis before in my life; on reflection from whenever I have started one, I seem to have the complete inability to remember to write in it for months at a time, and in a sense I feel that I have neglected to write anything on here in a similar way, although it has not been that long of a time since I last posted on here compared with my experiences of writing a diary which can be a months apart!!!!

The Ken Robinson reading highlighted some very interesting points that I have never considered before. From studing maths myself, I have always believed it to be a purely objective subject, you’re either right or you’re wrong, which is an aspect I’ve always quite liked about it as means that you know where you stand once a piece of work is completed. However Robinson discusses the subjectivity of science, “It’s perfectly possible to be objective and wrong“, I had never seen it from that perspective before this, but it is definitely true what he says, “the apparently impersonal process of scientific inquiry involves a very personal commitment by the scientist“. The initial methods of procedures and “frameworks of interpretation” are created purely from a subjective point of view.

The objectivity of art section also made some notable points, I think that largely art is subjective, personally you either like a piece of art or you don’t, but on a large scale view, there does seem to be “reasoned judgements”, which follow a general criteria, your own personal opinion does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the majority and in this sense it’s objectivity becomes apparent.

http://www.cypni.org.uk/downloads/alloutfutures.pdf

The 7th dimension is one that I was surprised and intrigued at, repeated test findings state that “creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys and more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers”. I had never really thought about creativity in regards to the comparisons of gender typical behaviours and how in fact androgyny is a more accurate representation of a creative person’s characteristics. At the same time though, it is stressed that even though they have traits not usually associated with their gender, they also have their own gender-specific traits.

Gardner’s “Frames Of MInd”, is a very indepth look at how IQ tests are not an adequate representation of a person’s real abilities or success later in life, and that aspects such as reason, intelligence, logic and knowledge should not be treated as synonymous. There are chapters devoted to specific types of intelligence, one of which I could relate to my questioning of the creativity in maths, “Logical-Mathematical Intelligence”. Developmental psychologist Piaget, describes the processes that a child encounters as they grow older in terms of “object permanence” and the grasping of applying the number series to arrays of objects. It is interesting that virtually everybody experiences this same gradual process of learning, and each thing learned, opens up the possibilities for further expansion.

There are items from “Frames of Mind” that can be tied together with “Creative flow and the psychology of discovery and invention”. Both pieces describe the importance of things that increase the creative ability of a person. An example would be access to both a domain and a field, things that are considered crucial to the flourishing of a person’s ability, having access to high quality facilities is inevitably going to encourage advancement.

Having being told to bring something to be creative with to tomorrow’s seminar, I am intrigued and looking forward to what we shall be doing exactly. I now just need to decide what to bring!!

In reflection to how this is significant towards one’s creativity it may seem that the two don’t relate, but if you found yourself to be concentrating perhaps too much when doing something, getting bogged down with all that is going on, then using this relaxation technique we were shown I’m sure would be a great help to just take a step back, clear your mind and you then go back to what you were doing with a fresh perspective and can make realisations, good or bad, that were not so clear before.

I would definitely like to try to recreate this self-hypnosis when on my own, but am worried that it will not be so effective compared to listening to someone elses very calming voice!! I shall have to wait and see though!!

I decided to call my blog re-inspiring my own creativity, as I feel that the older I have become, the less time I have spent on things of a typically creative manner. I am studying Maths and education, and especially since starting at York have devoted much more of my time towards solely these two areas. Having studied fine art all the way through high school, including a-level, I definitely used to spent more time doing the typically perceived creative subjects and would have considered myself to be a creative person. I still try every now and again when I have free time to do a sketch or something, but it’s not the same as when you are studying something like art as a subject.

This is why I now feel I should find more creative processes and attitudes that I can encorporate into my degree subjects, so in a sense “re-inspiring my own creativity”, but applying it to different means, rather than more arty subjects.

I wouldn’t consider the Maths that I have been studying at York to be remotely creative, information is given to you, then essentially you are expected to regurgitate it for an exam later on. I have initially started, by reading books, which discuss the creative attitudes that can be applied to Maths and Sciences areas, and from this hope to be more open-minded to the new creative possibilities that exist.

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