What Counts as Creativity?

What Counts as Creativity - Deanna Vogt

Do you do creative work?

If you said Yes, well done.

If you said No, maybe you’re right for now, and maybe I can get you to look deeper.

Look down this incomplete list of activities and work (or play) products. Some are inherently deeply creative. They vary a lot in their extent and depth of originality and impact (the two primary dimensions of creativity).

For now, gradients of creativity are not the point. Creative is creative. See it and own it, then wonder what more you would like to do with your creative nature.

How many kinds of creative work from this list have you’ve ever been involved in? What other kinds of creative experiences have you had?

creativity starter list—what’s your total number?

  • Architecture

  • Art

  • Bridge-building (people, groups, ideas, resources)

  • Bringing together (people, groups, ideas, resources)

  • Catalyzing

  • Child development

  • Coaching

  • Coding

  • Communication

  • Cuisine

  • Culture change

  • Curating

  • Dance

  • Design

  • Developing ideas

  • Development (human, organizational, cultural)

  • Diplomacy

  • Discovery

  • Drama

  • Educating

  • Emotional labor

  • Engineering

  • Entrepreneurship

  • Experimentation

  • Exploration

  • Expression

  • Facilitation

  • Film making

  • Finding patterns

  • Generating ideas

  • Generative learning (exploring, discovering, and creating new things by learning)

  • Healing

  • Horticulture

  • Hospitality

  • Illustration

  • Imagination

  • Innovation

  • Inspiring

  • Invention

  • Leadership

  • Life design

  • Making connections

  • Mediation

  • Mentoring

  • Music

  • Nurturing creativity or change in others

  • Organizational change

  • Parenting

  • Personal change

  • Photography

  • Play

  • Problem solving: new problems or solutions

  • Recognizing ideas

  • Re-imagining

  • Relating

  • Remaking

  • Research

  • Science

  • Seeing alternatives

  • Seeing things in new ways

  • Self-coaching

  • Shifting (perspectives, paradigms)

  • Social change

  • Solving new problems

  • Solving old problems in new ways

  • Solving problems your way

  • Story-telling

  • Strategy

  • Styling

  • Teaching

  • Team building

  • Theory building

  • Therapy

  • Trailblazing

  • Transformation

  • Turning ideas into reality

  • Vision

  • Writing

  • __________

  • __________

Did you find more than one way that you are or have been creative in your life?

Will you believe yourself or others now when you hear, “I’m not creative”?

Creativity is making something new, something of value to someone, anyone, even you. Something covers a lot of territory. So does creativity.

If you’re reading this, you do or have done creative work.

It matters that you know that, because what we can notice we can grow, improve on, and put to use.

Having established some of the ways you are creative…how do you make your creativity count?

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

Neil Gaiman

Knowing CreativityDeanna VogtScope of creativityComment