Creative Credo

Before I took this class, I tended to restrict creativity to certain areas, such as advertising,  composing, designing and so on and thought that only those fields need creativity. However, after several classes, I started realizing that we can explore creative process in anything and everyone can be a creator no matter what his/her job is.  We can be a creator when we are cooking, eating and reading, and we can show our creativity in many things. Through observing things, communicating with others, reading, learning new and different ideas from others, challenging ourselves, reflecting on ourselves, we can also stimulate our creativity. 

When I searched for "creative process", I found that everyone can have his/her own idea and pattern of creative process. However, although every creative process pattern is distinctive from others, they share some basic things. For example, almost every process include observation, which means that you need to get information and knowledge from the outside world for creating something. This corresponds to what we did in the class - documenting things in life, reading, listening to others' opinions. We engage and absorb the information and knowledge, and then take advantage of them to lay the foundation for our creating. Therefore, this is a very important step for us to be creative.  Also, every creative process include presenting and performing, which means you need to present your work and show your idea. Therefore, you can get feedback from others and reflect on yourself and then refine your idea and work.  

This really changed my understanding about creativity and helps build my confidence in being creative. Also, I really learnt a lot of great ways that can stimulate our creativity in this class:  I really find it useful to document my life since it helps me notice things that I have never noticed before. I had some new and different ideas about many things. For instance, when I was doing the 8 videos of exploring creative process, I started realizing that I can be creative even when I am dressing myself. I need to observe the weather and consider the occasion for dressing. Then I need to pick up a suitable dress and coordinate the dress with shoes and accessories. The whole process needs my creativity so that I can make myself perfect looking.

The activities in this class are very interesting and made me think deeper about creativity. For example, through writing Haiku, I realized that I have the talent of being a writer and being creative. Also, in order to get inspiration while we are creating something, we should observe and pay attention to details in life that we may neglect sometimes.