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Big-C and Little-c: The Creativity Crisis in the U.S.:
How can we encourage students to move toward Big-C solutions?
Art educators have the daily joy of seeing little-c performances when children in
classrooms discover new techniques, interpret assignments in an original ways, or present fresh
images. However, according to a recent article in Newsweek, the flow of enthusiastic, creative
production appears to have slowed in the U. S. The article suggests that the lack of creativity
development in our schools is a cause of the decline (Bronson & Merryman, 2010)
What happens to Creativity in Schools?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi situates creative thinking on the boundaries between disciplines
and occupations. Taking Csikszentmihalyi’s view, creative production in education appears to
be an oxymoron. Academic structures, such as classes, courses, grade levels, and divisions,
divide and isolate experience and knowledge to construct and define academic epistemology
within disciplines. The processes contained within academic structures are intended to replicate
the disciplines. The replicative nature of these structures limits the potential of teachers and
students to incorporate knowledge from other fields and life experiences into their primary
disciplines in order to develop useful, innovative solutions and products for problems within and
outside of the field.
Mark Runco, Director of The Torrance Center for Creativity & Talent Development,
recently gave a presentation at East Carolina University. Runco takes the view that creative
thinking should be incorporated into all school disciplines. The following is an example of a
project that Runco has done.
“In his research, Runco asks college students, ‘Think of all the things that could interfere
with graduating from college.’ Then he instructs them (college students) to pick one of
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those items and to come up with as many solutions for that problem as possible. This is a
classic divergent-convergent creativity challenge. A subset of respondents, like the
proverbial Murphy, quickly lists every imaginable way things can go wrong. But they
demonstrate a complete lack of flexibility in finding creative solutions.”
In Runco’s subsequent research, those who do better in both problem-finding and
problem-solving have better relationships. They are more able to handle stress and
overcome the bumps life throws their way. A similar study of 1,500 middle- schoolers
found that those high in creative self-efficacy had more confidence about their future and
ability to succeed. They were sure that their ability to come up with alternatives would
aid them, no matter what problems would arise. (Bronson & Merryman, 2020)
Similarly, in a community project here at East Carolina University and in Pitt County, we
have found that the middle and high school students that we work with are able to identify
problems in the community, but they are less able to visualize solutions to these problems. Often
their solutions simply visualized the problem and display the image with the prohibit sign. Based
on Runco’s work, there is great value in teaching students problem-solving behaviors—to
develop reflective thinking and divergent solution generation. Students who have confidence in
their problem solving abilities display less stress.
Definitions of Creativity and Innovation
“Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected)
and appropriate (i.e., useful, adaptive concerning task restrains)” (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999, p.
3). In creativity studies, researchers enumerate characteristics of persons who are celebrated for
creative achievements to find commonalities between these persons. Other researchers conduct
cognitive studies to identify and measure creative thinking methods or conditions such as (1) an
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aspect of intelligence; (2) an unconscious process; (3) the ability to solve problems; and (4) an
associative process (Brown, 1999). Researchers develop categories of cognitive processes such
as problem finding, formulation and redefinition; divergent thinking; synthesis and combination
of information; and idea combinations through random or chance-based processes.
Studying the cognitive nature of creativity, neuroscientists have begun to look at neural
substrates of these processes (Abraham & Windmann, 2007). However, understanding the traits
and biological locations of creative cognition in an individual is only one area that explains the
multiple facets of creative production (Sawyer, 2006). Creativity may be thought of as a
culturally determined process dependent on what a social, cultural, or ethnic group perceives as
novel, original, or unexpected and what product or action the group determines as appropriate
and useful. Therefore, researchers have begun to focus more attention on the environment
surrounding the creative individual and the person’s interactions with the social and cultural
contexts of creative production.
Although concern with the relationship between environmental factors and intrapersonal
factors has been present in creativity research for some time (Brown, 1999, Torrance, 1975),
recently there has been an increased interest in the relationship of culture and place to creative
production. Interest in explaining varieties of creative expression in many cultures and awareness
of the value of creativity in complex modern institutions such as education, business, and
community networks has led to new theory. Cognitive scientists, art and design educators, and
business researchers have developed systems-oriented models that consider situational factors in
the environment as well as the creative factors of an individual person’s cognition and behaviors
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, James, Lederman Gerard, & Vagt-Traore, 2004, Jamil, 2009, Sawyer,
2006, Amabile, 1996). In relation to art educational settings, Clark and Zimmerman (2005)
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identify collaborative group work, supportive environments, and a wide range of tasks among the
interventions for nurturing creative talent. These are common environmental factors found in
systems-oriented creativity models. For gifted students the problems of situation are large. For
example the language and communication skills of the talented student may not be matched to
the cultural group where he or she is situated.
Creativity and Innovation
Finding a relationship between creativity and innovation, Sawyer (2006) suggests that
creativity is the science of human innovation, thereby providing a framework that permits
exploration of creativity in individuals, groups, organizations, and societies. Innovation is closely
associated with the appearance of creativity in social systems and the development of products
that require the participation of many people. Designers and economists are likely to speak of
innovation because creative results in those fields enlist many interdisciplinary participants
(Jamil, 2009).
It is the area of social creative development that our Community Problems/Community
Solutions project addresses. We want to develop a community that prizes and displays interest in
the creative thought of all its members.
What is YAEP?
The ECU School of Art and Design and other university and community groups have
developed a project that has the goal of stimulating creative solutions to community problems.
Youth Art Expressions Project (YAEP) exhibits Pitt County Schools students’ artwork in the
Greenville Mall. YAEP is a collaborative project sponsored by the Eastern North Carolina
Council on Substance Abuse, Citizens’ Coalition Against Violence, The Greenville Police
Department, Art Education Program of Pitt County Schools, and East Carolina University School
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of Art & Design and College of Fine Arts and Communication. The YAEP has been in existence
for four years and has involved more than 400 students per year. Based on best education
practices, the YAEP links instruction in the public schools to organizations and businesses in the
community.
Goals of the Project
The overarching goal of the YAEP Exhibition is to encourage youth to enter into civic
dialog and action by imagining and artistically visualizing ways to address current problems
related to substance abuse, youth violence, and related social issues. The project links multiple
facets of a diverse community to create an innovative community-learning environment to
support youth as they develop into healthy, creative, future thinking citizens. The YAEP uses the
public space of the Greenville Mall as a forum for social critique and public identity building.
The watchword of YAEP might be “Using artistic creativity for the common good.” For the two
weeks of the YAEP Exhibition, the Greenville Mall serves as a market place for ideas about the
future. We invite any school to participate in the YEAP exhibition.
References
Abraham, A. & Windmann, S. (2007, May). Neurocognitive mechanisms of creativity: A
toolkit. Methods, (42) 1, 38-48. doi:10.1016/j.ymeth.2006.12.007
Amabile, T. (1996). Creativity in context: Update to the social psychology of creativity. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
Bronson, P. & Merryman, A. (2010, July 10). The creativity crises: For the first time, research
shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong and how can we fix it?
Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-
crisis.print.html
Brown, R. T. (1999). Creativity: What are we to measure? In E. P. Torrance, J. A. Glover, R. R.
Ronning, & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 3-32). New York: Plenum
Press.
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Clark, G. & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Teaching talented art students: Principles and practices.
New York: Teachers College Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008, December 22). The creative person and the creative context.
Retrieved from http://www.exploratorium.edu/media/
James, V., Lederman Gerard, R., & Vagt-Traore, B. (2004). Enhancing creativity in the
classroom. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and
technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/).
Jamil, S. (2009). The challenge of establishing world-class universities. Washington, DC: The
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.
Sawyer, R. W. (2006). Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Sternberg, J. R. & Lubart, T. I. (1999). Concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms. In J. R.
Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-14.
Torrance, E. P. (1965, Summer). Scientific views of creativity and factors affecting its growth.
Daedalus, 94(3), 663-681. Retrieved July 18, 2010, from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026936
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