I would say I am confident in my own work and creativity. I’m more than happy to commit to my own ideas and follow them through, present and put my work into the open, and receive criticism about my work, and while there are aspects of each of those I’d like to develop more when working in design, I think these things will come in time. What I’m trying to say is the idea of creative confidence as a thing to have yourself isn’t something I found particularly notable from the lecture, however, what I found really interesting was the idea of creativity being a skill rather than a talent.
Coming from having been one of five people in my school to do Art at A-Level, and having been through the foundation course at UU (initially thinking I was going to my undergrad in Fine Art Sculpture), I’ve never thought that creativity wasn't anything other than a talent only certain people have. To be honest, I would have proudly gate kept creativity in secondary school being one of the few in my year to do a non-STEM subject. Having somewhat impulsively picked IxD based on my gut as my undergrad course, I feel I never fully disconnected from my Fine Art roots, and maybe carried my ideas of creativity through from it.
The idea the David Kelley, the books author, suggests is that creativity is a skill that can be developed. I think this is true depending on how you define creativity. Creativity is often used as an umbrella term to incorporate all practices of art and design, from painting to problem solving, which has made me think and consider this idea further. If we want to say creativity is a skill I’d say creativity is not the ability to do but the ability to apply. For example, if you look at fine art painting for example, an artist looks at an object, decides how to go about painting it, then paints it. The ability to see and the ability to physically to do the painting are intrinsic talent, whereas the decisions over how to paint it, what colours, brushes, lines, etc, to use is the creativity part. This part, the decisions, are influenced by what the artist has learnt from outside sources, other peoples techniques, and information. What I’m trying to say is that creativity in the sense of problem solving is a skill which anyone can develop, however, the idea creativity as an umbrella term for the ability to do art and design is not, or is at least is capped by an intrinsic talent for people.
If I sound like I’m trying to argue against creativity as a skill, I’m not, I think its a step in the right direction for a collection of industries that could really benefit from non conventional skillsets and backgrounds. Shifting the perception of what creativity really is incredibly important for the longevity of the design industry, as being able to bring as wide a variety of people into it is vital, due to us already designing for such a wide variety of people.