Howard Gardner appeals to the creative mind

What is Creativity or who are the Masters of Creativity?

"The acid test of creativity is whether after a person does his or her thing they actually change the way other people see the world," Howard Gardner said last Wednesday in King Concert Hall.

As an American developmental psychologist, researcher and published author Gardner launched Fredonia's 2010-2011 series of convocation programs entitled "Faces and Phases of Creativity."

In his lecture, Gardner attempted to reframe this concept of creativity through his research of well-known masters and creators. Among the seven primary masters of creativity he selected to study were: Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, T.S Eliot, Martha Graham, Sigmund Freud, Igor Stravinsky and Mohandas Gandhi. Gardner acknowledged that he chose these famous creators because they lived a century ago and have had a large seal of approval as creators and masters of their domain. Therefore each master of creativity he discussed represents a different domain of study and in return offered a novel way of seeing the world.

However, he adds that in order to really harness creativity to affect change, an individual must possess a certain temperament and discipline. "I don't think creativity is something you're born with, I think what you are born with are different talents but talents are not the same as being creative… being creative really has more to do with personality and temperament than how fast you master things."

Three key concepts, which, Gardner coined to describe this attitude towards creativity are: reflecting, leveraging and framing. He said that each of the masters he studied exhibited these practices.

Reflecting attributes to a creator's discipline to spending a lot of time thinking about what they are trying to achieve or the problem they are attempting to solve. This often requires a person to isolate him/herself from his/her social world for extended periods of time in order to remain focused on his/her goals. In order to do this, a creator needs a willingness to spend years on a problem, empowered by the passion to learn more.

Gardner says that in the case of these master creators, the inspiration really sparked the faculty for creativity when they discovered an anomaly. "When in any field, when you get into it, things erupt that don't make sense, you begin to draw things in a new way, or you hear sounds in a way that people haven't heard before, you ask a question like Einstein did, ‘what would happen if I were traveling at the speed of light?'"

Questions like these that went against the grain of conventional wisdom, Gardner said, naturally attributed to a creator's increased isolation.

Valerie Walender, project coordinator of the Dunkirk Historical Society future and a guest host of a future convocation event this semester regarding creativity said,

"I think it was interesting that he said a lot of these creative people were risk takers, because I think that is something I identified with as an artist." As a conceptual artist Walender began the "Free Community" initiative which is designed to build a community that is free of child abuse. By partnering local artists and creative individuals together with community organizations and businesses they brainstorm original ways of presenting the issue of child abuse to the community.

"This project here I created when I was 21 and I knew it was a good idea but not until probably thirty years later did I get a fellowship to make my idea into a reality, with many years refining that idea," Walender said.

Gardner's second principle of creativity, leveraging, consists of a person's ability to understand his or her own talents and use them to their advantage. According to Gardner's research, Sigmund Freud's intellectual strength came from his understanding of personal development and linguistics, yet his weaknesses existed in his spatial and musical understanding.

Additionally, Picasso's spatial, bodily and personal intellectual strengths are not without his weakness in understanding scholastics. Therefore he adds that each of these masters of creativity carries a sense of truthfulness about themselves and their work. They have seen things through with an uncluttered mind and a chilling directness to their goals that is unbridled by anything.

Finally, Gardner addressed framing as the most important principal he learned from the masters of creativity. Framing he said, "is what happens when things don't work," and the point in which the creator, "figures out what they can learn from and the lessons they can learn to make sure things go right next time." He added that framing requires a positive attitude and a willingness to persevere and frame failure into opportunity and change.

Gardner values these three concepts as lessons ordinary people can analyze and learn from when evaluating the life and work of historical and revolutionary creators.

Creativity for the Future

Gardner has extended his research and understanding of creativity to communities across America in order to facilitate change in the education system.

Project Zero is an educational research group at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University that Gardner created with some of his colleagues. According to the Web site, http://www.pz.harvard.edu/ "Its mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels."

Gardner adds that Project Zero does not offer a set agenda for how to teach but rather works closely with educational leaders and organizing to strategize different methods of attaining creativity while teaching responsibility. One of his goals is to help educate young individuals to learn the importance of reflecting, leveraging and framing.