A text only version of this essay is available to download. Talk given to an Ottawa group of teachers and parents interested in establishing alternative form of education. The talk began with a short introduction to my background and about the sense of wonder at nature that seemed to have been with me from an early age. You can certainly train people to carry out tasks in a better way, acquire new techniques and skills, and to accumulate new knowledge. But the whole essence of creativity lies in its freshness, its freedom, its newness.
Creativity is often unexpected and exciting.
It involves seeing things in new ways and breaking rules. Stravinsky, or it may involve the unfolding of an old, established form with a total freshness-e.g. Bach and the fugue. Creativity is not a skill, it is not a sort of muscle of the brain, or a technology of the mind. Creativity makes use of knowledge and skill but that is not where its roots lie.