"This is the path creativity takes"

Creativity is the hallmark of Mastery. Eminent educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom recognised it as such and manifested it in different guises at the pinnacle of his taxonomies.

Another property of creativity is its ability, and requirement even, to disrupt. It's our curiosity to explore the side-streets off the main learning avenue which good teachers plan to accommodate, keeping learners in tune with their inventive minds. But in the realms of social dance (and the martial arts) a traditional lesson structure is commonly deployed; illuminating only the one main thoroughfare, leaving learners with the impression that only one route exists. And yet these learners are expected become creative at some juncture.

When should learners be encouraged to be creative?
Can educators tolerate, let alone accommodate, the kind of disruption creative expression causes?
Worse yet, have Michelangelos and Artemisias of dance been overlooked, because tradition has driven them elsewhere?

These are the very questions driving the revision of my pedagogical system, structure and style:

• to preserve, stimulate, and develop creativity from the onset;
• to provide a learning structure which can flex to accommodate creative disruption; and,
• to establish a place where creativity and artistry can be recognised in oneself and in one another.

To that end I've adopted a two-pronged approach:

1. The first is the 'sticking plaster' of illuminating the side-streets and accommodating their exploration. I consider this a sticking plaster because creativity is more accommodated than it is integrated - an adaptation of a conventional approach.
2. The second, still being articulated, brings creative decision-making into the core, where all routes are potentially valid - a paradigm shift. To provide the requisite structure (staving off learning anarchy), possibly two or more recommended routes will be explored as serving suggestions.

For the creative approach to succeed, the manner of delivery must be person-centred and it must stimulate artistic thought. The latter is the focus of current endeavour, and I am helped by a wonderful discovery: Will Gompertz's 'Think Like an Artist' (2015) (reviewed in a later post). There is one particularly apt observation:

"Passion - enthusiasm if you prefer - is the spur that makes us want to know more. It provides the impulse for the thoughtful enquiry that generates the knowledge, which fires our imagination to come up with ideas. These lead to the experiments that eventually result in the production of a realized concept. This is the path creativity takes."

From that one simple paragraph a taxonomy in the creativity domain might be created:

1. Passion,
2. Thoughtful enquiry,
3. Knowledge curation,
4. Imagination,
5. Realisation.

It might not be refined, but it already presents itself as a workable premise on which to hang principles and practices.

Loo Yen Yeo