Creativity Step 6

Outcomes

To achieve Step 6, learners will understand what creativity is and see how they can use it in the context of doing their work.

In earlier steps, the focus was first on imagination and how to share things that have been imagined, and then on how to generate ideas against a brief, to improve something or by combining different concepts. This step shifts into thinking about creativity more broadly and its relevance across different aspects of learners’ work.

Learners need to be able to:

• Understand what creativity is, and why it is valuable

• Understand how creativity can be used across work

Introduction

• Ask learners to recap the definition of using imagination.

• Explain that there are three aspects of ‘creativity’ and share these: “using imagination; generating new ideas; and turning those ideas into something.”

• Importantly, creativity is not just about art or performance. We can find it in all different areas of work – anything from engineering to sport to medicine.

Teach & Apply

• We all need creativity in different parts of our work. For example, when we are:

  • Trying to combine different ideas to create new things

  • Responding to a brief that we have been given

  • Imagining an experience that someone else might have that we have not yet had, or an experience that might happen in the future

• Without the skills of creativity, we would not be able to plan ahead for what might happen in the future because we have no way of knowing beyond what we learn and then imagine.

• While this step is mainly focused on using creativity in a work context, being creative in our work can motivate us to be more creative in our wider lives too.

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

• Nominate a ‘Creativity Captain’’ each week who is responsible for acknowledging when others have been creative and give them (as appropriate) a call-out, sticker or reward.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

• Question learners to describe how their peers have used creativity. Can the learners recognise the creative process others have gone through? Can they recognise creativity in their peers?

• Ask learners these key reflection questions:

  • What is creativity?

  • Why is creativity important?

  • How is creativity useful in doing your work?