Welcome!
If you read last month’s topic you know that I chose courage as the first month because I thought it was perfect in what I was doing. I needed the courage to start a blog and I figured a lot of people might need some courage too. After courage, we have the ability to make new things and become more, that is why this month I’ve decided to talk about creativity.
What is creativity? The word creative didn’t actually exist in ancient Greece. They actually used a word that meant “to make” and that was used when people were writing poetry.
The term was first used after Christianity came into play and it was thought that creativity came from divine inspiration and was used to explain the creation of the earth. The concept of creativity in man didn’t arise until the Renaissance.
When the renaissance started, creativity changed from only being for gods to being for man. I do want to point out that although more people started to have a change of mind that creativity wasn’t just for gods, there were still many who believed that it was only for gods and this kind of thought would continue until much later.
One of the people who were apart of this new thought was Leonardo Da Vinci. He was known as a renaissance man or a polymath (who is someone who has vast knowledge or learning). He went on to create many paintings and invent devices and would be what we call creative even though that wasn’t the case for that time.
It wasn’t until the 18th century when creativity became more normal, but it still wasn’t what we think of creativity today. It was more of an atheistic instead of a process, being more of imaginations than creating itself. Many writers during that time say that imagination is key to “human cognition” or that it was a qualifier of a genius including those who inspired the Declaration of Independence.
After the period of enlightenment, creativity as a subject wasn’t thought about until the 19th century. The word itself was not created until the 1920’s and wasn’t widely used until the 1950’s.
Creativity as a word is new. As an idea, it has a history that we never knew. We still don’t know a ton about it and we don’t just have one definition on it.
If you google it, it will say, “the use of imagination or original ideas”. While this is correct, creativity could also mean much more. There are topics and subtopics on what creativity is and how people use it.
As this month progresses, I want to dig a little deeper into how we can use creativity and at least try to understand it more. Next week let’s talk about what it is in a deeper understanding, and how we can use it for ourselves.
As for you, what creative projects do you hope to do and what questions do you have about it?
Thank you for reading. Read some more posts and comment down below something new you learned. Check out my Instagram, Penned by Rose and if you want to get notified by email when my new posts come out… Subscribe below!
