EWI

Creativity does not exist. There you have it: the unadulterated truth. Hidden away at the back of the magazine, in a column that might as well not even be here. Unless you are that kind of person. The kind of person who skips the ‘quality’ articles and immediately turns to the back page, where he (or she – although women are less inclined to do this sort of thing) seeks out the opinions of the author who wasn’t good enough to write a proper article. Not that this really matters. After all, you are only human.

But if my opinions can bring light into your darkness and make life that little bit easier for you, who am I to deny you my words of wisdom? Even so, this does nothing to alter the fact that creativity does not exist. At least, not in the conceptual role that you probably attribute to creativity. Being creative is, above all, an excuse for justifying your mistakes and for doing things that you really shouldn’t do in the first place.

In this respect, I am the inventor – or so I like to think – of creative parking. Have you ever driven onto a car park where a car is parked in the most impossible place, so impossible that it is almost arrogant (not to mention illegal)? That could be my car. Not because it’s so much fun to park that way, but because there’s simply no other option.Usually, all the good spots are already taken in by the Smarts, which are only half the size of the painted parking spaces, and the 4x4’s (the ideal city car), which are twice as large. Admit it: you are starting to feel some sympathy for me, aren’t you?

Well, that is the moment when you should really start to ‘colour outside the lines’ or ‘think out of the box’. Be creative and make your own parking space! A badly parked car is not so much an offence, as it is the sign of a creative spirit who is trying to solve a problem in an innovative manner.

This is something that we, in the Flemish government, understand all too well. Did you know that the Flemish government regards creativity as a full competence? And that you can be assessed on this competence if you include it in your personal competence profile? In accordance with the relevant (and no doubt carefully worded) definition, you are creative “if you devise original and new ideas, or propose solutions, or elaborate angles of approach which deviate from standard patterns of thinking”. Try and explain all this in the workplace and you will probably be met with blank (and possibly even deviant) stares, but this is something that you will simply have to accept. Do not let this lack of interest deter you. On the contrary, regard it as a stimulus! To allow you to master this competence, there are even training courses in creativity. But this is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Can something like creativity – in so far as it exists – actually be learnt? Is it not slightly ambiguous (to say the least) that you should seek to be ‘original’ by learning and copying the ways of thinking and the techniques of others?

Is creativity a skill, or is it a gift or talent? Some things can be learnt, others cannot. To my way of thinking, a creative spirit falls into the latter (and much rarer) category. It is something which you have in you (or not), a passion, an urge, an overwhelming feeling which makes you wake up in the middle of the night. People sometimes have a problem to channel all this restless energy in the right direction, to do something ‘useful’ with it. In this case, a creativity course might help. Perhaps this is just the opportunity you need to blossom open and to give your creative ideas (no matter how contradictory it might sound) the structure they really need. But how do you know if you are creative or not? Well, if you still need to ask that question, the answer is probably negative. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just don’t believe everything that you are told. Not even by me.