Creativity and the Social

Abstract

Creativity is an activity that manages to make something from something, as opposed to making something from nothing. In addition, the new idea, process or product that is created must be original and be judged to be so in at least one social setting. This of course implies that the context in which creativity occurs is critically important. Why? The answer is that for an object to be judged to be unique or original it must be judged to be so against some criteria that pre-exists the newly created object. The framework for that judgement is provided by the social grouping. If this is the case, it would be apposite to briefly examine the idea that the creative process occurs in stages as it also has some relevance to the idea that the social is indeed critical to an understanding of creativity.