If you are a teacher or a parent wanting to make sure that you are giving young people every chance to be creative, this book by Dr Karen Hosack Janes looking at how creativity can be nurtured is for you.

First it explores the early creative experiences of some people well-known for being creative and then draws together these insights to propose three conditions for nurturing creativity: Being in an environment that values the arts in everyday life; having time for experimentation and play; and having opportunities to collaborate with others.

The book goes on to use the three conditions as lenses to view a variety of educational theories and current educational practices, in and out of school settings, including online cultural learning programmes. The aim is to demonstrate how much consensus there is about developing creative skills. However, also highlighted is the importance of understanding that primarily creativity comes about when an individual has a significant amount of creative agency. This means, in practical terms for professional educators and parents, that children’s personal input into shaping a creative experience needs to be considerable. This important point brings into question activities that are not as creatively demanding as they could be, for example tasks that simply require children to copy, or to follow step-by-step instructions, or just to colour in. Instead, activities need to involve the individual more in experimenting with ideas, utilising their own prior experiences, and building and expanding on these by collaborating with others. In this way personal creative responses are most effectively elicited.

Each chapter in the book guides the reader through some complex ideas and poses reflective questions with a view to the reader finding a personal (creative) understanding of creativity. The multiple perspectives voiced throughout, including from writers, artists, musicians, academics, teachers and cultural venue educators, make it clear that developing creative skills is a life affirming experience that has widespread social, cultural and economic benefits. 

Dr Karen Hosack Janes is the author of ‘Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom An exploration of consensus across theory and practice’.

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