Here at SCA, Marc says ‘Creativity is the expression of an original idea that provides value’.

We were given a brief last week, to sell creativity. It felt like a clear brief with a straightforward ‘concept’ to promote. However I soon realised that it was a huge subject to explore. I started by writing a list of the several ways that one could be creative but this wasn’t enough. Creativity is very subjective. What creativity means to me might not be what it means to other people. So I decided to build some personas for this brief.

Personas are made up people that we create based on our research, to make sure we are targeting the right audience. So I interviewed a number of people from different walks of life and was amazed at how varied these responses were. I’ve captured them in their own words so you can draw your own inspirations from them.

• A 30 year old career-oriented lady with lots of hobbies says: “Creativity is individualisation and personalisation. It’s being innovative and adding a personal touch to things”. She also added, “creativity is the key to finding a non-traditional solution to problems”.
• A 60 year old father of two grown up children, who has strived to achieve great heights in his professional life says: “Creativity is relearning”. He says that observations would remain the same, but looking at them in a different perspective is creativity. 
• A 20 year old young adult, yet to pay any bills in her life says: “Creativity is being silly and having fun with your silly thoughts”.
• A 50 year old housewife, whose life surrounded raising her children says: “Creativity is the lack of boredom. In our daily monotonous life, whatever we do, using the whole mind and staying interested is creativity”. According to her a Mindful mind is a creative mind.
• A 40 year old software engineer says, “Everyone is different, no two people will draw something identically and that’s creativity.” He says, “a child may draw something today and the same child may draw it differently years later.”
• One of our most loved alumni, Naomi Taylor who is currently in her 30s says: “Creativity is a talent that can change and save lives, it has the power to do so much good and we always need more of it”.

Now it’s time for me to stop and reflect on what creativity means to me. I spent a significant part of my life engineering solutions for the scientific community. I had years of training to polish my logical reasoning skills and everything I created had to be proven with a formula. So, I see creativity as a world outside of this, where logic comes from what makes sense emotionally. For me, creativity is using all parts of my brain. A new beginning. An awakening experience for the side of my brain that felt undervalued and unused.

@kumaresan_anu