Hello, I'm Mervi!
An artist, nerd and business sorcerer, dedicated to make world more beautiful and strange with art, illustrations and logos + to help you figure your sustainable business out.
Defining creativity
Creativity has many meanings, depending on who you ask. In the more strict definition creativity is forming something new or original, which has value. That something can be abstract, as an idea, or a physical object, such as a book.
Wider definitions include using imagination for creating, or transforming traditional ideas and creations to unconventional ideas and creations.
In Finnish the word for creativity is luovuus, which in its spirit is rather poetic. Though these two words basically mean the same, and even have the same biblical linkage, they have a slight tonal difference. While creativity as a word includes a productive expectation, luovuus appears to have softer, philosophical and spiritual aspects.
A luova person is seen as someone non-conforming, risk taking, liberal, freedom seeking and independent. They are assumed to possess such traits as good imagination, sense of aesthetics, originality, capability of expression and reflection.
For me the definition of creativity is closer to the definition of luovuus. While I see how all these different definitions are true to creativity, my initial viewpoint is in its rather romantic characteristics.
I don't mean creativity wouldn't include the actual creation, but it doesn't necessarily always have to be as productive as that.
You are able to use creativity to produce things and ideas, yet production doesn't define creativity. I see a creative person as such not to mind or to be afraid of breaking the "rules" and to be able to see value in imperfection.
A creative person doesn't have to have some specific set of skills. To be creative you don't need to be a good drawer or painter, be a musical person, know how to knit, or be an exceptional writer. Those skills are part of creativity, but they aren't the sole definition of it. To be creative you don't have to be some sort of predefined kind of good at what you create.
Creativity can be useful and to be applied to many matters. You can be creative with networking and relationships, marketing, dancing, reading, family life, gardening and multiple other things.
As I mentioned earlier, creativity has variable meanings. Creativity may mean something else for you than it means for me. I welcome that, as I hope you welcome my idea of creativity.
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