Everyday Creativity and the Arts

Abstract

Everyday artistic creativity is downplayed in our schools, our lives, our culture. Yet here is an essential language of our lives, opening us to important ways of knowing, truth, beauty, and means for creative coping, as individuals and as cultures. Views of John Dewey and Suzanne Langer are each considered. A devaluation of artistic creativity may also reflect unacknowledged biases related to emotional “versus” intellectual knowing, gender stereotyping, science “versus” art, individualism “versus” interdependence, false stereotypes of creative “unhealth,” and eminent “versus” everyday creativity. Addressing these holds promise for our personal well-being and development, and our greater health as cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity innovation arts originality
• Dewey
• eminent creativity
• everyday creativity
• gender
• health well-being
• Langer

This article represents an extensive development of ideas first published as “Everyday—A Work of Art?” in Psychologie Heute (German), December 1992, pp. 58–64.