Creativity is Cultural

What does it mean to be creative in practice?

Creativity is more than imagination. It’s imagination coupled with craft. It’s the metaskill of making.

It envisions, embodies, elaborates. It develops, shapes, solves. It advances, iterates, proves. Note the lack of passive verbs in this list. Making is action. Unless you’re willing to get your hands dirty, your imagination will remain unrealized and uninformed.

Marty Neumeier’s definition of creativity insists that our imagination must be tied to the making of things, not just envisioning them. Making is at the heart of design, which is the discipline of innovation. As Marty notes, creativity is imagination coupled with craft. It’s not just about good ideas, interesting thoughts, or hypothetical possibilities done in the abstract. Creativity involves making something.

There are many who might argue with this, but at its core, design is about the manifestation of things (products, services, policies, programs, and systems) and not just the conception of them. Yes, a design could involve the creation of a map, a plan, or a guide, but that’s still something that’s tied to use and it’s value is determined upon the use. A theoretical plan never considered is an imagination, not a design.

Design is not coming up with ideas that aren’t enacted, attempted, or built upon. It’s about channeling creativity into the making of things.

I spoke about creativity in the second Cense Summer Series webinar. During that webinar, I showcased some of the latest thinking about creativity and its application.

Some of the key messages include:

1. Creativity is not just a vehicle for innovating in health, but health itself. A systematic review looking at the power of creativity through art(s) shows clear health and social benefits that extend to many conditions in both treatment and preventive contexts as well as health promotion. (Sonke, J., Tan, M. K. B., Lee, J. B., Pesata, V., Akram, S., Golden, T., ... & Sajnani, N. (2025). The arts for disease prevention and health promotion: a systematic review. Nature medicine, 31(11), 3907-3916.)

2. Creativity is not just a personal matter, but about the context, skills, and goals that channel it. Drawing the work of the “Four P’s of Creativity” I profiled how creativity is to the following four aspects: 1),The Person: The unique personality traits, traits, and cognitive abilities that make an individual prone to creative thought (e.g., curiosity, openness to experience)., 2) The Process: The cognitive steps and actions an individual takes to bring an idea to life, such as brainstorming, divergent thinking, and persistence, 3) The Product: The tangible or intangible outcome of the creative endeavor, such as a painting, a scientific theory, or a new recipe, and 4) The Press (Environment): The external factors, social contexts, and cultural influences that foster or inhibit creative expression (Tang, M., & Gruszka, A. (2017). The 4P’s creativity model and its application in different fields. In M. Tang & C. H. Werner (Eds.), Handbook of the management of creativity and innovation: Theory and practice (pp. 51–71). World Scientific. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789813141889_0003)

3. The SCAMPER model was introduced to those who attended. (See the earlier Design Loft lesson on this topic for details).

4. We also looked at the latest on AI and creativity, profiling newly published research that shows “Individually, AI often enhances creativity, particularly by enabling less experienced or less inherently creative individuals to generate more novel and useful ideas. But collectively, AI often “compresses” the idea space.” Boussioux, L., Doshi, A., Hauser, O., & Hosanagar, K. (2026, July 9). The hidden cost of AI-assisted creativity. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-hidden-cost-of-ai-assisted-creativity/

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   Takeaways

The takeaways are that we need to consider creativity as part of a system, and that when we design contexts that support it, we are more likely to see creative opportunities emerge in the health sector. These takeaways include:

1. Build curiosity outputs into working contexts

2. Nurture environments for creativity (trust, safety, curiosity)

3. Create habitual space for creative exploration

4. Connect creative thinking to making

5. Monitor, evaluate, critique, feed-back

6. Network and link creative connections; exposure to creative thinking, products, and outputs

7. AI can assist in warming the space up, especially for those with low confidence, but human leadership is needed

8. Remind ourselves that health is produced through tangible creation

We’ll continue to look at this journey of creativity and design in health over the summer months and in future issues of The Design Loft.

Thanks for attending the webinar and reading. If you’re interested in future events, register at: https://www.cense.ca/summerseries26/