Creativity - teaching creativity

I think it is very difficult to teach creativity. Either someone has the ability to be creative or they don't. One can be encouraged to use their creativity to their full potential. When I was at school my art teachers never seemed to teach me to be creative as such, they helped me to develop my skills at drawing and painting etc. but never helped me to come up with ideas. The one thing I was taught to do the most was a lot of research. I was told to look at artists, movements and just about anything for inspiration. We always moaned about it at the time and wondered why why we had to spend so much time looking at other peoples work rather than concentrating on coming up with our own ideas. Looking at other artists work gives you an understanding of what has been done in the past and what has worked and what hasn't. You can look at a piece of art and see what makes it good and use it to push your ideas further. Whenever I came to a stop during a project I found that doing a bit of research helps to fill my mind with more ideas and progress further. You are not necessarily using other peoples ideas but getting inspiration from them.

Also compiling a lot of visual research like photographs, reference books, magazines is really useful for when you are designing something. Whether you are designing a character or an object, you can take inspiration from pretty much anywhere so the more research you have the better.

Someone cant necessarily be taught to be creative but should be encouraged to be resourceful and broad minded when approaching their work.