Course Intent
Creative Process is designed to prepare U-M students to recognize, understand, develop, and utilize their creative capacity. Specific goals of the course are to help students:
- Recognize and demystify “creativity,” understanding that it is not the province of a select few, but an inherent potential of all humans.
- Understand that creative expression in any field is not an event but a process that can take many different forms and has recognizable breakthrough moments.
- Develop a first-hand knowledge of the interplay among creative impulse, media, modes of expression, and shared meanings in the creative process.
- Develop a conceptual and contextual foundation for understanding the creative impulse and the processes of creative work, drawing examples from multiple cultures, disciplines, and historical periods.
- Become more confident and creative makers and doers, able and willing throughout their private and public lives to follow their creative process toward positive, productive, and unforeseen ends.
Creativity is emerging as an essential competence for students in universities worldwide. The creative process has been a subject of study and inquiry in diverse disciplines for decades, as reflected in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Creativity Research, the Creativity Research Journal, the Journal of Creative Behavior, and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, as well as in the proceedings of organizations such as the American Creativity Association and the International Center for Studies in Creativity.
Creative Process uses the strengths of U-M’s exemplary professional arts and engineering faculty both to prepare students for particular career goals, and to equip them to respond creatively and confidently to the new and unexpected situations they will encounter throughout their lives.
This capactiy is as important to personal life satisfaction as to success in a global workforce. The vast majority of America’s corporate leaders today recognize creativity as essential competitive advantage in the 21st-century marketplace. Creative Process is designed to generate confidently creative thinkers, makers, and doers.
