Exploring first-year visual srts education students' perceptions of creativity

Abstract

This study explored how first-year Visual Arts education students perceived creativity. The focus was on visual arts in the first semester of the students’ first year of study, that is, the Visual Arts practical module JKU 101 at the University of Pretoria. I examined these students’ perceptions of creativity by taking influences like family, social background, gender, age, culture, other individuals in the individual’s life, and background information gathered through questionnaires into consideration while analysing their first artwork created during their first semester. There have been many studies on creativity and how it exists, but not many of these have discussed how individuals perceive creativity. Generally, the focus has been on the perception that individuals need to be creative to experience creativity but excluded those who do not identify as creative. In my study, to address this gap, I relied on existing studies to guide me while analysing the artwork of selected first-year Visual Arts education students to identify how they perceived creativity. I further relied on the “thinking hats” theory developed by de Bono in 1985 and the triarchic theory of human intelligence developed by Sternberg in 2003 to explore the creativity of those who did not identify as creative. De Bono’s lateral thinking method (the “thinking hats” theory) states that all individuals, no matter the influences or their skills, still experiences creativity. My findings showed that all the students in the study, irrespective of their skill set or level of creativity, experienced creativity, and that their ability to experience creativity was based on both internal and external influences. Nonetheless, at times, creativity in some of the individuals went unrecognised because it was identified differently. Consequently, I surmise that creativity and critical thinking are not limited to “special people” or “special occasions”, but that all people experience creativity in different ways.