The Role of Engagement, Honing, and Mindfulness in Creativity
Liane Gabora, Mike Unrau

TL;DR
This paper reviews theories linking creativity, hardship, and mindfulness, emphasizing their therapeutic potential and proposing an educational module to foster self-awareness and resilience in youth facing complex modern challenges.
Contribution
It synthesizes creativity and mindfulness theories to inform a curriculum module aimed at enhancing resilience and self-awareness in youth.
Findings
Creativity can both access and relive traumatic memories.
Mindfulness may enhance the therapeutic effects of creativity.
A proposed educational module integrates creativity and mindfulness for youth resilience.
Abstract
As both our external world and inner worlds become more complex, we are faced with more novel challenges, hardships, and duress. Creative thinking is needed to provide fresh perspectives and solve new problems.Because creativity can be conducive to accessing and reliving traumatic memories, emotional scars may be exacerbated by creative practices before these are transformed and released. Therefore, in preparing our youth to thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world, it could be helpful to cultivate in them an understanding of the creative process and its relationship to hardship, as well as tools and techniques for fostering not just creativity but self-awareness and mindfulness. This chapter is a review of theories of creativity through the lens of their capacity to account for the relationship between creativity and hardship, as well as the therapeutic effects of creativity. We…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCreativity in Education and Neuroscience · Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function · Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
