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Photo from news.ok.ubc.ca ARTICLE BY ADELE MCCANN Creativity is an illusive and mysterious thing. It is difficult to pinpoint where a great idea comes from and the process by which it comes into being. I had the pleasure of a conversation with UBC Okanagan Professor Liane Gabora to discuss her theory of creativity and her exploration into this area. She stated that creativity is best known as the process that fuels the evolution of culture. We might consider that a flower could inspire a song, which in turn might inspire a painting, which then goes on to inspire the invention of a certain kind of paintbrush, and so on. Creativity is a constantly evolving and adaptive thing that is constantly driving humanity’s evolution and adaptation to the world. However, Liane’s Honing Theory posits that it is not the creative outputs of a painting or a song that comprise this evolutionary process, but rather our own worldviews that give rise to creative processes. It is our perspectives that are evolving and regenerating and art is a visible manifestation of this underlying internal change. There are two components of the process by which these worldviews evolve: communal exchange and self-organisation. Communal exchange involves interaction with other elements of your world – very often people. You assimilate these interactions and that affects your worldview – your internal web of understandings about the world and your place in it, the driving force behind your creative output. Consider you might see a monkey eating a banana at the zoo and are inspired to create a cartoon about monkeys. You cannot create anything new for the world until you have interacted with what is already there. It is in this way that we can evolve a creative idea by talking...