Creativity—exploring and extending ideas leading to an original or interpretive product or performance
Creativity will come from the student’s talents, interests, passions, emotional responses, and imagination; the form of expression is limitless. This may include but not limited to:
Keep doing what you already enjoy! If students are accomplished in a particular creative form, for example, music, painting or acting, they may choose to extend their involvement and deepen their skill level. Within their field, students can define new challenges and objectives to fulfill creativity in CAS.
Note: A creative experience must have a product of some type that could be made available to the public. This could be an artwork, a performance, a written piece, a recipe, etc. Performances do not need to be public, but could be shared by video or photo.
There are many approaches to creativity, such as:
Ongoing creativity: A student may already be engaged in creativity as part of a school group or club, or through some other form of sustained creativity.
School-based creativity: In school, there may be appropriate creativity opportunities in which the students can engage. These creativity experiences could be part of the school’s service CAS projects, a school club, timetabled creativity sessions that are not part of their normal classes, or other opportunities.
Community-based creativity: Participating in creativity within the local community advances student awareness and understanding of interpersonal relationships with others, particularly if the creativity experience involves the local community. Creativity experiences best occur with a regularity that builds and sustains relationships while allowing the growth of students’ talents, interests, passions, emotional responses, and imagination.
Examples are: joining a community-based theatre group, contributing towards a community art gallery, creating a sculpture for the community park, or taking cooking classes.
Individual creativity: Students may decide that they wish to engage in solitary creativity experiences such as composing music, developing a website, writing a compilation of short fiction stories, designing furniture, creating arts and crafts, or painting a series of portraits. Such creativity experiences are of most benefit when they take place over an extended duration of time. Students can be encouraged to set personal goals and work towards these in a sustained manner. Risk assessment of such solitary creativity experiences should be conducted with the student beforehand if applicable.
Possible Creativity Experiences