WORKSHOP ON ‘CREATIVITY’ ORGANIZED BY THE SAMVITTI FOUNDATION

Prof. Amit Dholakia motivated large number of women participants

With an objective to facilitate an understanding of creativity and creative thinking a workshop for women participants was organized by the SaMvitti Foundation at Vadodara . Prof. Amit Dholakia, a social scientist teaching at The Maharaja Syajirao University of Baroda, conducted this workshop and motivated a large number of women participants to channelize their creative potential to achieve progress and happiness in life.

Prof. Dholakia underscored that creativity should not be considered as a special gift of nature given only to geniuses like Leonardo Da Vinci, Steve Jobs or Einstein or to artists and writers. According to him, each one of us – irrespective of the level of intelligence, education and socio-cultural background – has an equal capacity to develop creative ideas, innovations, products, solutions or works of art.

Prof. Dholakia pointed out that more than 95 per cent of children below the age of five years use different type of creativity and innovativeness in what they do. However, our methods of education and rote learning gradually reduce their creative resource so much so that only about 2 per cent of the adults are able to retain and use their creativity. Each person thinks an average of 70000 thoughts per day but few of these thoughts go ‘out of box’ or create something new.

In order to sensitize the participants to apply creativity in their life and work, Prof. Dholakia explained the various elements of creativity like imagination of multiple possibilities, visualization, divergent thinking and establishing of lateral, non-logical connections. Creativity is about breaking rules of logical thing, realizing that there could be more than one correct answer to a question, or one answer for many questions. Combination of two dissimilar or unconnected things often results into creative breakthrough. Not all creative ideas get accepted unless they have value, beauty or usefulness in them.

Prof. Dholakia observed that creative people are generally curious, emotional, imaginative and open-minded. They experience life’s happenings deeply rather than superficially. They connect to natural surrounding spontaneously and do not like to conform to the prevalent values and practices of a society.

Prof. Dholakia’s talk at the workshop was followed by an intensive dialogue session wherein the participants shared their perceptions and clarified their doubts with the expert. The workshop was compeered and moderated by Dr. Darshini Dadawala, First Trustee of the SaMvitti Foundation.