ABSTRACT
At the core of this piece is a cultural history – up to the present and into the future – of the term creativity and other terms associated with it. But before and after that, there are a prelude and postlude. These play with what is worked at between. Such a procedure with such a topic is arguably essential for a handbook of creative learning. For many of the debates in and around creativity and learning are precisely about how far these are necessarily matters of actual experience and experiment, practice and participation – not just definition and theorising in the abstract, sheer spectacle or mere commentary. This piece is therefore, by design, as much about the business of creating definitions as of defining creativity. You can’t have the one without doing the other, always afresh, sometimes for yourself (see Joas, 1996; Pope, 2005: pt 2).
