Students show their creativity and hard work this week displaying final projects from a semester-long course, History of Creativity.
Thousands of students every semester compete for a seat in the history of creativity in the arts, science and technology class. More than 1,000 students take the class each semester, and it is known as the most difficult civilization course to enroll in. Creativity Days is an event created to show off the students’ final projects at the end of each semester.
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“I always enjoyed walking through the aisles and aisles of creative projects,” said Zoe Clement, a senior in advertising. “It was always so interesting to me to see what others were able to come up with, especially after trying so hard to come up with my own original idea.”
There are two halves of history of creativity offered at BYU. This fall the focus was on early civilization-1500. The winter semester course will cover the years 1500-present.
The class content examines the creativity of people and societies throughout history. While learning about creativity within civilizations, students express their own creativity through the project.
“The students work all semester long on their projects, and they can do the creative project on anything they want with only two requirements,” said Brent Strong, a professor of history of creativity. “They have to relate their creative project to the subject matter of the course and then explain why it is creative.”
There are no limitations on what can be created, but every project comes with a write-up about how the project applies to the course and why it qualifies as creative. The project can be turned in three ways. It can be displayed at Creativity Days if it is an object, performed in class or handed in to be reviewed privately.
Around 20 percent of students on campus take this class to fulfill their general education requirement for civilization. The class is open to any student interested in learning about creative civilizations through history and using personal creativity.
“Every year, each project was always so different from the ones surrounding it,” Clement said. “It just shows how peculiar we really are here at BYU. Just the way Heavenly Father meant for us to be.”
