Can creativity be taught? I have heard of classes that teach 'creativity'. To me, the whole concept is absurd. I approached a student of the aforementioned class and asked him why he chose to learn creativity. He stated that creativity is a process in which you learn the basics and the rules and then extrapolate it. I argued that real creativity is innate, and it depends on the surroundings of which you are a part. 

And then a thought struck me: What if no one is 'naturally' creative? After birth, a baby knows only what he sees. Whatever a person knows has been absorbed from the surroundings in the form of opinions and experiences. On these lines, anybody can be creative, provided he is exposed to the 'correct' stimulus. Ideas and philosophies are personal interpretations of experiences and opinions. It wasn't our creativity as a race that has made us who we are today, but it was actually necessity that propelled our species forward. What else would possibly stimulate our creativity as a race other than our necessity as a species to survive?

In short, after an hour or so of arguments to and fro, my question: Can creativity be taught? I don't mean by giving a kid a crayon and telling him how to draw an apple. I mean creativity at its most absolute form. Can creativity be inherited?
The first Google hit for "creativity training psychology" (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2013) seems to answer your question pretty thoroughly. Prof. Chamorro-Premuzic is a pretty formidable psychologist, so it's no surprise coming from him! To quote the post:


  In short, creativity is not 100% malleable, but it can be affected by deliberate interventions. People's generic creative potential is more dependent on personality than contextual factors, but domain-specific creativity depends more on acquired expertise and our inspiration to be creative is both dispositional and situational. In simple terms, if you want to be more creative there's a lot you can do to achieve this - the only difficulty is to achieve the same results with people who don't want to be more creative (once again, it is a case of the rich getting richer and...)


Here's one particularly promising way to learn creativity: have other cultures teach you! Psychology Today (Markman, 2010) offers a nice review of a study of multicultural experience and creativity (Maddux, Adam, &amp; Galinsky, 2010) that found creative improvements among travelers abroad. Good excuse for a vacation!

References


- Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2013, May 18). Training creativity: Can psychology boost our creative potential? Psychology Today: Mr. Personality. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mr-personality/201305/training-creativity-0.
- Maddux, W. W., Adam, H., &amp; Galinsky, A. D. (2010). When in Rome... Learn why the Romans do what they do: How multicultural learning experiences facilitate creativity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(6), 731–741. Retrieved from http://psp.sagepub.com.uncensor.it/content/36/6/731.full.pdf.
- Markman, A. (2010, June 26). Can living abroad make you more creative? Learning to live in another culture has real benefits. Psychology Today: Ulterior Motives. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201006/can-living-abroad-make-you-more-creative.