1. Facilitating creative
activity
Jennifer Creek

2. Aim of session
To give participants an opportunity to
explore some of the ways in which
the occupational therapist can use
her creativity to support the client’s
creativity

3. What is creativity?
• To create is to ‘make, form, or constitute for the
first time or afresh’ (New Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary 1993).
• To be creative is to have the ability to create, to
be inventive or imaginative, to show imagination as
well as routine skill (New Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary 1993).
• Creativity is ‘a process as a result of which
novelty is achieved’ (Stein 1974, p. 6). This
novelty may be in form, appearance or relationship
(Beeman 1990).

4. WFOT definition
Occupational therapy is a profession concerned with
promoting health and well being through
occupation. The primary goal of occupational
therapy is to enable people to participate in the
activities of everyday life. Occupational
therapists achieve this outcome by enabling
people to do things that will enhance their ability
to participate or by modifying the environment to
better support participation.

5. The uniqueness of
occupational therapy
is not only in its analysis of activity and ability to
match this to client need… Surely occupational
therapy in 1986 is less concerned with mere
‘occupation’ or ‘activity’ and is more about therapy
and an individualized, person-centred approach?
Many occupational therapists seem at a loss
because they try to match activities and a fixed
programme to the consumer rather than
discovering what it is that a particular individual
wishes to do, or even not to do! (Westland 1986)

6. Occupational therapy
A negotiated approach between the
desires of the individual, the
limitations or opportunities afforded
by their disability and external
environments, and the skills and
knowledge of the therapist (White
2007).

7. Everyday creativity
Represents a departure from the view of creativity
as represented only in exceptional and rare
accomplishment such as was found in Mozart or
Einstein. Everyday creativity also moves beyond
traditional creative realms, such as the arts and
the humanities. In everyday creativity, creativity
is considered a quality or capability that is
present to varying degrees in all human beings and
that potentially manifests itself in virtually all
aspects of daily life. (Hasselkuss 2002)

8. Tao Te Ching
‘When his task is accomplished and his
work done the people all say, “It
happened to us naturally”’. (Lao Tzu
1963