I was recently updating my profile on Twellow, and wanted to add “Creativity” as a category so that I could follow what was being said on Twitter about that topic. Since I am interested in creativity as a primary subject, I naturally searched for that topic to add to my profile.  Unfortunately, “creativity” was not one of the available options. However, Twellow provides a link where you can contact them to recommend a new category, so I sent them an email requesting that it be added.

A couple days later, I received a response from Twellow. They had added “Creativity” as a sub-category of “Arts.” Which wasn’t quite what I was expecting. My thinking when requesting the new category was that creativity could be a broad catch-all topic – there were plenty of categories already on Twellow for individual creative fields and pursuits (art, music, design, etc.), but there was no home for the process of creativity itself.

If it had been up to me, I would have placed it at or near the top level in the taxonomy. In my opinion, creativity is not just a thing that artists do – it’s for anyone, in any field, who seeks to extend their options by applying a deliberate process of lateral thinking, idea generation, and so forth. I understand that Twellow probably has guidelines for how they classify categories, and that creativity may not have rated a top level under their system. Ultimately, what this illustrates is that a topic that is of the utmost importance to how one person organizes their worldwiew might be nothing more than a niche to another.

Where would you place Creativity if you were developing a classification system similar to Twellow’s?

Image: More Spatter and Splatter, by love not fear on Flickr.