Creativity is often treated as something mysterious: either you have it, or you do not. But in design education, the question becomes more practical — can creativity be developed, trained, and protected?
In this episode of Bloomerangas, we speak with Rūta Valušytė, Head of the Design Centre at Kaunas University of Technology and one of the creators of the master’s programme Design for a Sustainable Future.
Her answer is clear: creativity is not a formula. It is closer to a muscle.
Every person has the native ability to create. But like any muscle, creativity needs movement, repetition, resistance, and care. If it is not used, it fades. If it is nurtured, it becomes more natural, more intuitive, and more available when we need it.
“Creativity is not a formula that you can simply learn. It is like a muscle.”
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1. Creativity needs structure — but not too much
A blank canvas sounds freeing, but in practice, it often freezes people.
When there are no boundaries, no examples, no starting points, and no method, people can become lost before they even begin. This is especially true for those coming from highly rational or technical backgrounds.
The role of design education is not to remove all structure. It is to create a playground: a space with enough rules to feel safe, and enough freedom to explore.
This balance is essential. Too much structure kills originality. Too little structure creates confusion.
Ruta describes how students can be supported through limited, clear tasks that still leave room for invention. A strong example, a simple material, or a constrained brief can become a creative “kickstarter” — something that helps the mind begin moving.
In that sense, creativity is not born from chaos. It often begins with a useful frame.
At Bloomerangas, we create creativity playgrounds for offices and spaces that want to nurture the creativity muscle.
2. A creative environment is a culture, not just a room
Tools matter. Workshops matter. Digital fabrication labs matter.
But a creative environment is not defined only by what equipment is available. It is defined by its culture: the values, rules, behaviours, and ways of thinking that shape how people act inside it.
A person can create a meaningful game with two wooden sticks if there is imagination, purpose, and a story behind it. In the same way, a highly advanced technological environment can still produce ordinary work if curiosity is missing.
The question is not only: What tools do we have?
It is also: What kind of thinking do we encourage here? Are people allowed to fail? Are they encouraged to question? Are they brave enough to try something unknown?
Creativity needs safety. But it also needs challenge.
3. Struggle is part of the creative process
One of the most important ideas from the conversation is that creativity is not always comfortable.
In fact, struggle is often part of the process.
This can be difficult for adult learners, professionals, and senior students. They arrive with experience, opinions, habits, and a strong sense of what is “right.” That knowledge is valuable — but it can also become a cage.
To create something new, people often need to return to a beginner’s mind. They need to become curious again. They need to tolerate uncertainty. They need to be brave enough to think about something that has not yet been tested.
This does not mean abandoning rationality. In design, the creative and the rational constantly work together. A designer imagines, questions, tests, analyses, and returns again to imagination.
Ruta describes this movement almost like a ping-pong between creative and rational thinking. This rhythm is where new ideas begin to take shape.
4. AI is a tool — not a replacement for creative thinking
AI is now part of almost every conversation about creativity and innovation. It can help us generate, organise, synthesise, and visualise ideas faster than before.
But speed is not the same as creativity.
Ruta’s view is that AI should be treated like a pencil. If you know what you want to draw, the pencil helps. If you do not know what you are trying to create, the tool cannot replace that thinking for you.
Used without purpose, AI can flatten creative work. It can make language, images, and ideas feel increasingly similar because it is built from existing data and patterns. It is powerful, but it is also limited by what already exists.
This creates an important divide. People with strong creative judgement can use AI as an amplifier. People who rely on it without questioning may slowly weaken their own creative muscle.
The danger is not that AI exists. The danger is outsourcing the part of the process where human intention, ethics, curiosity, and imagination are most needed.
5. Innovation requires questioning the status quo
True innovation rarely comes from following a straight line.
If we only use what is already known, tested, and accepted, we are likely to reproduce existing solutions. That may be efficient, but it does not necessarily lead to transformation.
Design has a particular strength here because it combines rational and creative thinking. It can work with data and constraints, while still asking: What else could be possible?
This is especially important when designing for sustainability.
A more sustainable future cannot be reached only by repeating old systems with slightly better materials. It requires imagination first, and practical action afterwards. We need to envision alternatives before we can begin building them.
Ruta makes an important distinction: perhaps the goal is not a perfectly “sustainable future,” but a more sustainable future. That framing matters. It keeps the ambition alive while staying grounded in reality.
6. Design is no longer only human-centred
One of the most interesting shifts in the conversation is the move beyond human-centred design.
In the Design for a Sustainable Future programme, students are encouraged to think not only about human users, but also about non-human beings and wider ecosystems.
This changes the design target. The “user” is no longer only a person. It may also include nature, materials, systems, communities, and future generations.
That makes the work more complex. It also makes creativity more necessary.
Designing for a better future means asking deeper questions:
Who are we designing for?
What challenge are we really addressing?
What impact might this have beyond the immediate user?
What future are we helping to create?
These questions require more than technical skill. They require imagination, ethics, and the courage to work with complexity.
7. Creativity can be taught — if we understand what teaching means
So, can creativity be taught?
Not in the way we teach a formula.
But it can be nurtured. It can be trained. It can be protected. It can be awakened through structure, examples, experimentation, safe failure, thoughtful guidance, and repeated practice.
The role of education is not to “install” creativity into people. It is to create the conditions where creativity can reappear, grow stronger, and become part of how people think and work.
A good creative environment is part studio, part playground, part gym, and part research lab.
It gives people tools, but also asks them why they are using them.
It offers structure, but leaves space for surprise.
It values knowledge, but still protects curiosity.
It teaches people not only to solve problems, but to question which problems are worth solving.
Creativity is not a luxury in design education. It is one of the essential capacities we need for the future — especially if that future is to be more sustainable, more thoughtful, and more alive.
