Every card in the deck practises one of twenty creative skills. Sixteen come from the work of E. Paul Torrance, the psychologist whose fifty years of research did more than anyone's to show that creativity can be recognised, taught and strengthened. Four more were added by Dr Cyndi Burnett of Creativity & Education. Together they are a working list of the habits of mind that creative people use, and each card asks you to use one of them in the place you are standing.
Where the skills come from. The sixteen skills marked dagger are E. Paul Torrance's, as set out in Torrance & Safter, Making the Creative Leap Beyond (Creative Education Foundation Press, 1999). Torrance's work continues at the Torrance Center for Creativity at the University of Georgia. The other four — Curiosity, Risk-taking, Embracing Ambiguity and Mindfulness — were added by Cyndi Burnett and her co-authors.
Skill names and definitions are quoted from the Creative Thinking Skills handout, © Weaving Creativity into Every Strand of Your Curriculum — Burnett, Figliotti & Saltzberg, 2020, Creativity & Education, which also gives the five groups.
The cards under each skill are this edition's; a city edition keeps the same skills and mechanics and swaps in local material. Open the deck →