Attend the 2021 Torrance Lecture featuring Paul Silvia on Nov. 11

• Date: Thursday, Nov. 11
• Time: 5-6:30 p.m.
• Location: UGA Special Collections Libraries

The 2021 Torrance Lecture will be delivered by Paul Silvia, the Lucy Spinks Keker Excellence Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A past president of the American Psychological Association Division 10, he applies ecological assessment methods to study creativity and the arts in people’s real-world environments. Additionally, he has written books on the psychology of interest and conducting daily-life research.

In "’Ordinary Creativity’ in Everyday Life: What Our Quirky Hobbies, Projects, and Passions Reveal About Human Creativity," Silvia will discuss how although famous ideas and creators get most of the attention, nearly all human creativity is mundane: the countless hobbies, projects, and passions that allow people to spend time doing something creative in everyday life, be it knitting scarves, writing poems, making jewelry, or decorating cupcakes.

This talk peeks into the surprising world of ordinary creativity. Using experience-sampling methods that measure people’s creative ideas and actions where and when they happen, we find that creative activity in daily life is utterly pervasive, a source of positive emotion, and a way to build satisfying skills and relationships. All told, ordinary creativity reveals something special about our motivation to be creative.

This event is free and open to the public.