If creativity were a garden, what have you learned about it that helps it grow, and what causes it to wither? What have you learned as a gardener of human potential?
Freddie: Well, as a gardener, human potential has to be allowed to evolve in a very personal way, and the person who's tending the garden has to tend the person's creativity with understanding that you cannot drag it along. You've got to let it unfold and grow within that individual. And, sometimes you wish they'd do it faster, but that's when the gardener in you has to back off and let the seed evolve in their own time.
Creativity has been your companion for a very long time. How would you describe your relationship with it today?
Freddie: As a friend. I get a very nice feeling when I actually perceive an entity that is creative. It's almost like a ghost that is hovering around me, very happy, very supportive, and appreciates my creativity.
For the premiere episode of Season 2, I am joined by creativity scholar, educator, and mentor Fredricka "Freddie" Reisman. Throughout a lifetime of research, teaching, and advocacy, Freddie has challenged narrow understandings of creativity and worked to help people recognize the creative strengths they already possess. From her early collaborations with E. Paul Torrance to the development of the RDCA (Reisman Diagnostic Creativity Assessment), her work has been rooted in a simple but powerful belief: every person is creative.
In our conversation, Freddie reflects on creativity in education, the importance of self-awareness, the role of motivation, and why so many creative strengths go unnoticed in schools and society. She shares stories of students whose lives were transformed when their creativity was recognized rather than dismissed, and discusses her ongoing mission to help teachers, researchers, and individuals better understand their own creative potential.
Perhaps most movingly, Freddie describes the lasting gift she received from her mentor, Paul Torrance: the gift of caring. By the end of our conversation, creativity emerges not simply as innovation or problem solving, but as a deeply human capacity to nurture growth, embrace potential, and enrich the lives of others.
"The gift that Dr. Torrance gave me was the gift of caring... To care about someone else enriches your life, and I think that creativity is such a human quality, it's such a human characteristic, that it just helps one make their life more beautiful."
~Freddie Reisman
