By Mike Knowles FRSA, Lotus Academy.
He explores a provocative proposition for the AI age: whether individual creative achievement could be recognised through Creative Credits, giving young people a tangible record — and potentially a new form of value — for their creativity.
What If Creativity Had Real Value?
We tell young people that creativity matters. Then we send them into a world that rarely gives it a value of its own. What if we changed that?
Artificial intelligence is forcing us to reconsider what human beings bring to education, employment and society. I believe we are asking the wrong question.
We keep asking: what will AI be able to do?
I think we should be asking: what will human beings need to be able to do, that matters even more because AI exists?
For me, one of the answers is creativity.
I have spent much of my professional life in education and creative disciplines. I have seen young people arrive with curiosity, imagination and a willingness to experiment, only to encounter systems that are much better at measuring what they know than recognising what they might create.
Are we undervaluing the very thing we are going to need?
AI can already generate images, write prose, compose music, analyse information and produce solutions at extraordinary speed. I don't think we should pretend otherwise, nor do I think the answer is to fear technology.
The educational challenge is to help young people use AI intelligently without surrendering their own agency to it.
UNESCO has argued for precisely this kind of human-centred approach to generative AI in education: technology should serve human development rather than determine it.
At the same time, employers are telling us something important.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 places creative thinking fourth among the core skills required by employers today. It also predicts that creative thinking will continue to increase in importance towards 2030. Employers value creativity.
Universities tell students creativity matters.
But where, exactly, is the value of an individual's creativity recognised?
What if creativity became an asset?
What if an individual's demonstrated creativity could acquire recognised value in its own right?
I call the idea Creative Credits.
The original concept emerged from the possibility of NFTs and using blockchain technology to create a verified, tokenised record of creative achievement.
But technology is not actually the most important part of the idea.
The important part is value.
A Creative Credit would recognise an original creative contribution made by an individual. Over time, those credits could form a personal record of creative achievement — something accumulated through making, imagining, designing, writing, inventing, performing, problem-solving or other forms of creative activity.
Instead of creativity disappearing into a portfolio, classroom exercise or assessment mark, it would leave behind something recognised.
Potentially, something owned and transferable.
And, eventually, something with financial value.
Could every child begin with creative capital?
Creativity should not belong only to people who can afford art school, musical tuition, specialist equipment or the cultural networks that help creative careers flourish.
Every child is creative.
Education should help creativity develop rather than decide which children are entitled to call themselves creative.
Imagine a young person beginning to accumulate Creative Credits through school.
They might receive recognition for designing an object, writing a story, creating a piece of music, solving a community problem, producing a film, developing an idea, building something or finding an unexpected answer to a difficult question.
The question would no longer simply be: What grade did you get?
It could also become: What did you create?
What would students say?
I suspect many students would understand this proposition faster than institutions do.
Young people already live in economies of digital value. They understand profiles, gaming rewards, digital assets, followers, ratings and online reputation.
Why couldn't some of that instinct be redirected towards creative development?
Imagine an online environment in which young people complete creative challenges and build Creative Credits as they progress.
The purpose would not be to turn childhood creativity into relentless competition. Quite the opposite. It could make visible forms of ability that conventional assessment often misses.
A student who struggles with examinations may be an extraordinary visual thinker. Another may see spatial relationships instinctively. Another may make connections between apparently unrelated ideas. Another may have the courage to ask the question everyone else has overlooked.
And what might employers see?
The World Economic Forum estimates that nearly 40% of the skills required in jobs are expected to change by 2030. Employers continue to emphasise technological competence, but creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, curiosity and lifelong learning are also among the human capabilities rising in importance.
Perhaps the CV of the future therefore needs to tell us more than qualifications and employment history. It should evidence of a candidate's creative development?
Not somebody simply claiming: “I am a creative thinker.”
But a body of independently recognised creative activity accumulated over years.
But who decides what is creative?
My proposal is therefore for an independent body provisionally called the Keepers of Creative Excellence: educators, artists, designers, writers, performers, technologists and other creative practitioners who would help establish standards and recognise creative contributions.
Their role should be to recognise creative contribution, including experimentation, originality, imagination, problem-solving and the willingness to take intellectual and creative risks.
There would need to be safeguards, transparent criteria and serious research into bias, access, ownership and governance.
And, particularly where children are concerned, online safety and data protection must be designed into the system from the beginning rather than added later.
Does it actually need to be an NFT?
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The original proposition was Personal Creativity as a Non Fungible Token (NFT), and blockchain still offers interesting possibilities around authorship, provenance, ownership and transferability.
Technologies change. The principle is more important: Can we create a credible mechanism through which an individual's creative contribution is recognised, recorded and given enduring value?
If blockchain proves the best infrastructure, use it. If something better emerges, use that.
My ask of universities
Universities — particularly art, design and creative institutions — are uniquely placed to test this idea.
Could Creative Credits work? How should creativity be recognised? How could assessment avoid reproducing existing inequalities? Could credits have economic value without distorting the creative process? Could a verified creative record complement qualifications? Could schools and universities pilot it? Could employers use it? Could young people themselves help design it?
My ask of government and creative industries
Government policy understandably concentrates on AI literacy, digital skills and productivity. But preparing young people for an AI-rich economy cannot simply mean teaching them to become better users of machines.
We must invest equally seriously in the qualities that make human contribution distinctive.
I would like to see government, universities and creative industries support an initial research and development programme to investigate Creative Credits: their educational validity, governance, technology, economics, safeguarding and potential for a controlled pilot.
A final provocation
For generations, education has awarded young people certificates rewarding what they know.
Perhaps it is time we also gave them something that recognises what they can imagine.
It is an argument for becoming much more serious about developing what human beings bring to the partnership: curiosity, judgement, imagination, meaning, empathy and creative agency.
So my provocation to government, universities and the creative industries is this: Treat creativity as national infrastructure.
And above all, stop telling young people that their creativity matters while operating educational and economic systems that struggle to recognise it.
About the author
Professor Mike Knowles FRSA is an educator, designer and advocate for creativity-centred education, with extensive experience across higher education, design and creative practice. His work explores how education can place human creativity, curiosity and imagination at the centre of learning, particularly as artificial intelligence changes the relationship between knowledge, skills and human value.
Selected sources
Guidance for generative AI in education and research | UNESCO
The Future of Jobs Report 2025 | World Economic Forum