The Age of Creativity: Understanding How Creativity Persists into Later Life
Name of applicant
Karol J. Borowiecki
Title
Professor
Institution
University of Southern Denmark
Amount
DKK 12,977,800
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
What?
The project examines how creativity develops across the life course, focusing on its persistence into later life. It asks when creativity peaks, why it can endure, and which personal, social, and institutional factors help it thrive. Using unique large-scale data, it provides the first systematic, life-course-based evidence on creative aging in the arts and academia.
Why?
Creativity is central to innovation, discovery, and progress - yet we still lack systematic evidence on how it evolves and persists into later life. This gap limits our understanding of the dynamics of human potential across the life course. The project pioneers a comprehensive, data-driven framework to address this fundamental scientific question.
How?
We combine economic, demographic, and computational methods with unique large-scale datasets on artists, composers, and academics. By applying advanced text, image, and network analysis, we uncover the factors that sustain creativity in older age, producing new insights into the mechanisms of creative aging.