Everyday Creativity in Pandemic: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The article presents a systematic review of scholarly papers referring to everyday creativity in times of COVID-19. We reviewed 30 papers published between May 2020 and June 2022. We searched in SCOPUS, Google Scholar, JSTOR and PsycINFO, using combinations of the following keywords: Creativity, Pandemic and COVID-19. We follow the PRISMA guidelines for conducting systematic reviews. We established four general inclusion criteria and selected quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-design empirical papers. Three experts evaluated whether the papers met the established criteria. We analyzed the selected research qualitatively through encodings and method of constant comparisons. We built four general categories whose purpose is to systematize the main results of the papers: Creativity and Health, Increase in Creative Actions, Motivations, and Creative Growth. The analyzed papers show relationships between creative actions, well-being, and coping. The data showed increases in creative actions in times of pandemic. Enjoyment, seeking contact with others, and coping appear as the main reasons for the development of creative actions. The results highlight the importance of creative adaptation in the construction of new personal and professional development projects.