This study is concerned with creativity in education - especially in arts education (broadly conceived to include the visual arts, music, and creative writing). It takes as its starting point Nietzsche's view that works of art do not appear "as if by magic".

Using insights from philosophy, psychoanalysis, and semiotics, the book examines the creative processes of many artists in different media, showing how art works often result from processes of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction that may be long and laborious. Pigrum demonstrates how teachers and their students in all sectors of education may gain from a better, systematic, understanding of such processes.