This article provides a critical overview of literature and research on creativity. It takes as its starting-point McWilliam and Dawson (2008) “Teaching for creativity: Towards sustainable and replicable pedagogical practice”, Higher Education, 56(6), pp. 633–643. McWilliam’s and Dawson’s main idea is liquid learning, emphasising group endeavour over individual. Liquid learning is described as based on swarm intelligences, including teacher engagement in a post digital era, inhabited by the gamer generation. The present article makes use of the Csikszentmihalyian sociocultural framework (individual – domain knowledge– society). By doing so, it argues that liquid learning, while important, is not a panacea for creativity in higher education, suggesting a mixed ‘liquid’ and ‘solid’ approach to creativity that is socially valuable.