In the novel Never Let Me Goby Fazuo Ishiguro, Kathy tells readers, "How you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to...

The reason
behind putting so much emphasis on creativity is revealed later on
in a discussion between Miss Emily, Marie-Claude, Tommy, and Kathy at around page
239. During this discussion, Miss Emily reveals that
she was the only one who questioned whether or not Hailsham was
morally right. The morality of Hailsham can be questioned on
several different grounds: (1) Is it morally right to clone human
beings for the mere sake of harvesting their organs? (2) If human beings are cloned, are they
fully human, or do they lack human souls? (3) If cloned human
beings are not fully human, do they need to be treated humanely and with the same
civil rights as actual human beings?

It can be argued that
society's current method of organ transplants is
inhumane because ill individuals who need transplants must simply
wait until an organ donor passes on so that the ill individual can receive the organ. Many ill
patients who need transplants don't make it through the waiting
period. Hence, it can be argued that cloning human beings is a more moral method
of overseeing organ donations because more ill individuals are more likely to
receive the organ he/she needs. If more individuals are ensured the rights of
life and happiness, then more civil rights are protected for more
individuals. But while that's more moral for ill individuals, the question
arises, what about the clones? Should we even care about the rights of clones? As Miss Emily
states, their intention behind Hailsham had been to prove that there was a more humane way of
"doing things," such as donating organs to those who need it. But what's more, as
society developed the idea of creating clones to harvest organs, society also started
treating those clones as merely test tube subjects, not as human
beings. Miss Emily and other founders of Hailsham wanted to also ensure that the
clones were treated humanely. But of course the founders of Hailsham could only
prove that the clones were indeed being treated humanely if they could prove the
clones were being treated like human beings. The artwork became the
solution to the problem of inhumane
treatment.

Teaching the clones to be creative in
artwork became, they had hoped, the answer to that question as
to whether or not the clones at Hailsham were indeed
being treated humanely. As Miss Emily phrases it, they encouraged the clones to
create artwork because, "We thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely,
we did it to prove you had souls at all(it starting at we)."
Creativity is one of the very few things that separates human
beings from animals. If it can be proved that the clone children possessed the ability to be
creative, then it could be proven that they were fully human beings
and deserved to be treated humanely. Not only that, once it was
proved that the clone children had the ability to be creative, encouraging them to
be creative was a logical means of ensuring that the clones were
indeed being treated humanely, not as mere test tube subjects. As Miss Emily
later explains, they collected the colones' art work to put on
display all over the country so that prominent people could view the artwork, such as
"cabinet ministers, bishops, [and] all sorts of famous people." In displaying the
clones' artwork, it was there way of saying "'There, look! ... Look at this art! How dare
you claim these children are anything less than fully human?'" If the founders of Hailsham
could successfully make this statement, then they could ensure that the clones at
Hailsham would continue to be treated, as they hoped,
humanely.

Hence, encouraging
creativity was both their way of proving that the cloned children
were both fully human and worthy of humane treatment
and proving that the cloned children
were in reality receiving humane treatment.