> We found a small but significant (r = .19) correlation between memory and creative cognition. Among semantic, episodic, working, and short-term memory, all correlations were significant, but semantic memory – particularly verbal fluency, the ability to strategically retrieve information from long-term memory – was found to drive this relationship. Further, working memory capacity was found to be more strongly related to convergent than divergent creative thinking. We also found that within visual creativity, the relationship with visual memory was greater than that of verbal memory, but within verbal creativity, the relationship with verbal memory was greater than that of visual memory. Finally, the memory- creativity correlation was larger for children compared to young adults despite no impact of age on the overall effect size. These results yield three key conclusions: (1) semantic memory supports both verbal and nonverbal creative thinking, (2) working memory supports convergent creative thinking, and (3) the cognitive control of memory is central to performance on creative thinking tasks.
So some memory seems to be correlated with convergent creativity, which according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_thinking) is "the ability to give the 'correct' answer to questions that do not require novel ideas, for instance on standardized multiple-choice tests for intelligence." It sounds like there's less correlation with divergent creativity, which (again from wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking)) is "a thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions."
But my real takeaway is that people here seem to have strong (emotional?) opinions on "memorization vs creativity: which is better", but few people seemed to bother reading page 1 google results on the topic. So I like to think that bothering to do some cursory research beats both. :)