This article takes as its starting point the ongoing downturn in student interest in, and engagement with, the enabling sciences. We make a case that embedding of creative pedagogies in science education has significant potential to arrest the flight from modern science. Five propositions are explored in order to argue the case: that young people are more engaged by active tasks than with a passive consumption approach to transfer of core knowledge; that it is boredom, not rigour, that disengages them--the difference is between static and dynamic sources of knowledge; that creativity is not the antithesis of scientific rigour but the core business of scientific thinking; that we now have new understandings of creative pedagogies that make teaching strategies visible and effective; and, that these strategies can build academic, digital and social capacity simultaneously and this is the new core business of the science educator. We conclude by flagging implications for leading such pedagogical change in science faculties.