Environmental education: creative place-making in Papua New Guinea

This paper addresses how experience of environment may be an important stimulant in the creative process through which appropriate architectural place may be made. We will argue that with a better understanding of their own reactions in and to environments architectural students may be more sensitive to the effects of their architectural gestures on others. Accepting that such depth experiences are mirrored in archetypal forms and patterns in indigenous architectures, we will use as a case study the education of architects and the creation of architecture in Papua New Guinea [PNG]. We argue that an appropriate architecture, responsive to the locale of PNG, offers the antithesis of the often inappropriate internationalised architecture

An introduction to STRIKE : STRuctured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment

Knowledge forms a critical part of the income generation of the system and the complex environment in which actors participate in the creation of knowledge assets merits robust, eclectic consideration. STRIKE - STRuctured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment affords an unobtrusive and systematic framework to observe, record, evaluate and articulate concrete and abstract elements of a setting, across internal and external dimensions. Inter-relationships between actor and environment are preserved. STRIKE is supported by underlying techniques to enrich data and enhance the authenticity of its representation. Adoption of photography and videography tools provides illustrative and interpretive benefits and facilitates researcher reflexivity. This structured approach to data analysis and evaluation mitigates criticisms of methodological rigour in observational research and affords standardisation potential, germane for application in a verification or longitudinal capacity. Advancing exploratory validation studies, the method is employed to evaluate the knowledge environments of two enterprises in the UK creative sector. These occupy a critical role in fostering entrepreneurial innovation alongside participant self-efficacy. Access Space in Sheffield and the Bristol Hackspace are committed to open software, open knowledge and open participation; sharing peer learning, creativity and socio-technical aims to address broadly similar community needs. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of Meaning, the knowledge management perspective is abstracted from the STRIKE assessment. It is argued that the tiered analytical approach which considers a breadth of dimensions enhances representation and interpretation of the knowledge environment and presents a diagnostic and prescriptive capability to actualise change. The paper concludes by evaluating framework effectiveness, findings application and future direction

Building Forts and Drawing on Walls: Fostering Student-Initiated Creativity Inside and Outside the Elementary Classroom

The arts embody one of the oldest forms of knowledge and knowing and action research provides opportunities to experiment with art as an integral part of the creation and dissemination of knowledge.This report is a personal account of a teacher with 16 years' experience as an elementary classroom teacher, who found that young children are drawn to an arts-based approach of inquiry, one that is grounded in arts practices. He describes many incidences inhis classroom where there have been many instances of students using methods to enhance their learning experiences that were similar to those found in artsbased learning and arts-based educational research settings

Aesthetic objects, aesthetic judgments and the crafting of organizational style in creative industries

In this article, we conceptually engage with style as central to creative industries. We specifically argue that style is crafted into being via an interplay between aesthetic judgments and “aesthetic objects.” We define aesthetic objects as temporary, material settlements fueled by a continual sense of dissatisfaction, eventually resolved through relational engagements. These remain under aesthetic inquiry throughout the process of crafting, until brought to particular close. We elaborate our theorizing with a non-traditional exemplar of the Bride Dress in the preparation of a 2009 Jean-Paul Gaultier’s fashion show. Our subsequent contribution is a richer conceptual understanding of style, with a material, aesthetic engagement at its center. In addition, in foregrounding under-explored features (i.e., aesthetic judgments, crafting of physical materials), and introducing new concepts (i.e., aesthetic objects), we outline promising openings for and significant connections with scholarship on creative or fluid industries, style, and organizational identity