Towards humanising creativity?

Within the context of developing creativity discourse and policy, this paper begins by exploring a number of the tensions that emerged from research using an interdisciplinary framework to investigate creativity with English expert specialist dance teachers. The paper then interrogates and articulates the productive dynamics of one of these tensions that occur between individual, collaborative and communal creativity. This tension is discussed within the wider debate of individualised versus collaborative/communal creativity and the encouragement of the former by individualised, marketised creativity policies. It is argued that one constructive product of articulating how dance professionals negotiate this tension within education is a pertinent and helpful example of a more humane framework for creativity than that espoused by the individualised marketisation agenda. In turn the paper draws out the idea of humanising creativity as a productive process that has the potential to challenge aspects of the dominant policy discourse in an emergent way

Collaborative Practices that Support Creativity in Design

Design is a ubiquitous, collaborative and highly material activity. Because of the embodied nature of the design profession, designers apply certain collaborative practices to enhance creativity in their everyday work. Within the domain of industrial design, we studied two educational design departments over a period of eight months. Using examples from our fieldwork, we develop our results around three broad themes related to collaborative practices that support the creativity of design professionals: 1) externalization, 2) use of physical space, and 3) use of bodies. We believe that these themes of collaborative practices could provide new insights into designing technologies for supporting a varied set of design activities. We describe two conceptual collaborative systems derived from the results of our study

Learning from design creativity: translating processes from practice to education

Paper submitted as part of the 2nd International Conference on Design Creativity, Glasgow 2012. This paper is made available with permission of the Design Society, who own the copyright.This paper develops reflections on design creativity as a cross-curriculum tool in mainstream formal education at primary/elementary level. Evidence comes from a contemporary UK case study of a series of workshops whereby architectural design professionals introduced design creativity into mainstream primary teaching and learning situations, developed through the UK Creative Partnerships‘ programme. This programme, which until recently was funded through central government, introduced principles of collaborative creativity through targeted programmes of change and enquiry involving pupils, teachers and creative practitioners. Following the processes of designing and delivering a programme to embed creative exploration through design tasks which focus on the learning environment, the authors, both architectural practitioners and educators, undertake further reflection back to the architectural profession and the societal role of collaborative creative design. We propose a hybrid practice in which architects might swap skills with teachers, pupils, teaching assistants and school management. This process reveals new creative concepts to pupils and staff, and unearths latent abilities within pupils as they work collaboratively to develop and provide design services for the built fabric or spatial use of school spaces

Modes of communication during jazz improvisation

This study investigated modes of communication adopted by six student jazz musicians during rehearsal and performance. Six one-hour rehearsal sessions and a performance were observed and videotaped for analysis. Results revealed six modes of communication that formed two main categories, verbal and non-verbal, each containing three distinct modes of communication: instruction, cooperation and collaboration. Non-verbal collaborative mode displayed empathetic attunement, which is a vehicle for empathetic creativity. Empathetic creativity is a theoretical concept proposed by the author based on the concept of empathetic intelligence (Arnold, 2003, 2004). Practical applications of empathetic creativity are discussed with reference to music education, focusing on evaluation of individual contribution to group creative performances

Assessment of co-creativity in the process of game design

We consider game design as a sociocultural and knowledge modelling activity, engaging participants in the design of a scenario and a game universe based on a real or imaginary socio-historical context, where characters can introduce life narratives and interaction that display either known social realities or entirely new ones. In this research, participants of the co-creation activity are Malaysian students who were working in groups to design game-based learning resources for rural school children. After the co-creativity activity, the students were invited to answer the co-creativity scale, an adapted version of the Assessment Scale of Creative Collaboration (ASCC), combining both the co-creativity factors and learners’ experiences on their interests, and difficulties they faced during the co-creativity process. The preliminary results showed a high diversity on the participants’ attitudes towards collaboration, especially related to their preferences towards individual or collaborative work

Musical Creativity: Insights from Music Education Research

How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a communicative tool in music therapy? This volume offers new research o these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studios, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research

Stimulating Team Creativity: The Influence Of Swift-Trust On The Team Creativity Process

It is often suggested that most creative ideas that lead to an innovation originate from a collaborative environment.  Organizations frequently establish teams to encourage collaboration as a way of generating new and creative ideas for innovation.  Yet, teams often fail to establish a proper collaborative environment in a timely manner or to stimulate team creativity.  Team creativity, a by-product of the proper collaborative experience, and its stimulating agents are the focus of this paper.  Specifically, this paper examines how organizations can rapidly create the proper collaborative environment to induce team creativity using swift-trust.  Swift-trust, a unique form of trust and collective perception, is proposed as a stimulating agent for the quick formation of a collaborative environment that leads to team creativity.  The antecedents to the formation of swift trust are identified as team composition and team tasking.  The moderating effects of the leader-member relationship and history are examined.  Overall, results show that swift trust leads to the rapid establishment of a collaborative team environment which leads to team creativity.  A conceptual model is presented and an example is discussed.  This paper makes two important contributions.  First, the establishment of a swift-trust environment is positively linked to the early stimulation of team creativity.  Second, a practical blueprint, through the development of a conceptual model, is offered to the management practitioner desiring to quickly stimulate team creativity using swift-trust

A new approach to collaborative creativity support of new product designers

Bitter-Rijpkema, M., Sloep, P. B., Sie, R., Van Rosmalen, P., Retalis, S., & Katsamani, M. (2011). A new approach to collaborative creativity support of new product designers. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 7(4), 478-492. DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2011.042992Effective collaborative creativity is crucial to contemporary professionals who have to continuously produce innovative products and services. The technological nature and complexity of the innovations require team work, among specialists from different disciplines. Often these teams work in a distributed fashion, across boundaries of time and place. Therefore they need electronic “spaces” that support (‘afford’) their creative collaboration. Co-creativity support is not only a matter of making appropriate groupware spaces available but also of providing concurrent support in all these dimensions. These considerations inspired the development of the idSpace platform. idSpace is a collaboration platform integrating a variety of creativity tools with pedagogy-based guidance. It aims to optimize both the use of creativity techniques themselves and of the supporting processes of team collaboration and knowledge creation. In this paper we zoom in on Knowledge-sharing Strategies for Collaborative Creativity (KS4CC). We show how collaborative creativity can be enhanced via integration of pattern-based pedagogical flow support, including suggestions of optimal use of creativity techniques. The KS4CC strategies consist of a merger of learning and collaboration flow patterns with support for the application of creative techniques

Experiences of learning through collaborative evaluation from a masters programme in professional education

This paper presents findings from a collaborative evaluation project within a masters programme in professional education. The project aimed to increase knowledge of research methodologies and methods through authentic learning where participants worked in partnership with the tutor to evaluate the module which they were studying. The project processes, areas of the course evaluated and the data collection methods are outlined. The findings focus on key themes from evaluating the effectiveness of using a collaborative evaluation approach, including: enhanced student engagement; creativity of the collaborative evaluation approach; equality between the tutor and students; and enhanced research skills. Discussion focuses on the outcomes and effectiveness of the project and tutor reflections on adopting a collaborative approach. This paper highlights lessons from the project relevant to those interested in staff-student partnership approaches and those facilitating postgraduate learning and teaching programmes and educational research courses

Music Education: A site for collaborative creativity - Editorial Introduction

Abstract not available