Media creativity and literacies

Our research combines computer and social science to design creative learning environments and research social and cultural uses of media and technologies. It includes the research-based design of tangible, sensory environments, shared multimodal interfaces, and gaming environments that support creative learning. Alongside this, we examine how peopleís literacy practices and creativity is shaped through the use of media and technology, whether in education, the workplace or at play; the futures of knowledge, creativity and communication for education; the place of creative activity in media education; and activities such as amateur camcorder video production, creative game design and formal classroom activities.

Rhetorics of creativity: From theory to practice Print

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Project Director
Andrew Burn

Researcher
Shakuntala Banaji

Project Advisor
David Buckingham

Project Details
Aug 2005 – May 2006
Funder: Creative Partnerships

Keywords
Creativity, learning

 

Rhetorics of creativity: From theory to practice

This project is commissioned by Creative Partnerships. It explores understandings of creativity in relation to learning and to the interests of partners and stakeholders: how these understandings develop, where they come from, how they are used, and in whose interest.

The project develops a robust model of rhetorics of creativity. The working hypothesis here is that arts educators deploy a range of different claims about creativity which emerge from different contexts (artistic, bureaucratic, pedagogic, political), different artistic traditions (fine arts, popular arts, different art-forms, commercial art), different academic or quasi-academic traditions (liberal-humanist; aesthetics; communication studies; cultural studies), and different policy contexts (social inclusion; vocational education; gifted and talented).

Two problems for the effective planning, implementation and evaluation of projects emerge from this varied landscape. One is that stakeholders might only have a vague and ill-formed idea of what they mean by creativity. For instance, teachers interviewed in the BECTa Digital Video evaluation associated creativity with vague notions of freedom, which was actually at odds with productive forms of constraint used in the best practice in these projects (Reid et al, 2002). The second problem is that stakeholders might have quite specific ideas of what they mean; but that different partners within the same project have different ideas and understandings. Both problems are arguably quite widespread in the conception and execution of arts education projects in the UK. This project would provide a matrix of clearly-described rhetorics and clearly-described stakeholder positions, contexts and interests. Using this matrix, projects could be much more precise about what exactly they mean by creativity, what traditions they are working in, and how this will translate into the learning experience.

This project, while it would systematically review academic and professional literature, and develop more specific models of creativity in education, arts education, and new media, would regard the idea of creativity as a negotiated term, subject to rhetorical uses associated with specific contexts, social, cultural interests and even financial interests, and educational and artistic traditions. These rhetorics were tested with experts in the field at an Experts Seminar held at the Institute of Education, on the 16th of January 2006 and disseminated to CP directors as a matrix in handbook form, which should be helpful both as an evaluative tool, in assessing what forms of ‘creativity’ are at stake, and in aiding clear and coherent planning for future projects.

The project makes, we hope, a useful contribution to the theory of creativity in general and in the specific case of arts education.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 14 June 2007 )
 
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