If we take the premise that UAL really thinks that ‘the world needs creativity’ are they creating conditions that best facilitate creativity to happen? It’s a convenient claim because there is no singular formula for creativity. I am thinking about this in relation to schools like Black Mountain College, and Bennington—places that allowed for enormous freedom, interaction/collaboration between students and staff, and also were geographically more isolated, so community became inevitable.
But, even in cities, a commonality within movements is also community, because people are interdependent and nothing is produced in a vacuum. I have been trying to understand the structure of at least CSM but also UAL and how the pieces fit together. Along the way, I am finding more issues and possible solutions. And flirting with different topics like care, community, sociality, mutuality, and around to this central premise: creativity.
Simply assembling creatives in the same physical location isn’t sufficient: atomized structures are cleaner, but is creativity inherently messy? It’s time to look at studies of creativity. Why? Why this? I think these sorts of structural issues hit me in a visceral way, intuitively feeling wrong. Like a doctor who can see what isn’t working correctly. I refuse to affirm as effective this method as it currently is.
If we look to Rob Pope’s book Creativity: Theory, History, Practice, he notes that creativity is the “capacity to make, do, or become something fresh and valuable with respect to others as well as ourselves” (p. xv). He posits that creativity can be realised through objects (made), actions (done), and ongoing processes (of becoming). Crucially, he says “we never create anything fresh or valuable in utter isolation; we always create in relation to other people and other things” (p. xvi).
Citing an article by David Harrington titled ‘The ecology of human creativity,’ who says “people work in intended or unintended collaboration,” (p. 65) analogous to Donna Haraway’s emphasis on entangled biomes, Harrington is further cited as offering: “life processes are sustained by functional relationships and interdependencies” (p.69). Pope offers the idea of co-operation with an expanded idea of that word into “co-becoming” as the ideal setting for creativities.
“Clearly, this view of creativity has little in common with the hyper-individualistic notion of the solitary genius: the lone artist in his garret or the isolated scientist slaving in his laboratory. Such stereotypes have a great deal to do with the late Romantic, especially mid-nineteenth-century, mythology of creation. But, they have little to do with the actual creative practices of most scientist and artists, including the Romantics. Equally clearly, however, the present conception of co-operation recognises and celebrates the essential contribution of kinds of individual (but not necessarily individualist) input. As with a genuinely dynamic model of conversation, the whole thing depends on there being spaces and opportunities for the expression of individual differences and alternative preferences without any single voice or point of view dominating.”
Pope, Rob (2005). Creativity: theory, history, practice. London: Routledge. Page 66.
Shifting from Pope’s comprehensive overview to The Cambridge handbook of creativity, there are a plethora of definitions and approaches from different disciplinary directions. Interestingly, the section on organizational creativity felt relevant to the university setting, thinking about what organizational features promote creativity.
“In regard to organizational culture and creativity, Martins and Terblanche (2003) identified five major factors related to organizational culture that promote creativity:
1) an innovation strategy that explicitly focuses on the development and implementation of new products and services, which is derived through an organization’s vision and mission;
2) the organizational structure, which includes such variables as flexibility, freedom, and cooperative teams;
3) organizational support mechanisms, such as reward and recognition programs, as well as availability of resources (e.g., time, information technology, creative people);
4) behavior that encourages innovation, consisting of response to failure, idea generation, spirit of continuous learning, risk-taking, competitiveness, support for change, and conflict management;
5) open communication” (p. 155).
If we take these cultural premises promoting creativity and analyse Central Saint Martins through these criteria, are any of them being implemented or fostered? I think the rigid, closed-door structure of the university, full of convoluted communications and organizational structure, and hyper-individualism, goes against most of these accepted ideas of what fosters creativity.
In the spirit of the below passage on moderation, I’ll end here for now.
And a text reflection on this passage about moderation in creativity, in relation to the university’s promotional language, and my project.