Participatory Creativity

Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom presents a systems-based approach to examining creativity in education that aims to make participating in invention and innovation accessible to all students. Moving beyond the gifted-versus-ungifted debate present in many of today’s classrooms, the book’s inclusive framework situates creativity as a participatory and socially distributed process. The core principle of the book is that individuals are not creative, ideas are creative, and that there are multiple ways for a variety of individuals to participate in the development of creative ideas. This dynamic reframing of invention and innovation provides strategies for teachers, curriculum designers, policymakers, researchers, and others who seek to develop a more equitable approach towards establishing creative learning experiences in various educational settings.

The Participatory Creativity Guide for Educators debunks our outdated cultural understanding that some people are creative and others are not. Offering an embracing approach to creativity that encompasses invention and innovation, this practical guide reframes creativity as a mode of experience that all young people and adults have the opportunity to participate in. Bringing the principles of participatory creativity into the classroom, this book helps educators reframe invention and innovation, democratize the creative process, and leverage the knowledge, skills, background experiences, and cultural perspectives that students bring with them every day. Key concepts are illustrated through rich vignettes and pictures of practice as chapters walk you through the what, why, and how of incorporating participatory creativity into your teaching and learning environment. Designed for educators in a vast array of settings (including schools, community centers, museums, afterschool programs, and grandpa’s backyard workshop), this book is key reading for any educator looking to use creativity to strengthen and expand their teaching and learning.

Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom presents a systems-based approach to examining creativity in education that aims to make participating in invention and innovation accessible to all students. Moving beyond the gifted-versus-ungifted debate present in many of today’s classrooms, the book’s inclusive framework situates creativity as a participatory and socially distributed process. The core principle of the book is that individuals are not creative, ideas are creative, and that there are multiple ways for a variety of individuals to participate in the development of creative ideas. This dynamic reframing of invention and innovation provides strategies for teachers, curriculum designers, policymakers, researchers, and others who seek to develop a more equitable approach towards establishing creative learning experiences in various educational settings.

The Creativity Reader is a necessary companion for anyone interested in the historical roots of contemporary ideas about creativity, innovation, and imagination. It brings together a prestigious group of international experts who were tasked with choosing, introducing, and commenting on seminal texts focused on creativity, invention, genius, and imagination from the period of 1850 to 1950. This volume is at once retrospective and prospective: it revisits old ideas, assesses their importance today, and explores their potential for the future. Through its wide historical focus, this Reader challenges the widespread assumption that creativity research is mainly a product of the second half of the twentieth century. Featuring primary sources interpreted through the lenses of leading contemporary scholars, The Creativity Reader testifies to the incredible richness of this field of study, helps us understand its current developments, and anticipates its future directions. The texts included here, many of them little known or forgotten, are part of the living history of creativity studies. Indeed, an examination of these seminal papers helps the new generation of creativity and innovation researchers to be mindful of the past and unafraid to explore it.

This Handbook brings together an international cast of experts to explore the social nature and context of creativity studies, focusing on methodology as a key component in advancing the social study of creativity. Two decades on from the pioneering work of Alfonso Montuori and Ronald E. Purser, the authors present a timely appraisal of past and present work in social creativity studies, and look ahead to future developments within this field. The authors collectively offer a rigorous examination of the methodological and empirical issues and techniques involved in studying social creativity. They examine the phenomenon as a form of communication and interaction within collaborative relationships; contending that creativity happens not within a vacuum but instead from a nexus of personal, social and contextual influences. This comprehensive work is organized in three parts, focusing first on the various methodological approaches applicable to the social in creativity studies. It secondly turns to empirical findings and approaches relating to the social nature of creativity. In the book’s final part, the authors offer reflections on the state of social research into creativity, pinpointing areas requiring further methodological scrutiny and empirical verification, and areas that may inspire further theoretical or applied work. Combining classic ideas with cutting-edge, emerging methods, this work provides a vital methodological ‘toolbox’ for investigators within social creativity.

This book proposes that creative and participatory modes of measuring, knowing, and moving in the world are needed for coming to grips with the Anthropocene epoch. It interrogates how creative, affective and experiential encounters that traverse the local and the global, as well as the mundane and the everyday, can offer new perspectives on the challenges that lay ahead. This book considers the role of the arts in exploring geographical concerns and increasing human mobility. In doing so, it offers ways to counteract the unstable, shifting and disorienting impacts and debates surrounding human activity and the Anthropocene. The authors bring together perspectives from mobilities, creative arts, cultural geography, philosophy and humanities in an innovative exploration of how creative forms of measurement can assist in reconfiguring individual and collective action.

This book addresses the conceptual lapse in the literature regarding the relationship between cultural production and participatory politics by examining their connections in a range of national and political contexts. Each chapter examines how youth engage cultural production as part of their political participation, and how political participation is sometimes central to, and expressed through, cultural production. The contributing authors provide examples of the intersections between youth cultural production and participatory politics and bring together a range of approaches to the examination of these intersections, providing illustrations of the complexities involved in these processes. Each of the chapters takes up different kinds of practices – from street art to video production, from online activism to installation work. They also examine a range of political contexts – from students striking at the University of Puerto Rico to activism in community arts centres and university classrooms. The book considers what becomes evident when close attention is paid to the intersection of cultural production and participatory politics: what does participatory politics help people to see about cultural production and how does cultural production expand how people understand participatory politics? This book was originally published as a special issue of Curriculum Inquiry.

This book explores the practical delivery of participatory arts projects in international development. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academics, international development professionals and arts practitioners, the book engages honestly with the competing challenges faced by the different groups of people involved. Participatory arts are becoming increasingly popular in international development circles, fuelled in part by the increased accessibility of audio-visual media in the digital age, and also by the move towards participatory discourses in the wake of the UN’s Agenda 2030. The book asks: What do participatory arts projects look like in practice, and why are they used as an international development tool? How can we develop practical and sustainable development projects on the ground, localising best practice according to cultural, economic and linguistic contexts? What are the enablers of, and barriers to, successful participatory initiatives, and how can we evaluate past projects to learn and feed into future projects? Written to appeal to both academics and practitioners, this book would also be suitable for teaching on courses related to participatory development, community arts, and culture and development.