The nature of Creativity & Learning

Abbs (1989, p. 27), with reference to the Gulbenkian report, states that "art represents human rationality, is a mode of intelligence, is an act of enquiry or investigation, a form of thinking, a way of understanding”. The process of enquiry and investigation could be called the creative process and the creative product as the culmination of the thinking and understanding developed. Csikszentmihalyi (1996, p.28) goes on to define the nature and function of creativity further as "any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one. And the definition of a creative person is: someone whose thoughts or actions change a domain, or establish a new domain". This links with Atkinson's (2011) view that real learning presupposes an ontological movement, an individual change in the state of being of the creator but extends it so that, in addition to this, Creativity with a capital C also changes the wider domain in which it is located.

With reference to the balance between critical theory, knowledge and understanding, and practice, experimentation and visual investigation, it is imperative that both must inform the other in order for creativity to be successful: “No creation without tradition! or No transformation without the continuous internalisation of conventions!” (Abbs, 1989, p. 22). Creativity and arts practice require "a mixture of experimenting, uncertainty, perseverance, curiosity and contingencies that constitute unpredictable lines of flight and their local organisation in the struggles and enjoyment of learning” (Atkinson, 2011, p. 19). Equally, they also requires the underpinning critical understanding for both the creation and appreciation of works: “Both for the maker and the receiver, art presupposes other works of art; it assumes tacit understandings, implicit conventions, shared reference points within the symbolic field” (Abbs, 1989, p. 37).

Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1996. Creativity. New York: Harper Collins

Abbs, P., 1989. A is for Aesthetic. Sussex: The Falmer Press

Atkinson, D., 2011. Art, Equality and learning: Pedagogies against the State. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.