Behind the Scenes of Artistic Creativity

Front matter

Tatiana Chemi/ Julie Borup Jensen / Lone Hersted

Behind the Scenes of Artistic Creativity

Processes of Learning, Creating and Organising eg ER LANG EDITION

Part One: Creativity and Art, by Tatiana Chemti..ccssccccsssiuccossenan 31

Chapter 1: Artistic creativity: past, present and future... 33 Etymology and definition(s) History of A: CONCEP tes sssscnaseniacuseissessassssasernsedecesgiavecstedssevestvsenscenscssctvsosussedasessbseds The arts and creativity... escent Creativity: studies today. «.icscccccsscssscasssossscsnenessesacosescvess edvstceccestbas aceassatstetaconetevesd

Chapter 2: Artists defining creativity sisi dansiiccmnanssnoasnanananendan 55 Meeting definitional challenges. sisisssosisinisssiniiaisirniissaissranisiis Are wordand Value: sumiin a E ARRA What creativity is fOr artists’. cis.cesesscssssuiseosssccnvernsssdsssssenstiesnisenscesctvernsssivesssenvsties Creativity as compulsion to make art Creativity as artistic identity cscsscscccesssecssciecsesdesaconsttness cotvsdcecsosttas sadesecanctetaceeatenesd Theineffable business ’si:j.iscisssccactsassissssdbsasevesasdscroinsucuaisbosasehsvessvaysdsesaiostoctoeastbens Embodied meaning...

Propositional and presentational 00.0...

Art as language in a new key...

Chapter 3: Artistic process and composition -iisiic.cccsisecincsticeiietieienatinn 83 Before the storm: preparing for creation over a lifetime... sees 85 The lifelong créative project .scisicsccdccassscssdes seve ccvseecsnteasecisivasesccivensetucvenssdicbeveassnnes 88

Intentional exposure to experiences occ ee testes eseesesseetesesseeteseeaeeeaneaes 96 Stealing: dialogue or fight with models «00.0.0... tess eesseseeseesstesneeseesseesee 98 Sweeping up the creative space se... cssvscccccessccsscesveacssiecesssvatescessectbasesesnusesdaneases 100 VACUO S ICY bss e step tissue devisna cousdaseasnveassWiesdecosceat ata cataaciuers E 104 Tin dialogue with the Mediu ....sssseccsrscsessceseesossesesesssnsassosessescansesnsesiansdbisecseniies 106 RUN A E A 109 "The art Of making art isis. scascasessseonisiessestesossnesesescasessastes aa ii 113 Chapter 4: Artistic emotions and ways of thinking... 119 When the Work 18: Ome 5. sssesccsssssscisacsssssssesesassebevessdesnscioctesedisensssecavonssstesensesosissie 119 Emotions im The making asissésecasscassdsantstesévseaseossesdatuessesetassdsessrseasesevsasianascesevbode 122 IPOSIEAVE: STOUT ONS: AAE TAT ch cususcesastsaevsese3sas A otustst isesests 124 Artists Uri FLOW insae N a a 127 Negative CIN OTIS 5 5c5ei555ss cscustscatnsessavaseccssas iosutdedsoees seasnstioasss¢ssscesesessiscssueased casas 129 Bridging positive and Negative ss, i. cstestiliissted decid an an 133 Art-making as discovery and researches 142

Chapter 5: Creativity and elements

öf learning aiid CHANGE ots astenurtopahes aunties iania 149 Creativity, learning and the arts ii..:..cscscissssscsessccsvonveciecoussvsecucensoesetsacessnsectssnssey 149 Why associate the concepts of learning and creativity? 0.0... 150 Experience, action and learning within the arts... esseseeeeeeeseeeenees Action, community and creativity oanneacannnn oon Cognition, arts and learning siisii Socio-cultural dimensions in learning... cscs eset eeseeeeseeseteseesneennees Tools and meaning-making in the arts... esses seseeseesseeseesneennens Determinism: and spontaneity canann a GS Culturalism: aiid Creativity eainiie Domains and the creative process...

Aesthetic learning and senses in learning processes Learning and creativity as intertwined and interwoven.

Chapter 6: Creativity and ways of building knowledge anid SANG pa cists nmnniniuadi nah ierionianuiiamnibnnmmatdiaN 169 Adequate expression: technical skills, craftsmanship and the DOA 2s.2s sss ssusecasssatissersssssavosasacsvsnssvasesdeuvicvssstesnaevsstudedastnnes sctenesvarsasueceostsdte 170 Without technique, creative ideas dicnicessnnansonsmeonsaniaianisnia 170 Practicing as a learning strategy 0... esceseessessees sess eestesseesneeseeseesseeseesesneensees 171 Changing perspectives of meaning as a learning strategy... 176 Impossibilities and Obstruction wees eeseesesseeseesteseeseeaeeseeaesneeseeneenee 177 Challenge as a strategy for continual learning and creativity... 178 Open engagement with the worldisssissnisineniseninnidanina 182 Curiosity killed the cat — but not learning... eee eeseeeeeseeseeeseeseeeneennees 183 The reflective practitioner — a curious practitioner... eee 184 Practice, challenge, curiosity and improvisation oc secseesseeeeeesseeeeeseenes 186

Apprenticeship and the situated understanding of learning... 189 Shared work, distributed learning nainen nannaa 190 Non-verbal learning opportunities... testes teaeeeeateaneesneeneeaees 192 Meaning=making and: aflinu 193 Teachers, educators, other masters and opportunities HOt! CARDING yea asana E tea E ERER 202

What is at stake in formal learning settings? 0.00... tees eeeeeeneeneens 209 Daring to be deliberately stupid... escent eesseeseeetesseeseesstesnesneennens 213 Wrhiatiis Serendipity senora syle deltenas 214 EMICIN SA CATNCLS sects Secst caters na a 218 Restrospéctive appreciation iss .ciaccscsscivs sesisaces eeveseseasedca su a a 220 Prepared mind: the unique and special meets the conformist ANA COMMON seniidis niei iadi aeaa a aia 221 Serendipity in the ClassrOGrs..i.ssssessasescsioscaccssiecesvosssosacssasnssesenssceasesaancsesseasoveses 222

Chapter 9: Creativity in a Relational Perspective... 229 The relational perspective sscsicssiscissisescscsscssssetecsdevasasaavasseadesandaloviavanisaalsicanlsnans 229 In dialogue with traditions... cesses cessesseessesstesneeseessessesssesensseenessees 233 Internalised others and inner social audiences... eee eeseesneeneees 236

The tole Of COMAENCE i... .essssssascssesssscieesensiesostscesesbastededeaseseasossncseseadsaepeas aaeseien 251 Challenges to collaborative creativity asrina 273

Chapter 11: Organising Creative Wome scicctisiptiiitiniapteriaranataatinae 279 Pathfinding and emergence. cscsseisassassiescscrssescesvotssossessasedsesossosensesisvessaseasozeien 279 Organising, community building and networking. 0.0... 294 Inspiration from travelling and cultural exchange... 297

Chapter 12: For Leaders Concerned with Creativity... 301 Leading and motivating within the arts... cseesesseesesseesseeeeseesseeseesneennees

Metaphors for leading creative WOLK....0.... cesses eseeseeeeeeseeeees Creating a frame for the creative process Nurturing a collaborative climate for creativity

Epilogue, by Tatiana Chemi and Julie Borup Jensen... 329 The ‘stad yim MUM ets es.scisessieccatscadsisssechovscyssatscaveuvsdapuevcnusrasoensrsessovagdessgapvedees sey 337 Artists: DIO GTAP lies ssi. :s5.5éseseessccssvacaresnttcevesderssbeudesdesnssboasesedusensds i 337 FREMCTE MCCS ganihan ainai a N 351

Acknowledgements

First of all, we wish to thank the artists who agreed to be part of our research project for having allowed us to look behind the scenes of their creativity. Very few of the artists we approached rejected our request and, if so, this was not due to lack of interest but exclusively due to lack of time. The engagement and passion of the participating artists has been a significant part of our motivation during the last three long years in the bumpy and creative process behind this book. Entering into conversations with them and listening to their engaging stories has been extremely inspiring and enriching for us. It has not been possible to include in this book all the great amount of precious narratives, but our intention is to use them in future studies.

Secondly, we would like to express a due acknowledgement to our families who have showed patience and sustained us morally in the process of writing this book.

We would also like to thank the Department of Learning and Philosophy at Aalborg University, which has supported the book project and the group of authors with both financial contributions and recognition. A special acknowledgement goes to our head of Department, Annette Lorentsen, and to our colleagues, who have shown great interest in our research project by enquiring about our experiences and findings.

We owe special thanks to our peer reviewers, Kjeld Fredens (part 1 and 2) Annie Aarup Jensen (part 2), Kenneth J. Gergen (part 3) and the research group CLIO at Aalborg University (part 3), who have spent their precious time on reading, giving feedback and discussing our chapters with us.

Finally we would like to acknowledge Julia Campbell Hamilton for her professional proof reading, Maria Mikkelsen for having helped us with the transcription of interviews and the elaboration of the artists’ biographies, Bente Lope at the University Library, Aalborg for her help with referencing software and finally the staff at the retreats, Klitgaarden in Skagen and Strandgaarden in Mols Bjerge, where we found time and tranquillity for writing surrounded by beautiful nature.

About the authors

Tatiana Chemi, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Chair of Educational Innovation, where she works in the field of artistic learning and creative processes, a field that she specifically focused on during Post Doc research at the Danish School of Education (DPU). As a graduate in Italian Literature and Theatre, with a Ph.D. in Contemporary Theatre History, she has a deep understanding of aesthetics and artistic practices. She has been a senior researcher at Universe Foundation and researcher at Universe Research Lab; a teaching assistant for the Dept. of Dramaturgy at the University of Aarhus and lecturer of History of World Literature and Visual Arts at the Scandinavian Department of the Russian Theatre School GITIS. She has organised and led several cultural projects, including the international theatre meeting The Multicultural Space (1-9 May 2002) and the Samuel Beckett Centenary in Denmark (November 2006), where she made her debut as a theatre director with the play Come and Go. Currently, she participates in the following research groups: ARiEL (Arts in Education and Learning, co-founder and leader), FIU (Research in Education and Cultures of Learning), HERG (Higher Education Research Group). She is the author of many published articles and reports and is also the author of Artbased Approaches. A Practical Handbook to Creativity at Work, Fokus Forlag, 2006, Kunsten at integrere kunst i undervisning [The art of integrating the arts in education], Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2012, In the Beginning Was the Pun: Comedy and Humour in Samuel Becketts Theatre, Aalborg University Press, 2013 and The Art of Arts Integration, Aalborg University Press, 2014. In 2013, Aalborg University Press named her Author of the Year. She is currently involved in research projects examining artistic creativity, arts-integrated educational designs in schools and the role of emotions in learning. She is Italian, a yoga enthusiast and excellent cook, married with two young sons and has lived in Denmark since 1999.

Julie Borup Jensen, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at Aalborg University. Her major interest is artistically mediated learning and aesthetic pedagogies in education. These interests derived from her background as a professional classical violinist, who in her thirties shifted to the profession of nursing, as well as from her Ph.D. research on public sector innovation within educational settings. The combination of the artistic, the practical and the academic experiences led to a humanistic research perspective, approaching creative and innovative processes within education from a learning point of view. This research approach has been carried on in subsequent research projects on arts as a mediating factor in knowledge and identity building in educations such as nursing, social education and teacher education. She participates in several research teams and groups at Aalborg University: ARiEL (Arts in Education and Learning), FIU (Research in Education and Cultures of Learning), reCreate (Research Centre for Creative and Immersive Learning Environments) and LPT (Cross Disciplinary Learning, on action research, co-leader and coordinator 2010-2013). Her publications include a wide range of articles and book contributions in Danish and English, such as two books on public sector innovation, Samarbejdsdrevet innovation i den offentlige sektor and Samarbejdsdrevet innovation i praksis (DJOF-Forlaget 2011 and 2014) and one about action research. Articles and book contributions circle around creativity as part of learning, and innovation as a social exchange of knowledge and practices. Julie grew up in Denmark, but has lived for short periods in countries like Germany (1995-1996), France (2002), Singapore (2005- 2006) and USA (2011). When not doing research, she enjoys leading the department choir and finds it stimulating to discuss the world with her teenage children.

Lone Hersted, M.A. works as a lecturer and Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Learning and Philosophy at the University of Aalborg. Her teaching and research is concerned with leadership, organisational learning and development, coaching, innovative and creative change processes, dialogue training and collaborative team development. At Aalborg University, Lone is coordinator and lecturer of the Master program in Organisational Coaching and Learning. She is member of the research groups CLIO (Centre for Learning in Organisations) and ARiEL (Arts in Education and Learning). Lone has also worked as a consultant since 2003 and, in addition to her academic work, contributes to organisational learning processes through coaching and workshops. Originally Lone was educated as an actress at the Nordic Theatre School (1993) and obtained a Masters Degree in Dramaturgy at Aarhus University (Denmark 2002). She has more than 10 years’ professional work experience in performance theatre production and interactive digital arts and has also been directing international cultural and theatre projects e.g. in Latin America. She is trained and certified as a systemic coach and in 2010 she obtained a Certificate Degree in Systemic Leadership and Organisational Development at the University of Bedfordshire at KCC (England). Lone has contributed to several publications, among others: Relationelle Perspektiver på Ledelse (Hans Reitzels Forlag 2014). Another book entitled: Relational Leading - Practices for Dialogically Based Collaboration, written together with prof. Kenneth J. Gergen (published in English at Taos Institute Publications and in Danish at Forlaget Mindspace 2013). She is furthermore co-author of the book, Kreativ Procesledelse (Dansk Psykologisk Forlag 2011). In 2007 she was co-author of Gyldendals Teaterleksikon (the Danish Encyclopaedia of Theatre, at Gyldendals Forlag). In 2002: Co-author of the anthology, Teaterlandskaber: Nedslag i Robert Wilsons univers (Forlaget Drama) and cowriter of the anthology Come in Go out about the artistic work of Robert Wilson (Informations Forlag 2002).

List of tables and figures

Figure 4. The process of artistic composition inspired

By Michael Valeur sssecssscisssssscsusscanisecsssistesosducous sdpcvbetvebusesdoissonsbasdsserniotes 114 Figure 5. The warehouse-battery model, inspired by Fjord. 00... cece 131 Figure 6. On the left Kimbell and Stables’ model (2007),

Recognised by whom? Insights on research considerations by Tatiana Chemi and Julie Borup Jensen

In writing this book, our curiosity was directed toward the qualities of creative learning and generative processes in individual artists and ensembles. Even though we did not understand (and still do not understand) creativity as a phenomenon exclusive to the arts, we wanted to focus on the domain-specific form of creativity in the arts, because artists and artistic communities seem to cultivate and nurture creativity as one of the means and ends of learning, communicating, engaging in relationships and living their lives (on domain-specificity see Baer 2010). However, our studies on creativity showed that the need for more focused attention on the specific domain of artistic creativity was still strong and unaccomplished. Therefore we designed a research study that focused specifically on artistic creativity and that made use of the power of focused observation. Our purpose was to describe the phenomenon of creativity by means of artists’ recollections, retrospective narratives, conceptualisations, ideas, processes and relationships.

Because creativity is a basic need of and a well-acknowledged expectation within artistic achievements, we intended to ask full-time professional artists (the so-called Pro-C level of creativity, the professionals) who had made an original contribution to the domain in which they operated, who were broadly recognised (the Big-C level of creativity) and who had proved a clear interest in meta-reflections and artistic conceptualisations (see chapter 1 for a description of the different levels of creativity). We wanted to find experts in the arts, someone who had tipped the point of expertise, the famous 10,000 hours or ten years of practice that make individuals able to challenge the very rules of their domain, some say (Feldman 1999, p. 173, Gardner 1993). But who should know and acknowledge the chosen artists? The general public or the experts in the field? And who are the experts in a field? How could we define our understanding of recognition within the arts and in which context should we place this definition? Was Odin Teatret known in the whole country of residence by both theatre experts and general public? Or was its international recognition reaching only participants in the field of experimental theatre? And what about young but internationally acclaimed authors such as Morten Ramsland? In either case, would a broad or narrow fame-span influence our sampling choices? Answers to all of these questions seemed to be dependent on by whom, about whom and where they were formulated.

According to Csikszentmihalyi “what we call creativity always involves a change in a symbolic system, a change that in turn will affect the thoughts and feelings of the members of the culture” (1999, p. 316). We wanted to engage in a dialogue with these game-changers who had practiced artistic creativity and who had reflected upon it.

Moreover, we wanted to investigate several artistic sub-domains, looking at patterns and similarities across artistic modalities. In order to do so, we started looking around us at our networks and our knowledge about artists. We established contacts with the artists we knew, artists we had been collaborating with, but also artists whose biography and works were very well known to us or accessible in more intangible ways. We found ourselves proposing names of artists that we could connect to, physically, intellectually and emotionally. Artists who lived close-by geographically (sometimes, even neighbours) or artists who lived far away but with whom we shared our curiosity, artists that had touched us as cultural actors but also professionally, artists whose works had changed our understanding and perception of art as skilled connoisseurs or experts, artists who we respected and admired and whose works we often loved. Hence, participation in the research project was addressed to professional artists with whom we frequently had a long-term dialogue, either in person or through their works. More often, the established dialogue took the form of both personal and artistic acquaintance or knowledge. This led to the first limitation of the study: we were moving in a Western cultural tradition and within a geographical area. Without suggesting that the sampled artists shared common cultural values, we were definitely mapping a Western-based culture, with strong relationships to Scandinavia. Looking closely, though, we noticed that the majority of these artists did not define a mainstream Scandinavian or Western culture, but rather a global, transnational or multicultural perspective, whether living in a foreign country (Barba, Varley, Bosch, Jordan, Nisticò), keeping strong contacts across several cultures (Hustvedt, Kvium, Ramsland, Granhoj, Bosch), working with multicultural inspiration (Dehlholm, Barba, Varley, Exner, Fjord, Bosch, Valeur, Kleis and Rønsholdt) or in international environments (Koppel, Dehlholm, Granhgj, Barba, Exner, Olesen, Nord, Hustvedt and Bosch). What unites these artists is a cross-boundary dimension: they are often highly recognised nationally or internationally or both and they are recognised beyond the borders of a specific tradition or genre or beyond the popular/high culture dichotomy. They are cosmopolitans, known for having challenged traditions and generated new models that became novel traditions for other artists. Some of them are ground-breaking in their domain and have been on the move physically as well as intellectually for themselves and for others, within and against traditions, always in dialogue with themselves, others and cultures. It follows that the cultural- geographical restriction is an element of our research design, but does not define or describe the artists’ vivacious interests, international practices and wide public reception.

We were curious about the subject of artistic creativity and the ways it is expressed, developed and enacted by individuals and individuals-in-groups and we decided to ask the persons we consider experts in the field - professional artists who knew the hard work of being creative and leading creative processes. Our main focus of interest was on how processes of creation are related to learning and organising in the professional practice of artists.

By investigating the literature about creativity, we noticed that several contributions addressed and criticised assumptions and even stereotypes about creativity in general (Kaufman & Sternberg 2010, Sternberg 1999) and artists’ creativity specifically (Locher 2010, Weisberg 1993, Weisberg 1999). Basic misunderstandings about artists’ work-processes or artists’ creative endeavour were addressed both in literature and in different educational contexts. Probably a legacy of the Romantic view of artists as chaotic lonely geniuses on the verge of psychic dysfunction, many of the common stereotypes regarding artistic creativity miss some fundamental points. The artists’ rational choices about their ways in which they create, learn, organise and lead their creative processes; the perseverance in pursuing a set idea in spite of failures; their voluntary openness to what is emerging or surprising - these are only a few of the ways in which artists draw trajectories of growth that combine several paradigms. Rather than being all feelings and irrationality, as in the Romantic stereotype, artists seemed to us to apply both feelings and rational thinking, both openness and rules, both individual and dialogical processes. These early intuitions of ours, supported by mostly systemic views on creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1996, Csikszentmihalyi 1999, Gardner 1993) and socio-cultural perspectives (Bruner 2009, Connery, John-Steiner & Marjanovic-Shane 2010, Moran & John-Steiner 2003, Vygotsky 1925/1971, Sawyer et al. 2003, 2007 and 2010), provided the background of our research interests. We wanted to investigate and describe in depth artists’ working and learning processes, by taking a step back and addressing the question: how do artists create, learn and organise their work? Do they learn in a specific way? Are there certain environments, social settings and working procedures that stimulate creativity in and between individuals and facilitate the generation of ideas in groups? How do artists work and develop their ideas in relationships? Do artistic learning processes build on specific elements and common patterns? If so, how can they be conceptualised? Can the concepts be transferred into principles applicable in other domains such as teaching and process facilitating and if so, how and why? We aimed to explore these questions by means of an empirical and theoretical contribution to the field of arts and creativity research from a learning perspective, including relational and leadership issues.

Coming from different but related fields, the collaborating authors each brought their individual knowledge to the project: Chemi from the field of cultural studies and aesthetic learning processes, Borup Jensen from music and learning, Hersted from theatre and organisational studies. All united by a shared curiosity about artistic creativity, the authors brought to the present book different but related perspectives and wove them together. Based on a conjoined study, our empirical content unfolds through three main themes: artistic composition, learning and organising. These themes give a direction to the three main parts of the book and in each part figures a main author. However, the final result is principally due to empirical studies designed and carried out together and to frequent conversations amongst the authors.

At this point it is important to clarify our understanding of learning, as unfolded throughout the book. Given the need of creativity studies with learning or developmental perspectives, especially with focus on artistic creativity, we made use of few but fundamental contributions with this multiple take on creativity and learning or development (Feldman 1999, Moran & John-Steiner 2003, Sawyer et al. 2003, Sawyer 2003, 2007 and 2010). Our socio-cultural perspective looks at learning as an enactive and socially constructed phenomenon that is constituted in the individual and takes place in contexts and within relationships. In the interviewed artists’ case, learning may happen all the time and everywhere, to the advantage of creative endeavours. Therefore we have chosen to look at several learning environments: the formal (schooling, education), the informal (communities of practice, peers, role models, cultural exchanges), the organisational (workplace, leadership, organising) and the artistic domain-specific knowledge that encompasses all the above. When we mention learning, we think about this diversity and we aim at embracing its complexity. According to Sawyer (2003) we should rather define it development and not learning: in Part Two these definitional issues will be addressed and discussed thoroughly.

We have chosen to work with artists’ creativity and learning, because we understand learning as a basically creative enterprise, supported by several learning theories that are going to be discussed in the following chapters. Furthermore, we define creativity in its etymological origin as the creation (Latin creare) of something new and appropriate (a more extensive definition is discussed in Chapter 1). In the case of artistic creativity this “something” would be the artistic products (artworks), processes or environments that artists/creators are able to generate, change, implement or challenge.

Our specific interest was to investigate artists’ and ensembles’ ways of creating, learning and organising through their own expressions and narratives. The basic themes we were concerned with included:

e specific artistic creativity in a learning perspective

e the interplay between individual, group and community

e composition and artistic processes

e artistic leadership and the organising of creative work processes.

Research within the field of creativity and learning calls for qualitative methods of investigation (Denzin & Lincoln 2005). Methodologically, we have made use of the semi-structured interview as described by Kvale and Brinkmann (2008), as a framework for data collection. The interviews were recorded as audio files, transcribed verbatim, translated and afterwards validated or commented upon by the artists (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund 2008).

In the research interviews, we asked the sampled artists to tell us about a meaningful experience that had made a special impression on them in an artistic context; about how they learn best; how they understand creativity and define it; in which situations they experience being the most or the least creative and when they experienced being completely absorbed by their artistic work; about their collaboration with others and their sources of inspiration; about recognition and the meaning of it for creativity; about their ways of organising and leading their artistic work processes; about working rules, routines or habits that stimulate their creative process; about how decisions are taken in groups and with artistic leaders; about the external factors that they believed important for creativity to germinate; about special places that they find most inspiring. This is in line with a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to both data-generation and data analysis. Our approach matches the research questions, where the aim is to investigate the concepts of learning and creativity as they appear to the artists.

The replies we received were vivid narratives from the artists’ past, present and future visions. Probably the interviews tended to be positively biased, for the simple reason that we asked for memories on, influences about, definitions of what the interviewees are passionate about: their artistic work. Even though we mostly asked the artists to tell us the story of what works optimally for their creativity to unfold and flourish, we also asked them what is disturbing and what inhibits their creativity or communication in artistic communities. Although mentioned in a few places (distrust, lack of communication, frustrations), we have not systematically looked at highly dysfunctional sides of artistic creativity or topics such as crisis management, conflicts, mental or physical diseases or the like (on the dark side of creativity in general see Cropley et al. 2010)

In light of the four Ps of creativity -person, product, process, place- (Kozbelt, Beghetto & Runco 2010, pp. 24-25) we have collected narratives as follows:

e Person: artists as individuals in contexts and in relationships have been explored by means of retrospective qualitative interviews. We collected the artists’ narratives about their experiences within the educational system, their first approaches to the arts, the development of their passions, their working processes and strategies of creating, their relationships to others (peers, colleagues, public) and their creative or learning environments (emotional, psychological and physical spaces) and finally their eventual pedagogical or leading role in artistic tasks.

e Product: artworks, (auto)biographies, written or video recorded reflections on creativity constitute the secondary qualitative data that enhance the large amount of primary data of the interviews. Document analysis gave significance to these secondary data and contributed to our understanding of the artists’ products and processes. These have been pursued as a meaningful but minor supplement to the interviews. The reason for this minor role of artworks in our research was a necessary limitation to our study. The systematic and prolonged analysis of artistic texts is in itself an extensive research focus, worth addressing specifically.

e Process: creative processes in the arts have been looked at as relational, contextual, domain-specific phenomena through the artists’ narratives.

e Place: places where creation, learning and organising occur have been investigated by means of both primary (interviews with artists) and secondary (artworks analysis, biographies) qualitative data, as a fundamental part of the act of artistic creation.

Our research method is selective in relation to our research interest and inclined to embrace the developmental (Feldman 1999, Sawyer et al. 2003) and systemic traditions of creativity studies (Csikszentmihalyi 1996, Kozbelt, Beghetto & Runco 2010), together with the socio-cultural perspective (Connery, John- Steiner & Marjanovic-Shane 2010, Moran & John-Steiner 2003, Sawyer 2003, 2007, 2010 and Vygotsky 1971). The multi-theoretical research perspective is a consequence of the complex essence of creativity that makes it necessary to look at interacting and interrelated aspects, which mutually influence each other. Following Feldman (1999, p. 182) we acknowledge the lack of more studies that are multi-theoretical and multi-dimensional and we will attempt to contribute with multiple perspectives. We also consider creativity to be strictly related to learning, hence our developmental angle that allows us to see how creativity develops over time and how individuals and environment mutually interact over time. Well aware of the limitations of both retrospective studies (lack of memory or selective memory) and self-reporting (misrepresentation of self), as for instance emphasised in Weisberg (1993, p. 46), we believe we have recorded, documented and interpreted a unique body of unprecedented data, which we expect to contribute to the field of creativity studies.

The reader of this book will hear the multiple voices of writers, visual artists, designers, architects, musicians, theatre actors and directors, digital artists, dancers, choreographers and film-makers. Genres include musical forms such as classical music, opera and jazz; visual arts like painting, drawing, sculpting, digital art and installation; performing arts such as laboratory theatre, experimental theatre, dance theatre, theatre anthropology, modern dance (and the roles of theatre directing, acting, dancing, choreographing); types of cinema such as motion pictures and documentaries; literary genres like poetry, novels, plays and scripts for computer games. We included design and architecture as art forms, even though these domains can be perceived as non-artistic due to their industrial or commercial applications. The reason we included them is that we look upon these cultural productions in their artistic and creative perspective, choosing designers and architects that interpreted their role as innovative in their domain. We attempted to cover several art forms, genres and traditions, but we have not managed to systematically broaden our attention to more underground artistic expressions. This happened for two reasons. The first one is that we looked for artists that have been professionals in their domain over a large amount of years and that, as a consequence of this long-term commitment, have been able to challenge -and sometimes change- the rules of their domain. Often, the main creators of underground arts are young less-acknowledged artists than the ones we sampled. The second reason is that underground artists, such as for instance street artists, graffiti or knitting artists, punk-rock musicians, can be difficult to approach, especially for those arts (still) labelled as illegal or on the verge of vandalism. We believe that these art forms deserve a specific and more extensive study than we could have covered in the present book.

Specifically, we were interested in finding similarities among the different creative, learning and organising patterns across modalities. Even though originally interested in also studying the dissimilarities among art forms, the scope of our research proved so broad that we were unable to include this aspect. While acknowledging the importance of studies into the different approaches to creativity, learning and organising in the specific art forms, we have chosen to focus on their common traits. In other words, in the present study we do not cover systematically the differences in artistic modalities, styles, artistic traditions or genres and their impact on artistic creativity. The art-form-based differences are also emphasised in the interviews with the artists, for instance, writers Morten Ramsland and Siri Hustvedt point to how writing processes are different from painting processes, theatre director Kirsten Dehlholm puts music up against architecture and digital artists Klejs and Ronsholdt specify the differences between visual art and design. Even if in the present research we focus on the common traits among the arts, only occasionally referring to the differences, at the same time we wish to specify that research that also looks at the distinctions among the arts is greatly needed. This would deserve a long-term multidisciplinary research effort, which we look forward to undertaking in the future.