Wednesday 17 February 2010

Creativity 2




Today is a crimson day. Rage or passion....same thing at times?
I love Rothko's work for the colours he uses and the simplicity. As with his painting it can often be said of your writing that less is more.
Tomorrow I am doing a session with third year students on where they think creativity is based - in the work or in the person type of thing? It should be interesting as they are a good and very vocal group.
Creativity and criticality are something I am passionate about and I hope to write an article with my DoS - in the not too distant future - based on a model we have created where creativity is embedded with a critical methodological approach. (Very loose description). This works alongside/through the idea of the gyre that I have already spoken about in previous posts. The creative feeds off the critical which in turn feeds off the creative, a continuous process and like ontological and epistemological stances feeding off each other. Pedagogically, for me anyway, I see this concept as a way of getting students to understand the idea of creativity with an academic slant - with my other hat on I would suggest it is a prime example of research informed teaching. This also allows me to justify to those doubters who have trouble with the validity of a creative writing PhD. I can talk ontological and epistemological stances till the moon turns crimson.
There is a problem with trying to fit creativity neatly into a box and that is creativity isn't neat, predictable or obvious. It comes in many formats - music, poetry, sculpture, prose or in fact anything you make using your hands. But being a former business woman I would suggest that there is a lot of creativity in enterprise (and I am not talking accounting here), to be successful in business you need to have the vision, the understanding of something that can be as intangible as a business plan, for example. They are created of words and numbers all put together in a certain order in exactly the same way as the novelist writes their novel or the poet conjures up their poem. It is all couched in creativity just some aren't as willing as others to see the fact. The ones that scoff at it are normally the ones who criticise doing a creative writing degree suggesting it is a soft subject. What they don't take into consideration are the transferable skills that any CW student will be able to add to their CV after completing their degree. Admittedly there is the obvious one - they will be able to write - but also they will be used to working to tight deadlines (both time and word counts), they can analyse, research, summarise, edit, manage their time, learn to think both creatively and critically and use both to great effect, work as a team and on their own, manage projects and most importantly have confidence in their worth. Any employer should be very pleased to employ a student of creative writing as they will have gained an adaptable, innovative, enthusiastic and conscientious member of staff.
The moon has turned crimson, time to stop. This is Bert Jansch singing Crimson Moon.

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