Symposium and conference papers for art educators
“We are accustomed to teaching students to achieve artistically, using their creativity in visual culture. I suggest we can also use aspects of what we teach to enable students to achieve across the intellectual spectrum.”
In considering the relationship between creative thinking and critical engagement, I would like to focus on how creative thinking is increasingly regarded as integral to economic success. As art educators our experience confirms that creative thinking results in successful art, innovative design and any number of contributions to visual culture, but it is becoming apparent that art education may lead to more diverse innovations within society.
We are often told we live in a world of ideas, a post industrial society where prosperity comes not from manufacture but from a knowledge culture, a domain where ideas are valued beyond the means by which they may be made manifest, the industrial domain which, since Victorian times has been the generator of wealth. But unlike Victorian times where the outcomes of success – property, possessions, capital – could be transmitted from one generation to another, creativity cannot be bequeathed and thus perpetuated. Each generation must produce its own creative thought to develop its prosperity anew; a 'value added' aspect of production, the GST of intellectual life. It is for this reason that so much attention has recently turned toward creativity and how it can be maximized within culture.
The potential impact of creativity on the economy and on culture, beyond the standard expectations of the art market, can be estimated from the following examples. An interesting demonstration is found in the United States after the 2000-2001 recession. The Employment Policy Foundation in its November 2001 report indicated that while there had been some 1.2 million jobs lost from the manufacturing sector in the year prior to September 2001, there had been an expansion by 636,000 new jobs in the sector of what might be called 'knowledge workers', those who work with their minds. [1] Similar support is offered from the eminent Harvard Business Review which this year developed its 'Creativity Index' to indicate a country's potential to achieve economic growth through the use of technology, talent and tolerance. In his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida from Carnegie-Mellon university argues that creativity is the fundamental source of economic growth; he further argues that all aspects of our personal and social lives are subject to change generated by the application of creative thinking. [2]
Creativity was once thought of as providing the inspiration for great art, but now it seems to have become the cornerstone of cultural progress. De Bono [3] has shown its relevance to motivation, marketing and business; Stacey [4] has explored its role in organisation management, Robinson [5] considers creativity in the nature of corporate dynamics and Kirton [6] has addressed the role of innovation in diversity and change. The great Austrian, later British, writer Arthur Koestler [7] has argued parallels in humour, and the British philosopher David Best [8] has considered the concept even in sport. We as art educators have a crucial role to play in educating not just for artists, but in providing the stimulus to feed the creative potential of scientist, economist and technologist alike. We are accustomed to teaching students to achieve artistically, using their creativity in visual culture. I suggest we can also use aspects of what we teach to enable students to achieve across the intellectual spectrum. Part of any art curriculum involves the development of our imagination, the recognition of our feelings and how these may be expressed and the role of observation. I propose that these are also the skills which enable creative development in other disciplines to be achieved.
There is a story about Albert Einstein during his latter years in the United States when he had become a recognisable personality. A mother interested in her son's well being wrote to Einstein, asking how she could help her child become a great scientist like him. Einstein wrote back 'read him fairy stories'. The mother, puzzled with this reply wrote again, saying that perhaps he had not understood her query and that she wanted her son to be at the forefront of scientific innovation. Einstein wrote back again suggesting she read her son 'more fairy stories'.
It might seem strange that preparation to achieve in the sciences should rely on fantasies, but Einstein's point is that innovation comes from the imagination, the ability to dream beyond the boundaries of established knowledge and to imagine what might be possible. This view contends that creativity is not discipline specific, but applies across intellectual boundaries, certainly within the creative arts, but also in the humanities and sciences alike and thus imagination is relevant to them all.
French playwright, Eugene Ionesco, founder of Theatre of the Absurd, said of the role of emotion in his work: "Passions slumber in me that may explode, then be held in check again. Jets of rage or joy lie within me, ready to burst and catch fire. In myself I am energy, fire, lava. I am a volcano."
Some years ago the mathematician Jacques Hadamard conducted a survey of the working methods of major mathematicians in the United States in an attempt to understand their creative processes. He found that in all but a small number of cases these processes did not depend on analytic thinking as one might expect, but on intuitive types of reactions based on visual, auditory or muscular sensations, which they 'felt' were correct. Einstein described his processes as being guided by signs and images and also muscular sensations, which he combined together to develop his ideas.
The feeling of beauty has sometimes been considered a guiding feature of creativity. Certainly in art & design, as we would expect and also in literature and music; but we find reference in less expected areas. The mathematician, Henri Poincare for example, declared that he was guided by the feeling of mathematical beauty, claiming it was a 'true aesthetic feeling that all mathematicians know'. The Nobel Laureate in physics, Paul Durac, maintained that it was more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. Related comments can be found from Kepler through Einstein and beyond to recent theorists and commentators, where the sensation of beauty or some underlying harmony of structure is regarded as a fundamental of the creative act. In these examples, how we feel, our ability to respond through our emotions, whether to abstract sensations or to an ideal of beauty becomes the focus. Far from the heart and mind being polarized in a division of emotion and reason, both become integral and complementary components in our ability to understand the world. If we can integrate our intuitive perceptions and analytic understanding, we extend the parameters of our potential creativity. Whether it was the fantasy, the feeling or the beauty of fairy stories which Einstein held most important for the imagination, the creativity that resulted came from the relationship between knowledge and intuition. As Louis Pasteur, one of the most original thinkers in academic history pointed out, 'Fortune favours the prepared mind'. It is the knowledge base, the preparation and research, which enables innovation to occur. The imagination must build on sound preparation to achieve the actual. As George Bernard Shaw and others have remarked, genius is only 10% inspiration, the other 90% is perspiration.
The Italian philosopher Pico della Mirandola wrote in the late fifteenth century: "With the freedom of choice and with honour, as though the maker and moulder of thy self, thou mayst fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer".
Our ability to observe the world has since the Renaissance governed how we responded to it through our thoughts and actions. Throughout history the original perception has led to the creative solution. When William Harvey saw the exposed heart of a living fish at the Covent Garden fish market, he thought of the great water pump by London Bridge which drove water through the pipes of the city and the nature of blood flow was discovered. When Sir Isaac Newton observed that high tides coincided with the movement of the moon, he described it as the moon clutching at the waters with 'large ubiquitous fingers'. This poetic description identified the force of gravity and shaped the framework for Newton's laws of motion which described the understanding of moving objects until the 20 th century, and the development of relativity theory and which still give an accurate description of motion in normal circumstances. When Lord Kelvin noticed light reflecting from his twirling monocle, he conceived of the mirror galvanometer for measuring electric current.
Creativity is the core of Innovation. It can be thought of as standing beyond the differentiation of disciplines, as if a guiding beacon for us to apply across the boundaries of human endeavour and to shape all that we do within our learning and research, wherever that is placed. We, as artists and art educators come from areas which are defined by their creativity; the innovative art work, the new design the original perception that allows us see the world anew. Art & Design represent the world of culture, what might be thought of as the humanizing forces within society which moderate the cultural richness and diversity of a community, and relate to the qualities of personal experience. Our fulfillment and that of the community at large is integrally tied to the application of our disciplines. And in the broader cultural environment, the application of creativity, the essential feature of art and design, through other disciplines, shapes the future.
Observation, imagination and emotional sensitivity, the building blocks of creativity in art and design can feed development in all disciplines, influencing science, business, technology and engineering as well as the visual arts. Observation is the starting point for not just representation, but for any interaction with the world, be it practical or conceptual, for it is how we relate to what is around us and explore reality. Imagination is the counterbalancing journey through the unreal, the opportunity to chart the seas of fantasy and search for realms, concepts and experiences, unfettered by the limitations of the material world. These provide the parameters of experience, one governed by the world around us, the other fed by the world within; together they provide the substance and process for creativity. Emotion is the great sensitizing impulse of our existence, that which makes us aware of the subtleties and potentials of our own inner lives; our responses to the real or the imaginary alike. The objectives of all academic study at whatever level, in the domain of visual culture, include the development of these abilities. If we accept that they are also the characteristic skills required for creativity in other, possibly all disciplines, it would seem desirable that an education in any discipline, be it science, humanity or creative art, should include an education in visual culture to foster the skills of creativity. The degrees of freedom provided by the systematic fostering of observation, emotional sensitivity and imagination build on any academic foundation and provide a framework for the creative application of its knowledge. As Negus and Pickering have argued in their recent book, intuition and improvisation lead to the development of new cultural forms whose meaning and significance goes beyond the simple demonstration of artistic or cultural competence. [9] The Einstein view becomes the context for us all.
Education equips students for the transition to future activities and careers, the knowledge, the understanding and the experience which becomes part of who they are; who we all are. But in the end it is how we use what we have understood, what we make of our efforts and in this, each of us is alone; we are our own best, and indeed our only, resource. We cannot see with another's eyes, think with another's mind or feel with another's heart. We confront the world through our own sensibilities and monitor its experiences through the values and discrimination our education has given us. If it gives us the ability to innovate in the process of our learning, if it adds the skills of creativity to the discipline based understanding we receive, so much the better. The skills referred to here are not additions to the curriculum but a different emphasis within it, whatever its academic basis might be.
We all have the ability to think and acquire knowledge; we all have the ability to observe the world and if we allow ourselves, to sense its needs through our feelings. I suggest that we also have the ability to imagine, to allow our dreams to inspire our actions and wherever we apply our knowledge to do so through innovation, to create a world that is more beautiful culturally, more cared for environmentally, more equitable socially and more secure personally, be it as artist, scientist, economist or as a professional in any discipline. It is through this that our full potential may be realized and the innovation which feeds society and on which culture depends, may be developed.
