FIELD DOMAIN
INDIVIDUAL C/c
In this perspective, creativity occurs in the interaction between individuals, field (a group of individuals in a specific domain who are in charge of accepting or rejecting a creative feature) and domain (the values, explicit and implicit rules, shared practices, procedures and so on)� Creativity can happen at individual level, in case of talented persons or geniuses, or more often as a dialogue between
individual and field (role models, critics, mentors, peers)� In case of an extraor-dinarily creative individual able to create a ground-breaking product, the field’s gatekeepers (exceptionally influential individuals within a field) might open up the doors of a domain, securing accessibility to domain transformation� Accord-ing to Csikszentmihalyi’s conceptualisation, any creative process is conceived and developed within a community: “creativity is not the product of single individu-als, but of social systems making judgments about individuals’ products” (1999, p� 314)� Similar concepts are to be found in Lave and Wenger (Wenger 2009) who define the field a “community of practice”, and Bourdieu who conceptualises “the field of cultural production” (Bourdieu 1993) as opposed to “the field of power”�
What Csikszentmihalyi’s model does not emphasise enough is the circularity of the inclusion/exclusion dynamics concerning what is perceived as new and original or useful� Even though implicit in the model is the chronological dimen-sion and the cultural complexity of the relationship to creativity through time, the recurring of the same patterns of acceptance and rejection are not fully un-folded� “Creativity occurs when a person makes a change in a domain, a change that will be transmitted through time” (Csikszentmihalyi 1999, p� 315) and the understanding of change or originality is highly variable, given specific socio-cultural conditions� Or domains might grow ready to accept or embrace a given change (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi 2003, pp� 188-189)� Artistic creativity never happens in a void and Csikszentmihalyi’s three areas of interest - personal background (individual), culture (domain) and society (field) - are themselves included in and influenced by society at large� Moreover, the relationships in between are most likely to occur in chaotic, complex and reciprocal trajectories�
For instance, an artistic product can be perceived as ground-breaking, on the verge of being provocative or offensive, in a specific period of time (Impression-ist painting at its debut), until a gatekeeper (an art critic) or a group of gatekeep-ers (the organisgatekeep-ers of the first Impressionist exhibition) finds it interesting and valuable� The provocative nature of Impressionism is today lost and the func-tion of provocafunc-tion has been variously re-invented within other painting styles�
As theatre director Eugenio Barba pointed out in his interview for the present book: “You were hanged, you were burned 300 years ago if you said that you could fly or that human beings could fly, because it was an offence against the angels and God� The Inquisition came and told us that it was a Satanic way of thinking […], it took a little time”� This time perspective and its circularity is visualised in the model above by means of arrows and overlapping of the areas of individual, field and domain� Moreover, the interactions between individuals and groups in cultural settings tend to be more dynamic than Csikszentmihalyi’s conceptualisation explains� For instance, individuals can be part of one or more
fields and at the same time they are part of society at large, which also influences the dynamics within fields and domains� In this sense, gatekeepers can be both individuals within a domain-specific field but also the general public in a given socio-cultural context or a combination of those�
Although this conceptualisation was very much needed in our field and had been anticipated by other thinkers such as Stein (1953) and Vygotsky (Moran 2010a), it is clear that there is more to be said on the subject� How should the phenomenon of creativity be approached? Where should researchers look in or-der to find creativity? Is there any taxonomy that can describe the complexity of this phenomenon?
One more useful distinction in this direction is the one that Csikszentmihalyi makes between big C creativity and little c, meaning that not all individual ex-pressions of creativity can win a Nobel prize, as the big Creators can, but much of the creativity experienced by individuals is in fact happening in everyday life settings� Kaufman and Beghetto in 2009 extended the two C’s to a four C model, adding mini-c and Pro-c creativity� Finally, Simonton (2010b, pp� 174-175) sug-gested diversifying Big C, the eminent expression of human creativity, from Boldface-C, the level of creativity perception that extends to the non-expert fields� In our opinion, despite the extra C’s, there is still room for improvement if taxonomy of the C’s is to be comprehensive� We wish to suggest a “skilled c” level of creativity, which makes room for creativity from skilled amateurs or connois-seurs� This may prove relevant in differentiating professional creative practice from the spare-time, passionate but not identity-based one� Putting together the above frameworks and additions, the six C taxonomy can be recapitulated in a movement from what in literature is understood as the biggest or most influen-tial (top) to the smaller or less influeninfluen-tial (bottom):
1� Boldface-C: at this level, creators and creative products are well known be-yond the limits of a domain-specific knowledge and field association� Exam-ples could be Einstein and Pasteur, or in the arts Shakespeare and Mozart, creators that are familiar to a large number of people, across cultures and professional interests� Simonton (2010b, p� 175) proposes a “Google test” in order to locate Boldface Creators: how many hits does he/she get?
2� Big C: both Boldface-C and Big C individuals are extraordinary creators that are also recognised as such� Simonton defines them creative geniuses�
They “become highly eminent because they have contributed at least one product that is widely viewed as a masterwork in an established domain of creative achievement” (Simonton 2010b, p� 175)� The difference between Boldface-C and Big C individuals is the magnitude of their being known in
other domains than their own� Examples might be Russian actor and thea-tre director Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) whose acting and directing method has transformed the way we think of acting performances in Western cultures� Perhaps his name is renowned in domains close to cultural produc-tion and theatre, but it might not be well known in other domains� This does not change the huge impact that his system has had and still has, for instance, in acting styles such as those of in De Niro, Pacino, Brando and many other Hollywood stars�
3� Pro-c: besides the extremely widely acknowledged Boldface-C creators and the widely recognised Big C individuals, there is a large group of creators who work professionally with creativity but neither are high-scorers in Google-hits nor are Nobel prize winners� These individuals, though, are “Pro’s” in the domain of creativity� All professions that include the generation of novel product, processes or the design of novel environments that are valuable for someone, or that include the expression of creativity can be listed in this cat-egory� In addition to artists that are daily expected to deliver new and mean-ingful quality creations, other examples might be scientists or engineers or business and IT developers and so on�
4� Skilled c: the definition skilled c is an oxymoron combining the levels of little
“c” and the concept of expertise (“skilled”)� We propose it in order to include the up till now ignored field of skilled amateurs or connoisseurs� This group of individuals tends to cultivate a specific interest that is not necessarily rele-vant to their profession or main work tasks, but they do it in a way that cannot contain them in the category of leisure amateurs, within the little c creativity�
This field, very flourishing within the arts, counts domain-specific connois-seurs with high skills and high sensitivity to the field of interest� In Denmark, the most popular case at this level is Queen Margrethe: her official job is to be Queen of Denmark, but her private passion for the visual arts and dedication to their practice make her a skilled amateur� From time to time, skilled c crea-tors make their creations public, following the field’s procedures and can rise to a professional level (see the many talent shows currently popular)� Includ-ing this phenomenon with the others acknowledges the highly motivated and often autotelic involvement in the arts that occurs beyond a professional field�
This is relevant in the arts because of the recurrent confinement of artistic experiences to leisure�
5� Little c: the concept of everyday creativity emancipates the creativity dis-course from any myth or assumption that creativity is –exclusively– a matter of high achievements and public recognition� In this perspective, all individu-als can be creative everywhere, in all situations and by all means� As liberating
as the thought of everyday creativity might be, the creative praxis in everyday life can also be misunderstood� For instance, in educational environments the easy assumption can be that “everything is creative” or that creativity is equal to a simple making of “things”� Everyday creativity celebrates the human dis-position towards originality, novelty and change in work and leisure activi-ties� This level is less fixated with the generation of creative products than the previous three levels and includes processes in its assessment� Novelty in eve-ryday life can arise from a new way of doing something, a new procedure or approach� In the arts, where the goal is always the production of a work of art, examples of little c are rare, except for situations in which artists are subjects of processual creativity (a new way of cleaning brushes or a new functional use of a musical instrument and so on) or in the case of arts integration into contexts other than the artistic one�
6� Mini-c: the level of mini-c creativity has been variously defined as more sub-jective and personal, internal, mental, emotional (Kozbelt, Beghetto & Runco 2010)� This is the less tangible level of creativity and the one that still needs operationalisation, according to Richards (2010)� This personal creativity is self-referenced and is related to the individual’s potential� At this level, crea-tivity is more a handful of creative seeds rather than a fulfilled end-product or process� In educational environments these seeds are extremely valuable as the core to be developed in order to stimulate creativity in individuals� The arts can contribute to the development of mini-c levels of creativity by regu-lating emotions in aesthetic structures and the transformation of mini-c into more tangible, but still personal, levels of creativity�
We do not believe that the above taxonomy should be approached as value-laden, or better as a hierarchy of creativity, from the most to the least important�
Rather, we suggest that the many c’s of creativity are different aspects of the same phenomenon showing the complexity and variety of its forms� We also believe that, as the above taxonomy is not a hierarchic but a magnitude order, creativity can be practiced in different contexts with a variety of intensities and impacts on field, domain or society at large�
Studies on creativity are, at the time being, becoming more numerous, taxon-omies of creativity become more precise and acquire sharpness, several profes-sional environments express the wish of integrating creativity into their cultures:
the future perspectives for creativity studies seem to be absolutely promising�
Particularly rich in consequences might be the renewed attention to the roles of creativity in society and the role of society in creativity� At the time of writing, the mainstream discourse on the need for creativity is unfolding alongside three
major events: the global market that brings to the forefront former third world countries such as India and Africa, or countries previously at the borderline of great business, such as China and Brazil; the economic crisis hitting most of the Western world; the technological advancements at all levels of human existence�
These socio-cultural challenges generate a relentless rhetoric hailing creativity as the ideal solution for everything� Europe and North America, among West-ern countries or countries under WestWest-ern influence, have taken the creativity challenge seriously, perhaps because threatened by emerging socio-economical changes� One example might be the European Union’s claim about creativity as one of the key competences for the future, which led to 2009 being “creativity year” and to the formulation of cross-national or national commitments to the integration of creativity in life-long-learning initiatives (European Union 2009)�
These countries have come to accept a shared consensus: we simply need creativ-ity� This unilateral claim ignores creativity’s complexity and is often uncritical, for instance ignoring the “dark side of creativity” (Cropley et al� 2010) or more generally that creativity per se is a neutral phenomenon� Seana Moran (2010b) suggests we ask what is the role of society in creativity and then what is the role of creativity in society� Theoretical frameworks, such as Csikszentmihalyi’s individual-field-domain model, have partially addressed the former� Moran (2010b, p� 78) suggests that society interacts with creative enterprises mainly through the work and influence of three roles:
• Benefactors, who by providing or allocating resources are able to decide the life and death of creative enterprises
• Regulators, who evaluate the creative level and content according to regula-tions and standards or policies, and therefore can be “blind” when meeting extraordinary expressions of creativity
• Consumers, who often decide the success (or not) of a singular work of art or artist, or more in general of a creative product, process or person�
Through these profiles a given society can have a strong influence on what is considered socially accepted as creative�
But what are the purposes of creativity that are so attractive to the challenged Western countries? According to Moran (2010b, pp� 79-86), there might be two purposes, depending on differing perspectives� One could be improvement, the other, expression� The former is also emphasised in economic theories of creativ-ity (Florida 2004, 2005, Florida & Tinagli 2006) and looks at creativcreativ-ity as uncriti-cally positive, forgetting the deviant side of creativity (Cropley et al� 2010) or the challenging role of many creative initiatives, especially in the arts� Associating creativity exclusively with societal improvement might be a misunderstanding
about creativity’s role in society: “people who believe that improvement is the role of creativity may have difficulty with the moral and responsibility aspects of creativity; creativity cannot be coincident with improvement, on the one hand, and yet concurrently moral-free” (Moran 2010b, p� 81)� The second purpose, creativity as expression, draws from several arguments for engaging in creative activities, including emotional and cognitive well-being, the transformational or developmental, the egalitarian and educational, and so on� Moran (2010b) sug-gests that the real purpose of creativity in society might be both, or better “a confluence of both individual and societal forces” (p� 85)�
We maintain that a fourth role could be added, a role that bears a large in-novative potential: the creative maker� In the following chapters we will describe, analyse and suggest the role that homo faber can have in learning processes� We intend to do so by addressing basic misunderstandings about the creative artists’
work processes or the artists’ creative endeavour that are perpetrated both in literature and in different professions, including in educational environments, having a special focus on the artists’ creativity�
Chapter 2: Artists defining creativity
This chapter deals with the artists’ own definitions of creativity� We asked them to define creativity in the ways they understand it in their own practice and ac-cording to their own values and experience� Their responses were various and express broad perspectives on creativity and its connection with the arts� Their diverse takes on creativity and their sundry approaches to the very task of defin-ing creativity directed our attention to a couple of straightforwardly related im-plications: the artists’ effort in defining creativity at all, and the conceptualisation of art as a form of language�