Tatiana Chemi

Behind the Scenes of Artistic Creativity: Processes of Learning, Creating and Organising

B eh in d t h e S ce n es o f A rt is ti c C re at iv it y Throughout the literature of creative learning, many assumptions and even stereotypes about the artists’ creativity are nurtured, often according to myths going back to the Romanticism. The authors have been investigating and describing outstanding artists’ creativity and learning/working processes, asking the question: how do artists create, learn, and organise their work? This book explores these questions by means of original empirical data (interviews with 22 artists) and theoretical research in the field of the arts and creativity from a learning perspective. Findings shed an original light on how artists learn and create, and how their creative learning and change processes come about, for instance when facilitating and leading creative processes.

The Artful Teacher: A Conceptual Model for Arts Integration in Schools

This article addresses specific issues within arts-integration experiences in schools. Focusing on the relationship between positive emotions, learning, and the Arts, the article discusses empirical data that has been drawn from a research study, Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: Adopting Artfulness in Danish Schools. When schools integrate the Arts into teaching routines or strategies, what happens to their learning culture? When this involves a professional artist, how does a school’s learning culture and an artist’s mindset come together? And how do schools foster good learning and teaching using artistic, aesthetic, creative learning and teaching methods? By illustrating some of the schools’ strategies in their meeting with the Arts, the article develops a conceptual model for arts-integration activities and understanding in schools, which can be used as hermeneutic or normative tool for future experimentation in this field.

A Safe Haven for Emotional Experiences

Making art feels good. This is a truth that does not need scientific proof (almost). Especially to those who have practiced or practice the making or the active appreciation of any kind of art at any kind of level. However, even though this experiential truth does not necessarily need scientific support for those experiencing it, educational policies and classroom strategies need more robust knowledge on the subject in order to carefully integrate the arts in education.

Transgressive or Instrumental?: A Paradigm for the Arts as Learning and Development

Contemporary practices that connect the arts with learning are widespread at all level of educational systems and in organisations, but they include very diverse approaches, multiple methods and background values. Regardless of explicit learning benefits, the arts/learning partnerships bring about a specific approach to learning, which is embodied, sensory and aesthetic and makes use of metaphors, mediation, meaning-making and sense-making. I will make the point that the arts establish an alternative learning environment, which is different from the formal educational systems by offering multiple approaches to learning in a place that is characterised by pluralism, diversity and hybridity. This chapter will be mostly conceptual, leaning on creativity studies with sociocultural system perspectives. As an empirical support, I will bring examples from two sets of qualitative studies: one on artistic creativity and the other on practices of arts-integration. My final point rests on the belief that the opposition of transgression and instrumentality is a deceiving perspective on the arts, against the background of the aesthetic plurality and hybridity.

Critical Places Beyond the Psychology of Well-Being and Competitiveness

The purpose of the present contribution is to look beyond the limits evident in dualistic discourses in educational practices. Torn between the promises of well-being or the hard facts of competitiveness, educational institutions at all levels of instruction might miss the point of a more holistic approach to learning and creativity. Looking beyond dichotomous discourses in educational practices is harder than ever, in a world where globalisation demands high standards of competitiveness and neoliberalism denies all but economic growth targets. Approaches that envision different solutions are necessarily imaginative, critical and alternative to rigid discourses. In order to find foundational evidence for alternative ways of thinking and talking about learning, I will look at how Dewian and Vygotskyan conceptualisations walk the same paths and go towards holistic suggestions. Concluding remarks will address the disruptive potential of critical thinking in schools for the future.

Theatre as Co-Creative Space and as Inspiration for Higher Education

The director stands up on the left corner of the stage, facing the audience that is sitting in a semi-circle. The actors sit on chairs facing the audience, still sweating and catching their breath after a physically demanding performance. They are having a conversation with a group of scholars. Together we are trying to enquire into the concept of co-creation.

The Experience of Flow in Artistic Creation

In the present chapter I will describe and discuss the experience of flow occurring when professional artists create and learn. The unique findings are part of a larger study that looked at artistic creativity and aimed at describing the ways in which professional and widely recognised artists create, learn and organise their work. The methodological approach was qualitative and based on retrospective narratives of 22 high-achieving professional artists. When asked to describe the ways in which they create, these artists often replied by mentioning a positively felt state of deep concentration and calm. Flow, to them, seems to be at the same time a pre-requisite, a constitutive element and an effect of creative processes. Artistic creation happens in a state of deep concentration and self-forgetting and flow seems to have a specific purpose within artistic processes: triggering, facilitating and guiding the flow of creation.

The Teaching Artist as Cultural Learning Entrepreneur: An Introductory Conceptualization

ABSTRACT Cultural learning entrepreneur: A new professional identity for teaching artists?

Emotions and Learning in Arts-based Practices of Educational Innovation

The present chapter addresses the topic of educators’ emotions in teaching situations when they experiment with and apply arts-based tools to learning and facilitation. Original data are drawn from a qualitative study that observed and described an innovative arts-based development project at a Danish University College.

A Comparative Study of Students' Perceptions of Humour in Learning Creative Design Between China and Denmark

In this chapter, we explore the similarities and differences in design students’ perceptions of humour in experiences of creativity development in project groups between China and Denmark. Theoretically, we link theories of humour, learning, emotion and creativity from a socio-cultural approach.