Summary
This brief report considers the third Sandpit event for the AHRC Everyday Creativity Research Network, focused on the Wellbeing theme which is led by Professor Louise Mansfield and Professor Norma Daykin. The event was held at Brunel University London and attended by about 30 participants from a range of backgrounds heard three provocations from different perspectives including policy (Polly Mackenzie, Chief Social Purpose Officer, University of the Arts London); academia (Dr Steve Hadley, Research Fellow Trinity College Dublin) and practice (Barbara Eifler, Chief Executive Making Music)
AHRC Everyday Creativity Research Network: Sandpit 3: Everyday Creativity and Wellbeing
Thursday 11th January 2024, Brunel University, London
Norma Daykin and Louise Mansfield
This was the third Sandpit event for the AHRC Everyday Creativity Research Network, focused on the Wellbeing theme, which is led by Professor Louise Mansfield and Professor Norma Daykin. The event was held at Brunel University London and attended by about 30 participants from a range of backgrounds heard three provocations from different perspectives including policy (Polly Mackenzie, Chief Social Purpose Officer, University of the Arts London); academia (Dr Steve Hadley, Research Fellow Trinity College Dublin) and practice (Barbara Eifler, Chief Executive Making Music). We were encouraged to consider critical challenges including, from Polly Mackenzie, how to demonstrate the value of everyday creativity, and from Steve Hadley, ethics and implications of cultural colonialism. Barbara Eifler gave a hugely informative account of the realities of the sector, emphasising its support needs in the context of a history of being largely self-organised and independent.
When we were invited as researchers to join the network Steering Group with a view to bringing in a wellbeing perspective, we felt it was important to distinguish everyday creativity from the wider field of arts, health and wellbeing, which is the focus of several established research networks and groupings. We both agree that any prospective research programme that draws in EC and wellbeing needs to define key terms and position itself as a field of study that is distinctive and doesn’t duplicate existing work in the parallel field of arts health and wellbeing. We were pleased that the very vibrant and productive discussions at the Sandpit helped to clarify these issues as follows:
What is Everyday Creativity?
We started with the following working definition of EC, based on our previous research i and conversations with the wider EC network and stakeholders.
Everyday Creativity is characterised by day-to-day activities that are understood as being novel and valuable, incorporating original, potentially transformative thinking and/or action. Everyday Creativity encompasses a diverse range of immersive creative activities that millions of people engage in every day. Often removed from established hierarchies, economic models and notions of excellence, these activities can enable people to explore their creative potential, maintain their health and wellbeing, connect to others and to nature, learn and develop, and add meaning and purpose to their lives.
There was broad agreement around this definition. Further, discussions were very clear about what EC is not….
- EC is not a form of philanthropy. It doesn’t require the patronage of leaders or advocates but instead emerges from grassroots social energies.
- EC is not a readily available asset for social prescribing. Most groups are self-funded and self-organized and reluctant to engage with the requirements of health and social care funders. However, whilst independent, EC groups need infrastructure support in order to thrive.
- EC is not purely a private set of activities or the result of individual choices. It can be grounded in collective experiences and practices. Everyday creativity can also be personal, but even when experienced at the individual level, it is shaped by societal structures, assets and resources, and discourse.
- EC is not simply a product of moral policing in late capitalism. It is connected in complex ways with other cultural forms, including ‘high culture’, and with societal inequalities and status hierarchies.
- EC as a social movement is not only progressive; it can also be conservative. However, EC can form part of resistance to the conditions of late capitalism, its radical potential deriving from its resistance to categorization, its independence from the State and its basis in collective experiences.
- EC doesn’t exist outside of social context. It is shaped both by structural conditions including living and working conditions and status hierarchies, and by socially constructed ideas surrounding meaning-making and value. These are in turn influenced in turn by technology and globalization and shaped by public policy.
What sort of research, policy and practice programme is needed for EC and wellbeing?
The provocations and discussions led us to think about and craft an agenda for informing research, policy and practice on EC and wellbeing. Key points of development include:
- The established evidence on creativity, EC and wellbeing suggests that there is no urgency to design a bespoke research programme aimed at proving the value of EC for wellbeing or convincing policy makers and funders of its worth.
- Instead, understanding EC requires a broader programme that uses systems thinking to understand experiences impacts and intended and unintended outcomes in a range of sectors from culture, and sport to education and the workplace/workforce.
- A nuanced approach to evidence-building and decision-making is needed. Everyday creativity is not always positive for personal wellbeing. It is also possible to express resistance/transgression by being ‘non-creative’. There are many physical and discursive risks and challenges arising from engaging with creativity. These include perceived and actual judgements about quality and the effects of framings using socially constructed notions of talent.
- Sociological work on social movement theory and boundary work is relevant to understanding experiences, networks of relationships, stakeholder interests and processes of propagation in EC. Social movement theory can help to analyse the implications of strategy and tactics when engaging with programmatic, evaluation focused agendas in cultural and social policy.
- Anthropological work can help to map the landscape of assets and resources as well as stakeholder interests in EC and wellbeing.
We wish to extend a huge thank you to all those attendees who bought considerable expertise to the discussions. Many of them braved the traffic and travel issues of a London working week to get to us and we are hugely grateful. The discussions have certainly helped us move forward in our thinking about how to build EC in decision making and evidence building in a range of sectors in which we work. We look forward to further collaborations in this regard.
i Mansfield, L., Daykin, N., Ewbank, N., Golding, A. (2022). Understanding Everyday Creativity: A Framework drawn from a qualitative evidence review of home-based arts. Annals of Leisure Research (RANZ 2089183).10.1080/11745398.2022.2089183. Accepted 10/06/2022.
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