ACUADS 2006 Conference

 
Several UNESCO reports have identified cultural difference as a potential catalyst for creativity in a community. This is reinforced by research on cultural policy and creativity, including the work of Professor Richard Florida and Sir Ken Robinson, as well as contributors to the 2006 Vienna Conference on Cultural Policy Research.

It is more than forty years since the theoretical framework of a creativity based on the intersection of diverse elements of knowledge was postulated. The linking of disparate pieces of information to build something that is independent of either, has become integral to our thinking about creativity. Further, our understanding of the role creativity plays has vastly diversified, extending from the arts into all aspects of knowledge development. In this context, multicultural societies provide a vast potential resource for creative development in art and industry and across the social spectrum; but we require strategies to harness the potential of this resource.

Dr Helen Andreoni's report 'Outside the Gum Tree', 1992, found many artists who migrated to Australia, bringing skills and visual traditions from outside the core notions of an Australian art, had little opportunity to practice their art forms. With reference to examples of ways in which diverse cultural sources have contributed to the creative richness of contemporary visual culture, this paper contends that to maximise the creative potential of a community, it is necessary to support a diverse cultural mix.

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Creative Futures is a program of art-based inquiry utilised by the Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI) since 2003, as a pioneering approach to staff development. It focuses on developing peoples' capabilities to deal with complexity and uncertainty and thereby have more positive agency in creating the future. Its aim is to increase the capacity of the organisation through the increased capabilities of individuals.

DPI recognised from the outset that in offering an art and design based program – with no known precedent in organisational development – presented a risk. The program would not necessarily be widely embraced by scientists, and the benefits could not be measured in conventional ways. Despite this, DPI had the courage and foresight to go ahead and was rewarded by unprecedented results. This paper describes the methodologies employed, and outcomes achieved, by this innovative work. It also serves to illustrate other domains for the future applied practice of artists and designers.

Creative Futures is a significant example of the commercial application of my experimental practice: a fusion of art and design. This form of creative practice is the topic of my current PhD research.

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This research reports on selected findings from a more extensive qualitative study of creativity in senior art classrooms. The research challenges theories of the creative process and the intentionality of the autonomously originating student. The study examines the transactions between art students and their art teachers as students make artworks for their NSW HSC Visual Arts examination. The investigation is theoretically underpinned by Bourdieu's theories of the habitus and symbolic capital. These theories are demonstrably relevant for understanding creativity as a series of social and practical exchanges, the effects of which are both recognised and misrecognised. The study identifies the importance of the teachers' and students' investments in creativity, which accrues in their benefits over time. These investments, despite their disavowal, exert a powerful creative force in the properties of the resultant artworks and in the social relations in the classrooms. The selected findings as presented in this paper have an application beyond the case and should be of interest to tertiary art and design educators.

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Exotic specimens were once shipped across the world for the purposes of scientific and 'freakshowcentric' scrutiny. Their ability to build 'positive social, educational and economic value' and 'generate unprecedented attention…' catalysed mechanisms that ultimately destroyed (or at the very least deteriorated) their capacity to exist in an indigenous space, place or time. This paper examines the dark side of desirability, the criticality of habitat, and our responsibility to keep the creative beast 'wild', as opposed to breeding – if not cloning – it in captivity.

 
Bernard Hoffert is a professor, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Associate Dean for External Affairs in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University. He has written four books, numerous articles and essays and hundreds of art reviews and has exhibited paintings and installations internationally. He is a former world president of the International Association of Art-UNESCO.

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Natalie McDonagh's experimental practice is a fusion of art and design dedicated to expanding the ways we think about, and understand, the world and our actions in it (and on it). Over the past decade Natalie has evolved and refined an art-based methodology for inquiry – Creative Contemplation™ – that is being applied to great effect in individual and organisational development. She also designs tangible tools embodying the methodology to cultivate creative thinking and doing. Natalie's form of refashioned creative practice is the subject of her current PhD research, 'In/sight: The Art of Creating Self-Reflexive Spaces'.

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Kerry Thomas is a lecturer in Art Education at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, where she teaches in art and design education and practices of research. Her current research interests are concerned with investigating a sociology of creativity in the field of art education with a focus on the misrecognised economies of art classrooms. Kerry was previously Inspector, Creative Arts, Board of Studies NSW. Over many years she has contributed to the development of syllabuses and assessment in the Visual Arts K-12 and the HSC student exhibition ARTEXPRESS.

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John Vella lectured in Painting and Drawing at the Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, from 1998-2000 and was recently appointed as the Acting Head of Sculpture. John has developed independent and collaborative artistic projects that have been exhibited reviewed nationally over the last fifteen years. Vella has been awarded three major competitive commissions through the Art for Public Building Scheme (APBS) and been the recipient of significant, competitive grants from Arts Tasmania and the Australia Council. His work is held in a number of public and private collections. John Vella is represented by Criterion Gallery, Hobart.