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Mediums for Creative Self-Expression

1/22/2015

8 Comments

 
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In a design brief for some training and development I'm doing I was asked to address the idea of 'mediums for creative self-expression'. In spite of having invested a lot of time thinking about creativity over the last 15 years I have never really sat down and thought much about the mediums I use. I have taken them for granted.

The context in which people work, study, play and socialise includes the media through which they communicate and are able to express themselves through what they do and how they do it. The medium is an agency or means of doing and accomplishing something. In the context of personal creativity it is the means by which we convert imagination and ideas into something tangible and visible.

According to Ken Robinson the medium rather than the context is the vehicle for creative self-expression. 'If you’re doing something creative, you have to be working in a medium. My experience is that the most creative people love the medium that they work in. Musicians love the sounds they make. Writers love words. Mathematicians love the abstractions that numbers make possible. Engineers and architects love building things' (Robinson  2007).

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For an artist the medium is his art - his drawing, painting or other form of expression and it includes the media he uses to create his representations, his sketchbook and tools for sketching and colouring. Or, if he is a digital artist - a computer or digitising pad, scanner and camera or smartphone and software to process and manipulate the images. For a writer his medium for self-expression is the words he writes be they in a notebook or on a word processor. For a performer like a footballer, his medium is the game of football he plays and his tools are the ball and the boots he wares.

Finding the medium and media for creative self-expression is an important and continuous search across and through all the spaces and opportunities in our life if we want to find joy and live a fulfilled and meaningful life. Looking back through my life as a teenager I loved drawing and painting so I was used to the medium of the artist. Later I swapped my sketchpad for a field notebook as I became a geologist. My context became the 'field' and my medium my field sketches and the maps I produced as I observed and interpreted the world around me. Geological mapping is a craft that combines observation and critical thinking with imagination. In the classroom as a teacher, the lecture or practical became my medium and the resources I produced and used were my tools to engage and encourage students to share my love of my subject. These techniques were later adapted for educational professionals as I morphed into a higher education researcher, policy maker and developer. In this way, although the contexts have changed the medium through which I have expressed myself have generally remained constant.  Outside my work I have enjoyed expressing myself through my garden and being in a band where I play drums. All these contexts, and more, provided me with challenges and opportunities, in which I could create a sense of purpose. Within them I found a 'medium', the means of doing and accomplishing something that I valued and within which I could create something - mostly by myself, but sometimes with others.

The medium I prefer to express my ideas, imagination, beliefs and values in is writing. This has always been the way since I wrote my dissertation as an undergraduate, through the papers and thesis I wrote as a postgraduate, through the articles and books I have published in my fields of geology and education and now to the articles and blogs I write and most recently a book about my family's history.

In recent years I have come to see myself as first and foremost a writer, then a developer, broker and lots of other things. Some would say I'm sad spending so much time sitting at a computer writing. My wife sees my writing as work, and there is a discipline that makes it work-like, but it often feels more like a hobby because of the pleasure and satisfaction I gain from it. Through writing I explore my ideas and imagination and bring some sort or order and meaning to their randomness as they are connected and contextualised.

There are many definitions of creativity but as a writer I have always had a soft spot for Dellas and Gaier (1970) who suggest that creativity is the desire and ability to use imagination, insight, intellect, feeling and emotion to move an idea from one state to an alternative, previously unexplored state. That sums up very nicely what often happens when I sit down to write about a subject I know little about - like this blog. The process of crystallising thoughts in words is the way I discover and consolidate what I understand and believe. 'How do I know what I know until I say it?' is very real to me. Through writing I appropriate the ideas of others and make them my own connecting them to what I understand and adding to my understanding in the process. It's mostly a solo experience - so in answer to the question do you prefer to be creative on your own or with others, I would have to say that on balance, and in the context of my preferred medium, my preference is to work by myself. Although, there are certainly times when it is a joy to write something collaboratively.

The desire to write is often what gets me up early in the morning (including this blog today). I have a thought in my head and that provides the stimulation and motivation and I get annoyed if something gets in the way. It's the medium that provides me with the means of doing something useful (to me) with the idea. When I sit down to write I usually have a bit of an idea about what I want to write about but not much. The words have to be invented as I write. When I get stuck I might google and do thanks to serendipity I will usually find something that someone has written that triggers new thoughts and ideas. I sometimes also bounce an idea off friends who will offer their perspectives. For example yesterday I wanted to start writing something on the creative affordances of social media but didn't know where to start. So I wrote down some simple propositions and emailed them to a couple of knowledgeable friends and within an hour or so I had their perspectives, as well as confirmation that what I had written was okay. This enabled me to progress my understanding in a way that was useful to me.

The medium enables immersion. By that I mean I can lose myself in the process for hours, sometimes 10 or 12 hours in a day. It's not all fun though and there are often negative emotions and feelings of dissatisfaction as I struggle with something or lose something that wasn't saved, as well as more positive feelings as stuff emerges. Writing is a process that results in a product but the product emerges through the process and that is where the magic lies. So at the end of writing this piece the collection of connected thoughts and feelings that have been crystallised into words did not exist before.

I enjoy writing for different audiences and in different styles - essays, academic articles and books, magazine articles and blogs to name a few. The space I write in is not so important - I can write anywhere and anytime but I prefer writing in my own space,which is my office - a converted garage where I'm surrounded by own things and connected to the world via internet. This perhaps is because leaving the house and walking to the garage is like going to work where I know I am going to be disciplined. My office space is my equivalent to an artist's studio. It's full of stuff that has meaning in my life. Like many an artist's studio my office is quite messy but I can generally find things I need. I remember reading that when they broke into artist Francis Bacon's studio after he died it was knee deep in discarded drawings and paintings. In life he reasoned that in this environment he created order out of chaos and I have used that as an excuse for my messyness ever since.


My preferred writing tool is a laptop/word processor - I use an old version of word. I cannot touch type but I'm quite fast with 2 or 3 fingers and I type as fast as I can think and compose. I sometimes write with pencil and paper but I notice that when I sit down at my laptop I ignore what I have written and just write. But coming to it freshly, after having thought about it, generally makes it easier. Writing is an emotional rather than clinical affair: I often listen to music when I write and I choose music that fits my mood.


The second medium I am at home with is visual representation. I like to turn ideas that are written in words into pictures - illustrations and diagrams, in particular. I enjoy the process of creating a picture in my mind but technically, I am not very good at drawing the pictures so I work with an illustrator (Kiboko our community artist) to help me turn my imagination into reality. Sometimes I just tell him that I want to illustrate an idea and describe it to him in words and then let him interpret but this generally does not work. I have discovered that if I can create a design for him - usually based on cut and paste of figures he has already produced we get a much better result. To achieve this I've got proficient in using paint and photoshop to edit and amend existing illustrations or parts of illustrations.  - Here is a recent example formed around the idea of learning and developing in lots of different contexts. On the left is my collage formed from previous drawings that Kiboko has done with my notes to guide him and on the right the new design created by Kiboko. The process is collaborative and we both feel that we have contributed to the process of creation.


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Most recently, I have, thanks to Web 2.0 website building tools enjoyed creating websites in order to support my work as a developer and organiser of social networks around the educational ideas I believe in. Weebly, (this website) and other Web 2.0 tools like explee that allows you to animate illustrations, have opened up a whole new medium within which I can think, communicate and create. Thanks to Web 2.0 and social media the world has suddenly become richer for people to express themselves and share their creations.

Please share your perspectives on the medium(s) you use for creative expression?

Sources
Photo is of Julian Stodd a talented graphic facilitator drawing a conversation on the walls of SCEPTrE at the University of Surrey

Dellas, M. and Gaier, E.L. (1970) Identification of creativity in the individual. Psychological Bulletin, 73, 55-73

Robinson, K. (2007) Fresh Perspective: Creativity and Leadership: Sir Ken Robinson in Conversation with Russ Volckmann Available on line: http://integralleadershipreview.com/ 5377-fresh-perspective-creativity-and-leadership-sir-ken-robinson-in-conversation-with-russ-volckmann/  

 Norman Jackson

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10 Ways Social Media Can Enable Creative Self Expression for Digital Scholars

1/16/2015

428 Comments

 
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One of the profound changes that is taking place at the start of the 21st century is the creation  of many new affordances for creative self-expression brought about by the technological revolution that is carrying us into a new Social Age of learning and a new culture of participation, creation and co-creation (1). Aided by the internet and its associated technologies we are changing our habits of communicating and interacting through the on-line environments we increasingly inhabit.  Fundamentally, as a society we are changing the way we find, share and co-create information to develop new knowledge and meaning. The world is full of content creators and people offering their unique perspectives on anything and everything and full of opportunity to collaborate to co-create new knowledge, objects and relationships. The very act of communicating in the Social Age offers new affordances for creative self expression and examples are given below of some of the ways in which social media can encourage and enable creative self-expression for all digital scholars working in higher education. 


Traditional channels to share achievements

The CV or resume has been used for many years as a means of sharing work experience, skills and qualifications. Typically the 2-sides of A4 paper CV is used as a means of selecting applicants for job interviews. In the last two decades we have seen a growth in the Company website which may offer a Who’s Who gallery. The purpose of these is to showcase the skills of those who work for that organisation. The digital CV for many is now having a LinkedIn profile and using the affordances for professional networking and publication that LinkedIn provides. This professional networking site has provided the space to host these since 2003.


Traditional channels to express scholarly activity

In the main these have been peer reviewed journal articles and books. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. Whilst providing valued benchmarking information and reputational yardsticks, for use within the higher education (HE) sector and for public information, we must also consider how to highlight the excellent work that doesn’t make the dizzy heights of the REF. A further consideration is the time it takes for research to actually be published.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy argues that “a new paradigm of research communications has grown up -  one that de-emphasizes the traditional journals route, and re-prioritizes faster, real-time academic communication”. He goes on to introduce the blog as a useful mechanism to share a synopsis of your article, book or chapter. The likes of Wordpress and Blogger offer free blog sites and are supported with excellent online help guides to get you started. Web 2.0 drag and drop technology also enables us to very easily create our own websites to curate the products of our research see for example weebly.


Using social media to become and sustain yourself as a digital scholar

Social media is what it says on the tin. It is digital media that enables you to share information socially. By social this means enabling opportunities for interaction and dialogue. It goes beyond text as multimedia can be shared in the form of images, video and audio.

In a recent open lecture on Social Media and the Digital Scholar I suggested that providing bite sized links to your scholarly work can be helpful to others, highlighting topics of mutual interest. Examples might include:

  • writing a LinkedIn post and updates which include links to useful content
  • adding presentations to SlideShare and sharing also on your LinkedIn profile
  • adding your publications to your LinkedIn profile: articles, press releases, papers, books and chapters
  • adding projects you are involved in along with the names of those you are collaborating with
  • writing guest posts for other peoples’ blogs, websites and digital magazines
  • writing your own blog and sharing a link via Twitter
 

Taking this a step further and considering the technology so many of us have at our fingertips and contained within the mobile devices we carry with us, there are now so many more opportunities to become more creative in the way we share our scholarly work. Beyond text we can now easily capture images, video and audio using our mobile devices and share these on a variety of social media channels. Thinking about utilising a variety of rich media to express ourselves is the first step and will provide the means of adding your own creative mark to the work you are sharing. 

Ten creative ways social media can be used:


1 Twitter

Having only a maximum of 140 characters per message (tweet) brevity is the word!. Adding hyperlinks to websites can provide the reader with more information. These links could also be to videos, audio or images. In addition you can upload an image of your choice and this will appear below the tweet. This is where you can become creative as you can design your own images. There is now an option to pin a tweet to the top of your profile page. Selecting one you wish to promote along with an image can be very useful. Opportunities for creativity abound in the messages and images you create, and the way you engage with others using this medium.


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2 Slideshare

You can upload PowerPoint presentations, documents and infographics to
Slideshare. If you are on LinkedIn you can choose to auto-add these to your profile. This adds a visual aspect that stands out amongst the text. You can also capture the embed code and display your slideshares in your blog or website.

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3 Screencast-o-matic

Create guides in the form of a
screencast video. This captures anything on your screen from a PowerPoint set of slides, a word doc, a photo, diagram or drawing along with a recording of your voice over. The recording can be uploaded to YouTube or saved as a file. It can then be shared via your chosen social networks.

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4.    Pinterest

Pin your visual assets - photos, drawings, sketches, diagrams of your work, book covers, presentations - on to a virtual pinboard.  
The image maintains the link to the site it was pinned from. You can create as many boards as you wish on Pinterest.



5 QR Code

Add a QR code to your business card that links to your blog, website or LinkedIn profile. These can be made easily by using the https://goo.gl/ URL shortener. Paste the URL you want to link to - click shorten and the click on details to reveal your QR code. Save this as an image.  There are a number of free QR code reader apps that can be downloaded on to your smartphone.

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6 Video

Capture short video clips about your work. These could be demonstrations of practical activities, talking head interviews or exemplars of student work. You could create a video biography or CV and then share on your blog, website or LinkedIn profile. If uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo you can capture the embed code and simply paste this into a blog post or on your website.

You may also want to experiment with
Vine
to create mini 6 seconds video clip. This is long enough to capture the cover or title of your book or any other artefact you wish to share. Vines can be shared via social media or embedded into a blog or website.

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7  Podcasts

Tools like Soundcloud and AudioBoom
are easy to use to capture audio narrations. Consider recording a synopsis of something you are working on. Share the recording via Twitter, 


LISTEN TO SUGATA MITRA PODCAST


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8 Images

An image can add context to an update shared via any social network. This could be a photograph or a digitised drawing, sketchnote, mindmap, diagram, CAD drawing and more.

Curate scholarly related images you create by adding to
Flickr or Instagram. Go a step further and use them to create a collage using PicMonkey or an animated slideshow using Animoto or Adobe Voice.

Consider giving your images a
Creative Commons licence so that others may use too and make use of the Creative Commons search
facility for your own work. Here you can find images and music.


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9 Host a Google+ Hangout

A Google Hangout  is very similar to Skype enabling you to have a live video conversation with one person or a group of up to ten people. Google Hangouts on Air give you the opportunity to publicly share the hangout conversation that takes place and will auto record and publish this on YouTube.

Sharing a discussion is an excellent way to introduce others to research, teaching innovations, student work or anything else you think would be of interest to others.




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10  Infographics

These are a great way to visually portray information including stats and data in the form of a digital poster. You can use PowerPoint or Publisher to create or tools like Piktochart or Infogram which give you a lovely choice of templates. Infographics can also be used for visual CVs using VisualizeMe.

Right is an example of an infographic poster made using
Piktochart
.



Useful background reading

1) Using Social Media in the Social Age of Learning Lifewide Magazine September 2014 Available on line at:  http://www.lifewidemagazine.co.uk/

2) Exploring the Social Age and the New Culture of Learning Lifewide Magazine September 2014 Available on line at:  http://www.lifewidemagazine.co.uk/

Sue Beckingham @suebecks  is an Educational Developer and Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University with a research interest in social media use within education http://socialmediaforlearning.com/ 
. She is a founding member of the Creative Academic community.



428 Comments

How purposes drive creative self-expression 

1/10/2015

6 Comments

 
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For the past month we have been busy getting ready to formally launch Creative Academic and now seems as good a time as any to do so. Chrissi, Alison and myself will try to energise the idea but ultimately the success of the enterprise will be in attracting people who care about students' creative development, to our community, and harnessing their energy, enthusiasm and expertise to bring about systemic perspective change.

By those wonderful coincidences I came across a lovely post by Shelley Prevost this week who talked about the way she carried her purposes through different jobs and roles to enable her to become the person she wanted to be.

'Your purpose in life has very little to do with your job' In the last four years, I've been a psychotherapist, teacher, mentor, investor, and entrepreneur. It's so tempting to say with certitude that this job or that job is my purpose. That I'm 'called' to be a counsellor, a teacher, or a CEO. But rather than using them as labels to define and decode my purpose, I now think of my roles as reflections of who I am now, in this moment in time, with these people I work and share my life with. And perhaps more importantly, these jobs are helping me become who I am supposed to be. Your purpose is to unlock--and eventually fold in--who you are becoming with who you already are. The activities that force you to grow are your calling. Learning from those activities is your purpose. Your life purpose is way too big to be filled by one role, or even one long career. If you choose wisely, your job can point you toward your purpose. Your personal evolution--becoming wiser, kinder, more curious, more YOU--is the purpose of your human experience. If you're lucky, your job might serve as the flint that sparks your growth or, as some of you know too well, it may take the form of a psychic straight jacket that's inflexible and unaccommodating. Either way, your job is a reflection of your current conditions--not the purpose itself.' Shelley Prevost

How right she is. I've had five different roles / enterprises in the last 15 years  and in each I have tried to pursue my purposes even though the roles have been different. In fact making the job or enterprise into something through which I felt able to fulfil my purposes and provide opportunity for creative self-expression, was and remains, a key element of my enjoyment and fulfilment in each role. In the coming week I am going to launch another enterprise - Creative Academic. Its purpose, and mine, is to support students' creative development in higher education.  Looking back to 2001 I created a similar community based enterprise called the imaginative curriculum network while working for the Learning and Teaching Support Network . Both of these enterprises are, in Shelley's words, activities that force or enable me to grow and develop and give meaning, substance and purpose to my creativity. These interconnected projects underlie the fact that our purposes are too big to be filled by one role. We carry and enact them by repeatedly bringing new organisations, relationships, performances and products into existence. In this way our purposes become the real driving forces for our creative self expression. While our creativity gives meaning and substance to our purposes, its our purposes that drive our creative spirit that ultimate leads to the creation of the things twe value.

“Whether we’re artists, corporate managers, accountants or whatever, we all want to create; and we want to do it in a purposeful and meaningful way. I learned the hard way that, as agreeable an idea ‘Creativity for its own sake’ is, it’s not particularly sustainable, financially rewarding or emotionally satisfying over the long run.” Hugh MacLeod


One further thought occurs in the light of my recent exploration of the role of disruption and inflection in our lives. It seems to me that our purposes persist through disruptions and they influence our decisions that lead to inflections that take our life in a new direction.


Shelley Prevost Two Unexpected Lessons I've Learned Since Changing Careers 
@shelleyprevost
http://www.inc.com/shelley-prevost/two-unexpected-lessons-i-ve-learned-since-changing-careers.htm

image source and quote
https://brucelynnblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/creativity-with-purpose/



Norman Jackson
Leader Creative Academic

6 Comments

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