Creativity, Funding and Research in Canada

I am puzzled. Highly skilled artisans, artists, creators and designers are perhaps among the most sophisticated researchers our society produces. In order to succeed, they have to not only understand the context of their creative work, but also the impact and possible market for their ideas and objects They have to develop sophisticated models and prototypes to test their ideas and they have to be able to translate their research and practice into something that can be understood by many different people often with quite differing interests. They have to have skills that might best be described as ethnographic so as to understand if not sense both the demands of their communities and also the resistances those communities have to change and new insights. They have to negotiate complex collaborative arrangements to produce outputs that will reflect great technical expertise as well as vision.

Yet, for the most part, their work is neither recognized for its research value, nor substantively funded as research in Canada. (Great Britain and Australia have overcome this problem.) My sense is that conventional research in this country has over time become defined in a rather narrow way to benefit those people, institutions and disciplines that have historically received money from governments, foundations and private benefactors. For example, what is the difference between a researcher in political science and one who studies and researches politics in order to produce a film? Does a list of publications and books mean more than a list of well-made documentaries? Today in Canada it is still unusual for a funding agency to accept the CV of someone who has devoted themselves to media and forms of expression that are not traditional. It would be even more unusual to accept a work of art like an installation as evidence of rigour, forethought, insight and inventive thinking. These are among the criteria that are expected by juries in assessing the value of applications for funding.

I cannot go into the history of funding for disciplinary research in Canada, nor examine within this context, the very particular mandates of the funding agencies that have over time developed specific areas of emphasis to the exclusion of many of the creative disciplines. The purpose of this short piece is to raise some issues about the future of research within the conventional boundaries that have been in place in Canada for decades. The secondary purpose is to argue that the models presently in place and in use by the main funding agencies are tired, reductive and repetitive and that the standards used to evaluate research have precipitously narrowed over the last fifteen years.

Qualitative and quantitative research are based on a set of standards and criteria that have evolved over time within the context of disciplines that are for the most part pursued within the university context. Those disciplines range from the hard sciences, medicine and engineering through to the “soft” social sciences and humanities. The fields involved are diverse and often contentious. Some the disciplines are newer than others with the more scientific health-related disciplines receiving the largest amount of money. This is because of their perceived utility to society, the assumption that medical research for example, will have the most immediate impact and the further assumption that innovation occurs in those areas because of their empirical nature.

The common and dominant popular metaphor for research is the science laboratory, an environment of experimentation within which purposes and goals are supposedly clearer than research that might be pursued in a library or through fieldwork. The other metaphor and it is one that also rules the popular imagination, is that research has to have concrete outcomes for it to be valid. In other words, “real” research will produce “cures” in medicine or a better understanding of physical reality or technological innovation. Of course, good research in any discipline will hopefully have productive outcomes. That is a given. But, good research is rarely linear and often (as is the case with AIDS, for example) takes decades to produce results.

In fact, laboratories are notoriously conservative places often using research paradigms that produce little value either for participants or for the public. (See the work of Bruno Latour, but also the work of Thomas Kuhn for analyses of the cultures and working practices of scientific research.) This does not mean that universities should close those labs or shut down those disciplines that show little for the sometimes-massive investment in them. It does mean, however, that policy makers have to look with great care at accepted and conventional assumptions about output, results and their translation into highly specialized journals. In saying this, I am not suggesting that the only model for research is an applied one. In fact, I am arguing the opposite.

Research in all its varieties is fundamental to all forms of learning and the development of new knowledge and is the foundation upon which new, useful and great ideas come into the public sphere. The assumption that there is one method or one way to arrive at results is something that most good researchers would argue against. And yet, that is the reality of the distinctive manner in which research is funded in Canada. It also underlies the assumption that the PhD is the only consistently valid tool of evaluation of researchers who wish to pursue innovative ideas, so that for example, an MFA is seen to be less significant even if it is a terminal degree for some professions.

Part of the challenge, part of the beauty of research is that it trains the minds of learners, researchers and teachers and provides everyone with the intellectual and practical tools they need to pursue their interests and their passions sometimes with important and positive results. Research builds on disciplinary histories and practices, mode of enquiry, crafts and the multi-faceted use of technology.

This potent combination is also at the heart of post-secondary education and learning and is the source of what makes universities and colleges so important to our society. However, value in research can be drawn from many sources and from many different practices. The isolation of research into particular institutions and specialized disciplines slowly leads to practices that are less innovative than they could or should be. This is largely because of the manner in which disciplines develop, their tendency to devolve into silos and most importantly, the departmental and faculty structure within universities, which tends to validate the history and shape of specific disciplines.

In Canada, funding agencies have bought into the argument that excellence can only be found and developed in large universities, which have infrastructures to support their ambitious research goals. Often and ironically, the faculties in those universities are no larger than their smaller sister institutions, but nevertheless garner the majority of the money in any disciplinary competition. Excellence has become a quantitative game. Fund enough research in one place and you will undoubtedly have some winners. Very little research has been done on faculty at the large universities who do not provide research that matches their ambitions, particularly in areas like the social sciences and the humanities.

Public policy in this area has to change. In particular, Canadian funding agencies have to realize that they are not recognizing value, innovation and creativity in most of the institutions across the country. Instead, they are perpetuating a vague notion of excellence based on the capacity of large universities to garner most of the money. All of that would be fine, if the claims about research being made by those large institutions were not based on exclusivity, to the detriment of the quite extraordinary richness of the work going on in many other institutions and as is often the case within the creative disciplines. The latter receive an infinitesimally small amount both compared to the number of people seeking funding and to the growing importance of the creative industries in Canada.

Teaching, Learning and Making in Design Education

One of the major assumptions in design education and pedagogy is that students have to “make” or “produce” objects, from for example, web pages to bicycles to books in order to prove that they have learned to become designers. This philosophy is further amplified in popular journals like Applied Arts, which features the work of designers (much as photographic magazines feature the works of photographers) as examples both of production and professional capacity as if the works themselves have enough presence and force to stand for the creative process.

This outcomes based strategy is pervasive in disciplines that frame learning through the products or objects students create. The assumption is that students become more active learners if they transform information and knowledge into something tangible. To varying degrees, this approach has immense value. However, my sense is that the focus on outcomes often reduces the students need to engage in wide-ranging and critical analyses and therefore to make possible the kind of self-reflection that is essential to learning. In other words interpretation, discourse and critique become less important largely because the object is meant to stand not only for function but also for meaning, process and aesthetics. There is in this approach a thin border between 19^th century vocational learning and teaching and the depth that should be required of university students in the 21^st century who wish to become designers.    

The tradition of making that dominates contemporary art and design educational organizations is often portrayed as one of the essential differences that design schools have with more traditional institutions. Making is given a higher value than just thinking or research that may have no pragmatic or immediate outcome.  I would like to argue in this short article that the underlying philosophy of “making” to show progress in skills acquisition is fraught with dangers, among the most important of which is rampant anti-intellectualism. Furthermore, from my perspective, the learning process both within design and generally, is by its very nature so interdisciplinary that the focus on outcomes (most fully exemplified by the fourth year graduation project that comes to stand not only for years of learning but for the general capacity and competence of the student) tends to distort if not undermine creative process as well as innovative and speculative thinking. Of course, I am not suggesting that making is an end in itself, nor that the fabrication of prototypes or objects is harmful or without merit. Rather, one of the most important elements of any creative discipline, in my opinion is that learners become creative problem solvers. In order to achieve that goal many different pedagogical approaches are needed, not the least of which is an awareness of the differences among skills, learning and research. Gaining that understanding means that design students (and for that matter design teachers) cannot approach learning in a linear fashion. There is no easy or simple road to creative and innovative thought or production, unless the purpose of the educational process is framed by a limited understanding of the vocation or discipline within which both learners and teachers are engaged.

In contrast, experience design is part of an effort to recast design process so that at a minimum fabrication can meet creativity in a middle zone, a space where designers can reach out to potential audiences or users, a space that is both highly contingent and not entirely framed by use. The challenge for successful experience designers then centres on communication, language and quality of interaction, that is, how to fabricate a relational environment that may or may not have objects as their focus. Experience design suggests something about the challenges that now face all designers as the ground upon which creative engagement shifts from makers to users, inverting the creative process so that the latter is often more responsible for their experiences than the former.

Ironically, this is the same problem that artists face. The fabrication of something from nothing and the translation of ideas into artifacts cannot be reduced to a series of mechanical decisions, but requires a combination of self-reflection and self-appraisal as well as external evaluation and critique. Concepts don’t become aesthetic objects just because the craft needed to make or create something has been well learned or even well executed. If creativity were a simple matter of craft or even technique, then there would be little aesthetic or technical difference among artists or designers or users. Self-reflection can be learned. At the same time, learning to work beyond the limitations suggested by any craft or technique is the foundation upon which both innovative and critical articulation rests. The challenge both for learners and teachers is how to open up an increasingly narrow and narrowing set of assumptions about the pragmatic outcomes of the learning process. This is one of the key challenges both for the discipline and the institutions that teach design.   

Leadership in Art and Design

This talk was presented at the European League of Institutes of Art, Leadership Symposium held at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in December of 2011.

Designing the Future: Leadership in the 21st Century - Ron Burnett from Emily Carr University on Vimeo 

Transdisciplinarity: A New Learning Paradigm for the Digital Age?

I have been an educator, administrator, writer and creative artist for over fourty years. During that time, most of the disciplines with which I have been involved have changed. For better or for worse, the very nature of disciplines (of both an artistic and analytic nature), their function and their role within and outside of institutions has shifted. The context for this change is not just the individual nature or history of one or other disciplines or research practices. Rather, the social and cultural conditions for the creation and communication of ideas, artifacts, knowledge and information have been transformed. From my point of view, this transformation has been extremely positive. It has resulted in the formation of new disciplines and new approaches to comprehending the very complex nature of western societies. However, we are still a long way from developing a holistic understanding of the implications of these social and cultural shifts and this brief essay can only offer a hint as to why so many distinct changes have happened in such a short time. 

From a cultural point of view, the impact of this process of transformation first appeared in a symptomatic fashion in the early 20th century, when the cinema became a mass medium and accelerated with the advent of radio and then television (although there are many parallels with what happened to literature and photography in the 19th century). Networked technologies have added another layer to the changes and another level of complexity to the ways in which ideas are communicated and discussed, as well as learned (and in so doing further fudging the boundaries between disciplines). The conventions that have governed communications processes for over fifty years have been turned inside out by the Internet and this has led to some fundamental redefinitions of information, knowledge, space and time. 

Technology plays a role here, but it is not the only player in what has been a dramatic move from an industrial/agrarian society to a mixed environment that is as dependent on cultural activity, networks and information as it is on the state and conventional notions of political and economic activity. The disjunctures at work in our society and the upheavals caused by profound cultural and social change have begun to affect the orientation, direction and substance of many different academic and art-related disciplines. Although some of these disciplines have been around for a long time, part of my argument in this essay will be that most disciplines have been under stress for the better part of the 20th century. We are very likely in the early stages of a long-term shift in direction and it may take some time yet before that shift is fully understood. One important way of understanding these changes is through the an examination of what has happened to learning in the digital age and the role that technology has played in sustaining and sometimes inhibiting changes in the way learning takes place both inside and outside institutions.  

I will discuss post-secondary institutions because I know them best, but I believe that many of the following arguments apply to most forms of education. Modern universities now operate within a context that is both challenging and undergoing fundamental change. My effort in this essay is to try and understand why some of our disciplines may be in crisis and why transdisciplinarity may be one of the best solutions to that crisis. It is my feeling that a combination of phenomena and a particularly difficult context for education has begun to foreground a series of contradictions that require some elucidation. These include increasing questions about the relevance of university education for the future and questions about how universities manage themselves and what the balance should be among research, teaching, learning and administration. 

 At the same time, I am concerned with the evolving role of disciplines within post-secondary educational institutions and the challenges that a new context is introducing into the learning environment. What is that new context? Well, it is not one thing or one phenomenon; rather, I believe that we are in the midst of a ‘sea change’ in our understanding of the communications setting that is the underpinning for learning, pedagogy and education. This is a bold claim. For example, it is not possible, in my opinion to examine what we teach without linking that to the networked world. Information now flows from so many venues that what we mean by content needs to be examined from many different and sometimes-conflicting perspectives. Educational institutions are becoming one of many possible places that learners can seek information and knowledge, but they are no longer the only place. 

An interesting phenomenon which exemplifies this point and which is enhanced by using the Internet is auto-didacticism, people who teach themselves. A good example of this is in the computer sciences where students as hackers learn programming from each other as well as from sources that are sometimes legitimate and other times not. Another example is the many different ways in which young people alter the computer games that they play. There is a vast movement of gamers who have learned how to ‘patch’ games and introduce ‘mods’ which transform not only the aesthetic of the game, but often its intentions. The marvel of auto-didacticism is the extent to which at least in the digital era, learning turns into networked dialogue among anonymous individuals who dedicate themselves to projects that they are working on. The development of the LINUX operating system (which was the product of thousands of peoples contributions) is a further example of this growing and important shift in how ideas and information are exchanged. All of these examples point towards a complex landscape in which learning takes place within a variety of different settings and where notions of authority as well as authorship are under constant pressure.

The digital revolution has disrupted and will continue to disrupt what we mean by learning and how we organize our disciplines. Suffice to say, that to think about transdisciplinarity in a networked world is to think about disciplines in a different and evolving context of interconnection and complex forms of communications and interchange. The fluidity is sometimes startling, but a necessary if not creative condition which can transform the exchange of ideas. Or, put another way, the public sphere is no longer dependent upon the particular forms of dialogue to which we have grown accustomed and new forms will have to be developed. This doesn’t make universities redundant as much as it shifts the ground for the conversations that we can have and has significant implications for the processes of communications that we engage in on a daily basis.

The discipline of Communications (which matured over the last thirty years) perhaps more than others represents the shift from a mono-disciplinary approach to a multi-disciplinary strategy. This may well be its undoing, but at a minimum I believe that communications has helped us to conceptualize as well as explain some of the changes that we are experiencing. The status of disciplines like communications does of course largely depend on the definitions that we apply to the activities of research and practice within both education and society. For example, the fact that there is now a discipline in the universities with the name of media studies is largely the result of the increasing importance of media in society and a growing recognition that critical as well as theoretical research is needed if we are to understand how the media work and what their influence is on our daily lives. The disciplines that we are a part of at universities have grown out of shared social, political, cultural and economic concerns. Disciplines are based on a systematic history, one that includes not only particular methodologies, but also specific concerns that are sustained in a cohesive way over time. 

In Western cultures disciplines developed because of a felt need for sites of rational discourse, reason and a sense that without boundaries knowledge cannot be rigorously pursued or deepened. Yet, those boundaries are neither as natural nor as fixed as the history of disciplines would suggest. Nor should they be. Rather, as with knowledge and learning, the question is how to create sites of engagement, which will support some degree of stability while recognizing the need for continual change and responsiveness to the social, cultural and economic pressures that surround the learning experience.  

Disciplines are examples of the synergistic relationship between the perceived needs of social formations and the common assumption that economic and political progress comes from an educated populace. The assumption that education and progress are linked is of course an eighteenth as well as nineteenth century concept, which developed in part because literacy was assumed to be central to bourgeois society. It was and still would be a heresy to suggest that literacy may not only be found through the comprehension of texts and that there may be many other venues that encourage personal and social growth. I am of course not arguing against the value of literacy, just against the received opinion that to understand means to read, to learn means to write and that reading and writing are the foundation upon which all else is built, especially in the educational system and particularly in the digital age. 

The discipline that I received my doctorate in is Communications. Historically the development of the discipline of communications was the product of a convergence among a nascent media studies, cultural studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural anthropology, semiotics, feminist studies and art history. It is clear that a broader mapping was needed to sustain the multi-disciplinary interests of different scholars. This was also, clearly, a response to changes in our societies. Other areas like linguistics, sociology and political science watched in amazement as communications researchers borrowed and begged from everywhere in order to engage with some of the central cultural and social phenomena of the 20^th century. It is fascinating how quickly communications with its sub-disciplines like film studies, media studies and cultural studies spread and how many departments were created or recreated to accommodate faculty and student interest. So, we have an interesting paradox. Aren’t these developments evidence of the ability of disciplines to evolve and change? Doesn’t this suggest that universities are supple and responsive places? This profusion of disciplines also suggests that the antennae of researchers were carefully tuned to the changes going on in society at large. As media became more ubiquitous, as more and more devices of communications appeared, as our entire society geared itself towards a technological shift, many departments and disciplines, many teachers and administrators responded in a positive and constructive manner. 

The paradox is that this is both true and false. It is false because the newer disciplines simply transported earlier intellectual paradigms onto the media for example without due concern for specificity or context. Modernist notions of canon creation allowed and encouraged a few paradigmatic ideas to become central and foundational far too quickly. The relationships among the various disciplines became obscured. Hovering in the background were concerns that interdisciplinarity was simply too general and not specific enough to encourage rigorous scholarship. And then there was the teaching. Because these areas were and are of interest to students who bath in the phantasmagoria of media and culture on an everyday basis, these courses attracted large numbers of students at all levels. People had to be hired to service demand. Doctoral programs grew. More and more conferences were organized by faculty anxious to understand each other’s work. At the same time, expectations about rigour and connections to more traditional disciplines — to the broader constellation of concerns within universities seemed to be of marginal concern. Ironically, this new area, so unaware of how disciplines can quickly lose their edge, so disconnected from similar research going on in other areas, growing so rapidly found itself to be mainstream in society and under attack in the university. 

Somehow, the broad vision of Communications was being transformed into what looked increasingly like literary studies of the 1950’s. The fragmentation was enormous and continues to this day. This would not necessarily be a negative were it not for the fact that the eclecticism (which I believe can and should be supported in certain circumstances) became self-referential. That is, research in the area referred increasingly to literature that most researchers outside of the field would not or could not read. And in universities the reaction to that lack of interaction is that silos go up, walls are built to keep ideas and people out of each other’s purview. There are many disciplines other than Communications that have followed a similar trajectory. 

I am not suggesting that the inherent transdisciplinary character of communications led to these problems. I am suggesting that the way in which that transdisciplinarity is practiced needs to be examined with close attention paid to the tensions between applied forms of research in communications (international policy, for example) and research that is oriented towards criticism, theory and history. It is an irony that just as Communications became increasingly accepted as a discipline, it fractured from within and lost sight of its goals. The most telling example of this is that early research into the Internet came from interdisciplinary scholars in the science and engineering and not from scholars in communications. 

Now, as the technologies of entertainment and communication have become not only ubiquitous but also foundational to everyday life, there is an increasing convergence among the various strands that broadly speaking make up the study of communications. The digital era is very much about the fudging of boundaries and this has increasingly meant that the study of communications cannot and should not be pursued in isolation of the computer sciences or psychology or the neurosciences. These disciplines are also increasingly attracted to more rigourous forms of research in anthropology and communications.   

How does what I have said impact the development, maintenance and continuation of the disciplines I have been talking about? Well, at the same time that we are researching, inventing and reinventing our areas of interest, we need to stay connected to the many ways in which all disciplines are engaged in a similar struggle. That struggle tries to bring purpose to ideas, tries to create a context for a transformed and transformative humanism and tries to connect the value and depth of research to the process of communication among all members of the community (inside and outside of the university) and most importantly, students.

As I have said, with respect to the discipline of Communications, the arrival of a plethora of new instruments of communications, new technologies and new media has created a wonderful opportunity to bring the sciences, engineering, computer sciences, social sciences and humanities together. I am involved in numerous projects with researchers and practitioners with whom I would never normally have had contact. We are transgressing all of the boundaries and mapping a new territory that hopefully will re-energize our teaching and redefine our disciplines. I say this with some pride but also with trepidation. I recognize how fragile this process can be and have been made wary of the potential for politics and competitiveness to interfere with good intentions and well laid plans. Yet, I am hopeful that our students will resist the seemingly natural tendency of our institutions and disciplines to narrow their concerns, and will keep the pot boiling as to the relevance of the courses that they are taking and the information that they are processing and learning.    

Often, the assumption that is made is that technology has been the main cause of the shift that we are presently experiencing. But, I believe that this change has been in the works since the advent of distribution and communications systems for mass culture and the linking of culture to education and learning. In addition, the motor for many of the changes has been scientific research in a variety of fields, but most especially in physics and biology. The integration of science and technology and the strengthening of the social sciences have combined to transform what we mean by subjectivity and human identity. This is in turn has led to a redefinition of our sense of time and of space. In particular, "time" in the early 21st century has less to do with measurement than with flow, which may well be an excellent metaphor for the direction in which our disciplines need to head. So, by way of summary, let me suggest the following:

1. Technology is one of the drivers of change in the shift to transdisciplinary models, but not the only one.

2. The integration of research in the sciences with research that has led to technological innovation and social analysis has been supported by a massive change in communications and distribution systems. This is turn has changed the ways in which we translate innovation into practice. It has also transformed how we locate and sustain change at the economic, social and cultural level. All of these elements have an impact on what we mean by learning and transdisciplinarity.

3. Networks of communication have altered what we mean by information and also how our culture views knowledge and this has had a profound impact on the arts and on the social sciences.

4. These changes have redefined our notions of time and space and our ability to map and develop explanatory models for what is happening around us with the result that different disciplines have had to alter their direction (good examples are geography and architecture).

5. More importantly the metaphors that we normally use to explain change have been altered by the integration of media and images into every aspect of our daily lives. The digital revolution has merely extended the boundaries of these transformative phenomena. 

6. All of this has affected the definitions and explanations of disciplines and it may be the case that transdisciplinarity provides us with the strategies that we need to understand the radically different boundaries within which disciplines must now operate. 

7. There is a strong desire to recognize the importance of convergence between disciplines and research and scholarship. This desire for convergence must also recognize diversity and difference. It will only be possible to move from specialized and closed approaches within disciplines, if we also acknowledge that their relatedness allows us to select what needs to come together, while celebrating separateness, locality and community.

A significant example of these processes at work is that one of the most important of the physical sciences relating to the brain, the neurosciences, has become a combination of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, biology, pharmacology and genetics with a profound concern for culture, ethics and social context. Genetics itself makes use of many different disciplines to achieve its aims (including data visualization). To survive in the 21st century the neurosciences will have to link all of their parts even further and bring genetics, the environment, and the socio-cultural context together in order to develop more complex models of mind.

It may well be the case that no amount of research will produce a grand theory. But, as the great neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran has suggested, the most puzzling aspect of our existence is that we can ask questions about the physical and psychological nature of the brain and the mind. And we do this as if we can somehow step outside of the parameters of our own physiology and see into consciousness. Whatever the merits of this type of research, it cannot avoid the necessity of integration and the inter-related nature of our disciplines. The need for a common ground has never been greater. The question is, will our institutions be up to the challenge?

W/Here: Contesting Knowledge in the 21st Century

W/Here is a symposium organized by Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the European League of Institutes of Art. The conference will be taking place from December 7-9th, 2011. 

Programme

“W/Here: Contesting Knowledge in the 21st Century?” will include perspectives from artists, designers, musicians, educators, administrators and cultural workers who have deep commitments to the role of Higher Arts Education. Over the three days at both emily carr university and other cultural locations around Vancouver the Symposium will address the following themes:

Have We Ever Been Modern | The Institutions of the 21st Century

Dispersed Learning | The Students of the 21st Century 

DIY Open Source Culture and Learning Cultures | Leadership in the 21st Century

MOBILE WORKSHOPS A series of mobile workshops have been planned, with groups of 20 participants visiting a range of Vancouver’s cultural organisations, to experience how these themes manifest in the configurations of arts organisations today.

New Approaches to Applied Masters Degrees | Masters in Digital Media, Great Northern Way

First Nations Culture and the Digital Turn | Museum of Anthropology

A Creative Commons for the City | W2 Community Media Centre

Alternative Models of Creation | Progress Lab 1422

On The Topic of Culture (2)

(This the second part of a reedited presentation to the Arts Umbrella community from September 7, 2011. The first part can be found here.)

Digital cultures are hugely democratizing because they encourage many different forms of creative output, but this does not mean that the works being produced will find a significant place in our society. In fact, we now need more and more sophisticated curatorial strategies to even understand the range of what is being produced. So much is being created that we are inverting and dissolving conventional notions of high and low culture and this is leading to what I will describe as a series of micro-cultures. Micro cultures are both an exciting development and also full of pitfalls. They reflect the increasing fragmentation of cultural activity into interest groups often driven by very narrow concerns. At the same time, they represent a profound change in the conditions which drive the production of creative work.   

How is that the creation of cultural artifacts that are so essential to our sense of community and nation exist in such a fragile relationship with the population and government? If there is a consensus that the arts are important why do most cultural organizations struggle and in many instances rely on government funding and public philanthropy for their survival? The only conclusion that can be drawn from these contradictions is that cultural creativity is not that essential, which is why cultural organizations are always the first to feel the sting of government cutbacks. I will return to this point in a moment.

Third, the move to identify the arts in particular as functional parts of a cultural economy carries with it many dangers. One of the most serious is that we conflate the deeply felt desire on the part of a significant number of people in our communities to satisfy their yearning to create with the outcomes of that creativity. It is so important to understand that creativity does not necessarily mean that there will be identifiable and valuable outcomes to the process. The key word here is process. It is the same with learning. If all we are aiming for are outcomes, then we will end up with a linear process, one that is predetermined by what we anticipate from it. Part of the joy of creativity and learning how to be creative particularly in the arts is that we don’t know exactly where we will end up nor do we often know why we even began.

The joy here comes from the quest. And if the final object, process or event reflects our deepest sense of what we want to say and why, then that should be enough. As we know, in the present context, it is not.

We need to sharpen our understanding of this contradiction. In the 18^th century culture meant something very specific, usually related to crafts and to guilds. Although many of the arts were practiced in elite contexts and produced for the elite, the distinctions between creativity and everyday life were neither sharp nor seen as necessary. In other words, the boundaries between the arts and other activities were permeable.

Over the last fifty years or so that permeability has decreased to the point where creative practices are now classified as one of many professions. In fact, from a policy perspective the systems of classification that we have in place are very convenient. However, and quite ironically, if creators are engaged with their work, they are likely to make a mockery of the classifications largely because the voyage of creative engagement often has no clear purpose. This is in fact the opposite of what traditional professions are designed to accomplish which is why the most current word used to explain how people enter various professions is training. Purpose of course has many meanings as well as outcomes. The same issue haunts research. If it is too directed towards outcomes then there will be few surprises and innovation will be stifled.

Part Three is here   

On the Topic of Culture (1)

(This is a reedited version of a speech to the Arts Umbrella Community on September 7, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada)

It is always a challenge to talk about culture, but in particular to offer by way of discourse something new on a subject that is as old as civilization itself. This latter point came to mind when I was viewing Werner Herzog’s new film Cave of Forgotten Dreams which is shot in 3D and takes place in the Chauvet Caves in France. The images in the cave are at least 30,000 years old. They reflect an extraordinary desire to picture the world since they were created under very difficult circumstances, most likely with very little available light but by artists with exceptional talent. The images reflect a deep desire to connect aesthetics with form. They are all closely linked to each other inadvertently creating a narrative that may well have been repeated in many other caves and in many other more distant locations. This suggests that not only is the creation of art fundamental to the human psyche, but also that humans could not survive without it.

As Brian Boyd recently suggested: “A work of art acts like a playground for the mind, a swing or a slide or a merry-go-round of visual or aural or social pattern.” (On the Origin of Stories, 2009: 15)

The integration of play with creativity and curiosity seems transparently clear to those of us who have devoted our lives to the arts, but for reasons that I will discuss today, as much as we recognize the importance of art, we also devalue its role, contribution and voice. This could be one of the great golden ages for the arts. My hope is that it will be. But, there are storm clouds on the horizon that we all need to be watchful about.

Over the last fifteen years, the cultural sector along with the small number of institutions devoted to learning in and for the arts in Canada have been involved in a difficult and challenging debate.

On the one side, some argue that culture is essential to the fabric and nature of Canadian society and that culture defines not only who we are, but also how we live and in some instances how we should live. On the other side, are advocates for what I will describe as the economic argument for the arts using the term Cultural Industries as a catch all for culture’s contribution to the GDP and to the economic well being of our society.

I want to talk to you today about why both positions need revision and rethinking and why we have reached a crucial phase in the broad based discussions that our communities are having about culture and its importance.

First, we need to understand that there are many definitions of culture, so many in fact that the term itself has lost much of its power. This is not a minor issue because in its present usage culture encapsulates nearly everything we do, which means that we have no clear definition for it and no way of distilling what is special about creative engagement and the creative life. This has implications for the role and importance of artistic engagement, because we end up replacing the uniqueness of creativity with assembly line notions of production and consumption.   

Second, it is proving to be very difficult to sustain the argument that creative cultures are essential to our everyday lives. As our economic crisis deepens, various elements of our culture appear superfluous even as people seek out alternative venues to relax, learn and be entertained. Although not a given and very dependent on context, creative work is also meant to challenge, sometimes caustically.

What we are seeing today is a separation among various creative forms with some like interactive gaming appropriating the history of aesthetic expression for popular purposes while others in the fine arts continue to rely on an exclusive gallery system for validation. This separation has its own challenges, not the least of which is the decline of serious art criticism in our newspapers and the almost complete absence of art among mainstream broadcasters.     

At the same time, we are undergoing a massive conversion to digital technologies and it FEELS as if artists are leading the way. I say feels because if you take a close look at what is happening you will notice that cultural creators are still for the most part ensconced in the same fragile relationships that they have always had with the state, the business community and the population at large. Despite all of the discussion of DIY cultures and social media and despite the societal recognition that creativity is at the heart of what we do, the gap between artists and their communities has not changed all that much in the last fifty years.

Part Two can be found here……

I am learner (by John Connell)

I am learner.

Just as no one can see the colours I see, just as no one can hear the music I hear, just as no one can feel what I feel when I hold something in my hand, and just as no one can sense the world as I perceive it around me, no one can teach me. 

No one can teach me.

I am learner.

I am not taught. I learn. I am human and a social animal, so I learn with others. I do learn from others, but what I learn is rarely, if ever, what is taught to me, and rarely, if ever, what others learn at the same time from the same teachers. Often I learn entirely alone.

I am learner.

I perceive. I use my senses to know the world around me. I discern patterns. I shape my understanding through metaphor and analogy. I seek to create purpose in my life. Sometimes I conceive purpose where there is none; often I accept others’ conceptions of purpose in life, others’ conceptions of purpose in the universe. 

I am learner.

I build a universe in my mind and I live there, a universe that changes constantly as I learn. All people, including the people I love, live alongside me in this constantly shifting universe. I see only glimpses of the lives they lead, because, just as they are players in my world, I am a player in all the universes created by every other person alive. 

I am learner.

I connect. I connect with people and ideas in the physical and virtual worlds and discern no boundary between the two worlds. I learn in, across, through, with and from the networks in which I live, work, play and interact. I continually extend my own potential through my connections. I make connections between what I have already learned and what the world chooses to present to me through my own interactions with the world and through the interventions and actions of others.

I connect therefore I learn. 

I am learner.

I am able to recite facts, echo the opinions of others, assume the attitudes of so-called authorities when urged to do so, but I prefer to seek real knowledge of the changing world in which we live, genuine understanding of the realities of the human condition, authentic insight into our intrinsic dependence on one another. My need to know for myself is stronger than my need to recite from or imitate others.

I am learner.

I imagine. I reach beyond the reality of my senses and there I build my own dreams and visions; sometimes I welcome others’ wishful thinking and create my own place in their fantasies, accepting the values they place before me, filtering and refining them to fit my universe. Often, by accidents of time and place and birth, I am conditioned by those around me to accept their social, moral, religious and political values. In these circumstances, I still create my own truth but I struggle to do so freely, constrained by the strictures imposed on me by others. 

I am learner.

I listen to stories from others; I tell my own stories, to myself, to others; I participate in stories, mine and others’. I determine who I am through a prism of dramas, tales, myths, histories, lies, assumed truths, rituals, games and a complex and intricate narrative that I weave around the realities of my life. I live and learn from the drama of the now and I recall and learn from the narratives woven out of past dramas. 

I am learner.

I am not taught. 

I learn.

by John Connell - originally posted at http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2697