W6: Creativity - Definitions and Histories

This week's lecture was on the Creative sector (the fastest growing sector of the UK economy in the last 10 - 15 years) and the work that we'll all hopefully be going into.

We started by considering Creative Practitioners and what they exactly are. We began with individuals that express and create, that try to do something original. But what about people that come up with a concept, but don't actually make it? Who is the 'Creative' then? Aren't chefs, computer scientists, etc. creatives as well? It seemed like there are many different interpretations which were sometimes incompatible.

The definition of creativity has changed historically though, meaning different things at different times:

• The modern form originated 200 years ago from Neville Brody.
• 18th Century - arts seen as a separate activity - galleries, idea of aesthetics.
• Romanticism - originality, progress, artists as genius. An individual with insight and imagination.
• Modernism (late 19th and early 20th Century) - looking forward, experimental, radical, separate to entertainment - technological advances. e.g. Helvetica font. Gerald McBoing-Boing - 1950s parred sown aesthetics because of TV. Jan Tschichold - typographer, Penguin classic book cover.
• Post-modernism (mid/late 20th Century) - mixing of 'high' and 'low' cultural forms, borrowing from earlier styles, celebrations of retro design, value of inauthentic, intertextuality (referencing different forms).

The Creative Industry is defined as something new, that combines the idea of creative arts with an interest in commerce and the marketplace.

However the Culture Industry is different to the Creative Industry. It's defined by an essay of the same name written by a group of German Intellectuals (Adorno and Horkheimer theory) associated with the the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in the 1930's/40's and is a critique of standardised pop culture forms, e.g. Hollywood movies, magazines, music. It's against media as propaganda and mass ideological persuasion. It's main critique is that culture becomes Homogeneous (standardised, uniform, predictable) and this encourages conformity where as we should critique everyday life. They considered culture and industry to be opposite and that meaning comes from the moment of creation.

Yet Walter Benjamin, a colleague, disagreed with this. He argues that the fusing of culture and the commercial was good as it opens it up to a wider range of people. It democratises an image by destroying its aim. From art being reproduced in new places, meanings emerge at the moment of consumption.

We're Active Consumers - unpredictable, interactive, critical, collaborators in production of culture (social media, online gamers, flash mobs), not docile.

This challenges Adorno and Horkheimer's theory who saw consumers as passive and producers as standardising ideological values.

Now consumers are seen as having an Idea of knowingness, a resistance to capitalist values and the need to employ culture jamming/ adbusters (subverting the original message of a product). We're understood as discerning, discriminating and hard to persuade. Consumption needs to be understood as an action.

Now the Creative Industries have moved beyond the elite vs mass and arts vs entertainment. It's a combination of creative arts and cultural industries, perhaps due to/ working with the rise in consumer industries and the decline of manufacturing industries. The Creative Industries are now able to impact on connectivity, rejuvenate cities, and create new media and (inter)active consumers.

In conclusion, the definition and understanding of creativity has changed over time. While the importance of the earlier idea of 'Culture Industry' is necessary to consider, there have been challenges to this idea. In particular from the emergence of 'Creative Industries' and the relationship between creativity and commerce being contested.