Discussions generated through drawing.
On sharing essential elements of creative practice:
The preliminary activity was to draw a symbol, a metaphor for an individual’s creative practice - to make creative processes visible, to tend to them, in order to become better at this process [making practice more explicit and develop as a creative practitioner]. Several practitioners approaching the exercise did think about role of teachers alongside their creative practice.
· Whenever I teach students it changes the way I think about my subject - so it’s an interaction which changes my practice - my drawing [within the workshop] changed in relation to other people’s drawings - others work influenced mine.
· Part of my practice is about being a human being - first place for creativity is in ‘life’ - agency - [engagement with others work in the workshop] symbolising own creative practice.
· I found myself doing what I do with students work - looking at other people’s stuff and thinking what is the sub-text - wanting to add something - students aren’t aware or interested. The drawing experience [in the workshop] is similar to teaching experience rather than just the creative process. I feel my creative process is something internal that you want to let out - and not sure initially how to give from to that.
· I create and produce but not am not so good at vocalising or articulating it - ‘I’ll tell you about it later but just have to do it now’ - so the metaphor of drawing it like the way I practice - letting it come from within, producing - but articulating it years later.
· I was trying to mimic how I normally work - thinking, visualising, an emotional spiral from what can’t be seen to physical outcome - anxiety over notion of being seen doing something which is normally private - notion of hypocrisy, makes me think of teaching practice too, as I am always asking students to ‘just draw it’ and the pressure it puts on them, which I can now sympathise with - but is there is a way of working with the drawing process - is there a visual way of working, which relieve the first pressure?
· A lot of practice is pre-verbal, about feelings that you are normally asked to articulate - very internal - confusion, not direct - creative practice is not one solid block, lots of different things evolving - lots of wavy things - so you are not solidly sure about your position because you are always learning, moving and hopefully this is the some position in education. But, in education you have this objective view because it is time limited and you are able to tell someone ‘this is what you should do’ and yet when you are in your own private practice, isolated; it’s a mass of confusion. I don’t know how you create out of that confusion.
The concentric circles as a symbol for creative practice:
· The practitioner [bottom circle] starts of notionally as the expert, but as they interact the role suddenly changes and their significance reduces and the significance of students and their work increases. But, as a practitioner you are not perfectly balanced, it is not a concentric process- there is interference and the process is reflexive. There will be other practitioners and learners doing the same things at the different times, which ought to be over a broad area but often doesn’t join up.
· Creative practice is internal [central circle], which emanates out of making contact with other people.
· [Circle] as symbol for society and as a practitioner sometimes I feel I am part of society and at other time looking in it - it’s a duality thing - like the teaching relationship with students - sometimes there is a relationship, sometimes there isn’t.
Visible Thinking: How creative practice informs and enhance teaching.
Key themes emerged from the group discussing how the processes of their creative practice were mirrored in how they experienced working with others within the drawing activities; making connections, communication, appropriation, visual quoting; exploration, uncertainty and anxiety; responding to the context and the ‘blank space’ as creative individuals, in their own way. Some practitioners worked from a rational, literal response, which widened more conceptually, others found it more difficult to describe their processes as they worked more instinctively within the space. Drawing was described as a spring-board to a discussion, mark making and the visual becoming a larger thing to help us think.
Further details of the creative processes of the individual practitioners are reflected in the Pause Gallery drawings, and the texts below where participants talk about their drawings.
Context, freedom and structure:
Broader discussions related to creativity within a context or structure, and the responsibility for facilitating it in others, through creating a framework and making some processes more transparent. In exploring their creative processes, practitioners are less clear on how these are evident, or inform their teaching in the different context, despite a clarity about the responsibility to facilitate creativity. This reveals ambivalence about the role of teacher-practitioner and potentially a desire to be more ‘practitioner evident’ to students.
· Link between freedom and structure - want to perform and produce [within the workshop] and sometimes not sure what, feeling uncertain, being in a continuous process, but this is a positive thing, rather than being at a finite point.
· Thought processes, analytical versus intuitive processes - structure, but creativity comes out where you don’t have control - nothingness as a starting point is a good thing [the open brief or creating an open framework].
· The way I do my creative practice is not the way I teach others to do it.
· We all see ourselves as practitioners first rather than teachers, and students see us a teachers. How do we foreground our practice so students can perceive this more strongly? In teaching we have to take account the structures rather than just our creativity.
· Creativity and new possibilities are at the core of our practice and education but we found that in truth they are pushed aside by industry demands, curriculum demands.. and pressure of time.
· The box is a metaphor for working within parameters - either your own, institutional or whatever - lines represent fluidity - ‘Nine hairs’ - [body spilt in proportions]. I started thinking practically initially then tried to get out of that.
· Constraint (structures, policies, process and learning and teaching).
Release (lid open - organic)
Freedom (open box - but left with a framework
Creativity (cloud)
Droplets
River (life long learning)
· Intuitive versus structure. Freedom versus control.
· Practice can be a point of freedom and it can be difficult to find a space for radical creativity within the institution - this is how we feel but really there isn’t anything that is going to stop us - so how does one negotiate our own ‘radical creativity’ within the institution?
Locations.
· Always a start in singularity. Explosion.Do it.
· Outside-in-creativity. Anarchic. Ask the audience.
· The open potentiality of space - the demands of industry - the creative individual is the common idea but ideas don’t necessarily come from the institution they come from ‘out there’ - creative responses are produced by students without any help, or realising they are even doing this, so the creative practice is no longer always ‘within’ the institution - the challenge as creative practitioners within an institution is how to make the relationship work and enhance teaching when the creative kernel may be out there. [the series that this commentary refers to is not visually represented here as it was difficult to photograph well].
Connections. Stories.
· ‘Modalities’ is based loosely on the idea of dot pictures. As a child we join the dots, the results a prescribed picture. Of course as an adult, living itself becomes an act of interpretation, a process of making meaning. Each ‘dot’ or node represents a memory, a story, an experience for our collective and individual biographies. How close to - these become a map of our experience. And of course maps don’t just describe what ‘is - they become a way of navigation, new places and the future. For me that is what creative practice is about - whichever modality of form of experience is engaged with. 
· My practice as a teacher is about facilitating others to get in touch with their own stories and form relationships through communication with others, irrespective of the modality that they are working in, always need for the creative act - the interpretation.
· William Blake. Universe full of stars. Main sun representing font and triangle of knowledge glowing in the dark?
· Outside in from inside out.
Processes.
· Distilling multiple influences - none conscious, none not; observations; research; knowledge… to create an end artefact, an interpretation with a resonance of the various influences. Trying to avoid the obvious.
· Non discipline specific design thinking:
· Tangential thinking
Synthesing
Strategic thinking
Creative thinking
Challenging established norms
Contributing to wider cultural discussions.
· Physical exploration of practice, rather than intellectual process. Borrowing and taking cues from others ‘visual quoting’, re-interpreting and re-visiting others work to advance own practice. Extending boundaries/blurring boundaries, taking cues from the work of others to inform and develop my own when I’m unable to define clearly where my practice (or lack of) is leading me. Warming up is important - reinterpreting the work of others through my choice of medium. Physical boundaries - physical reach, going beyond limits allowing physical action to determine composition. Spilling over into other’s work.