Creativity

1. G325: Section A: Theoretical Perspectives in Media Question 1a) Creativity What skills did we develop?

2. What is creativity? • A work in progress – skills development and future projects? • A sense of future direction for other projects? • Sense of stylish and artistic development? • Challenging conventions or replicating / furthering knowledge of them? • Creativity is something unambiguously positive/ desirable • “The making of the new and the rearranging of the old” (Bentley, 1997).

3. Creativity involves thinking or behaving imaginatively. • The imaginative activity is purposeful – set against a meaningful objective. • The processes must generate something original • Relate this to your own coursework? • The creation of bringing something new into existence – “this particular understanding of creativity involves the physical making of something, leading to some form of communication, expression or revelation”. (David Gauntlett) • Could talk about media language- mediation: how you communicated a preferred meaning?

4. Creativity and Your Coursework Creativity is often prescribed within social boundaries – is it instrumental? Is it controversial? Who is judging the creativity? Is there an agenda? What is the ideology embedded within this creativity? In Media Studies your coursework is often influenced by your social/cultural/environmental/biographical background and ideas – so how have you tried to expand the boundaries of the social norm?

5. For your coursework you could look at your work’s: • Composition and Framing (and all other micro elements) • Abstract natures of communications and representations and identities • Narrative • Language and Rhetoric • Layout You must also take into account the technology you have used and how this has afforded you the opportunities of being ‘creative’ in some of the above areas: “If creativity is not inherent in human mental powers and is, in fact, social and situational, then technological developments may well be linked to advances in the creativity of individual users” (Banaji, Burn and Buckingham, 2006).

6. There is no absolute judgement. All judgements are comparisons of one thing with another (Donald Laming). In terms of your work is it a ‘knowledge object’ or an ‘art object’ – what is its purpose and how have you communicated this?

7. Please think of these questions as part of your 750 write up. • Do you think you were creative (in terms of discussion on ppt) or not throughout your coursework? • Did the technology enhance your creativity or not? • What ideas did you communicate and what stylistic techniques did you use? How did it relate to your interests/vision of identity? • Was your product influenced by your social environmental? • Was this original or did you add something extra to an original media text? • Would you take any creative skills into future projects or have you been influenced to engage these skills in any other projects?