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Writing is bad for my health but good for my wellbeing

28/4/2020

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This week we are tackling the question of how creativity relates to health and well-being and this morning I invited participants to share a story about something they do fairly regularly that gives them opportunities to express themselves creatively which impacts positively on their wellbeing which I take to mean a ‘dynamic state, in which the individual is able to develop their potential, work productively and creatively, build strong and positive relationships with others, and contribute to their community. It is enhanced when an individual is able to fulfil their personal and social goals and achieve a sense of purpose in society’.(1 p10) The ability to fulfil one’s individual and social potential, is therefore a defining feature of wellbeing.

As Ken Robinson is fond of saying ‘academics live in their head’ and writing is perhaps the way that most academic’s communicate to others what is in their head. Probably the only things I do on a regular basis i.e. most days, is write and create illustrations alongside my writing. If someone asks me what do you do? My first thought is, ‘I write a lot’. I write blog posts and content for websites, journal and magazine articles and books, in the past I have written a multitude of reports and working papers. I hate to think what proportion of my adult life has been spent writing. Perhaps, for people like me there is a need for a ‘writing app’ like the ‘footsteps app’. I have led the life of a writer in many different contexts for work and for pleasure. Writing and illustrating are ‘work’ in the sense of producing something for an audience and a purpose, and a hobby – in the sense of producing something for myself. In fact, all my writing starts off as writing for myself and then some of it is re-purposed for an audience and a context.

Writing is the means by which I am able to immerse my ‘self’ in my thoughts. It’s a process of growth whereby thoughts and feelings are represented in words and then words and phrases are written and rewritten over and over again until the point when I let them go. I cannot read anything I have written without making changes to it because there is always a better way of saying something. Ever since I started writing for audiences other than teachers (as a doctoral student) I have also turned ideas into pictures or diagrams. This is a form of self-expression driven by a desire to understand the relationships, interactions and processes between the ideas and the things I am trying to explain. I enjoy working with illustrators who are more talented than I am to turn ideas into graphical narratives. But I prefer to write by myself as this is the essence of my self-expression.

I can’t say that sitting at a laptop for many hours a day is healthy. In fact its positively bad for my posture and health as I stumble out of my chair and try to get my knees working again. Furthermore, the combination of writing and my wife’s delicious cooking has dire consequences for my shape. I do try and get outside to do something physical most days. But even then I may well be thinking about the stuff I am writing about.

Writing is a process in which I crystallise ideas and feelings from my cognitive/psychological world. It’s always wondrous to me, in the sense that I have no idea what will emerge on my screen until it has emerged. It feels creative even when there is a struggle to put words on a page. It is a sort of emergent synthesis in the sense that I connect up particular ideas, in particular orders with particular words to create sentences with meanings some of which feel original to me and may well be original to others or even to the whole of mankind for all I know. What I write may, and often does, start off not making much sense but by the time I have finished it more or less makes sense to me. Writing is a way of searching for and eventually discovering new meaning: it’s all about the creation of meaning and perhaps persuading others that these meanings have value.  And this is particularly the case in a body of work like a book or article. The creative value is in the collection of meanings that are brought together in a way that no-one has ever brought together before. Writing is not an act in isolation -thinking, reading, writing and illustrating are woven together in the experience of writing. It is the process of weaving things together that results in something new and unique, and this gives me pleasure, makes me feel fulfilled and sustains me (my ‘self’) as a scholar. Perhaps it is this idea of sustaining and developing an aspect of myself that I value that is at the heart of a key part of my wellbeing.

There is one more aspect of writing that I should acknowledge. I wrote a lot of journal articles and several books for publishers until I began to realise about 15 years ago that this meant that most people would not read them Since then most of what I have written is openly accessible through my own websites or hosted on platforms like academia.edu and ResearchGate. It was one of the reasons I started my own open access on-line magazines to bypass publishers intent on making money from writers.

I get little feedback from people who read what I have written but when I do it is generally positive and it makes me feel good. More importantly, I know I benefit hugely in my work from the literature I have read and it’s only because others have shared their ideas through their writing that I am even able to have my own ideas. So writing is the way I honour this tradition and add my own ideas to my culture. And I know that when I read and I’m enthused by the writings of people long gone like - John Dewey, Eduard Lindeman, Carl Rogers to name a few I know their ideas live on in me. And I know that in some small way my own writing may spark the imaginations of others and this thought provides me with a vague sense of immortality which is also good for my soul.

I wrote this post without looking up a definition of what wellbeing meant and I added the definition after I had written it. I think my story captures well the idea that through my writing I am able to develop my potential and work productively and creatively on work that I find meaningful. Teressa Amabile makes the point that to be positive about doing something we have to find what we are doing meaningful. Writing is generally a solitarty activity so I am not directly building strong and positive relationships with others. I am however building strong relationships with the ideas and materials I am working with and perhaps indirectly I am connecting to the readers of my work. Also in the #creativeHE forum I am through my writing contributing to my community and I believe I am contributing to my cuture - the discipline and the field. I believe through my writing I am fulfilling my individual and social potential

​And just to let you know, writing this little piece has given me pleasure  and helped me understand myself a little more.

Source
1). The Government Office for Science. (2008). Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project: Final project report. (Foresight). London: The Government Office for Science

POSTSCRIPT 01/05/20

Slowly, over the discussion this week I have realised that my sense of wellbeing is as subjective as my concept of creativity. My wellbeing is linked to my health – whether I am free from illness and pain, and my level of fitness and physical capability, my identities – who I think I am embedded in the life I lead (my circumstances), what I value in my life – the people I love, the people who love me, my home, family and friends and the network of people who I interact with in my work, and my way of life - the things I love doing and the sense of achievement and fulfilment I gain from involving myself in these things, like being with my family, my work and hobbies, working in my garden, travelling and seeing new places, having new experiences and sharing the things I have produced with others.
 
After reading about psychological wellbeing I learn my wellbeing has two components. Firstly, the “hedonic” or happiness, dimension of subjective well-being (SWB, 1) consisting of a cognitive component that evaluates how satisfied I am with every aspect of my life and an affective component characterized by the prevalence of positive emotions rather than negative emotions as I experience my life. The second element is my psychological wellbeing (2), the “eudaimonic” component, relates to the search for and creation of meaning in my life, as I seek and find purposes and try to realise these purposes and become a better version of myself (3).
 
At any time the way I feel about myself, my circumstance and my life (past, present and imaginings of the future) changes as stuff happens. Mostly, it has been positive and has enabled me to grow and become a different person but there have certainly been times in my life when my life have been transformed. I have been fortunate in being able to absorb the ups and downs but sometimes what happens impacts profoundly on one, several or all aspects of the above to the point where I will never be or feel the same again. For example, the loss of my first wife over 20 years ago, or the serious illness of one of my children seven years ago, or making a radical career change 30 years ago.

​For the first time I am beginning to appreciate that my creativity must play into my complex mix of subjective and psychological wellbeing. Quite how, when and why it does are questions to be pondered. But the subject of this post, my writing as a medium for my creativity, is probably embedded in the eudaimonic aspects of my psychological wellbeing linked to my identity as a scholar.
 
Sources
1 Kahneman, D., Diener, E., and Schwarz, N. (eds). (1999). Well-Being: The Foundations of hedonic psychology. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
2 Ryff, C.D., Singer, B.H. and Love, G.D. (2004) Positive health: connecting wellbeing with biology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 359, 1383-1394.
3 Ryan RM, Deci EL. On happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. A Rev Psychol. 2001;52:141–166. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141.
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New perspectives on creativity in education

25/4/2020

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This week we have been discussing the educational domain as an environment for the development and use of creativity. Facilitating the discussion forced me to think of key questions I might pose and knowing that our community contained representatives from all levels of educational systems and representatives from different national education systems I tried to be inclusive in the way I formed the topic for discussion. Out of it (building on the earlier conversations see previous post) has come the dawning of new ways of thinking about creativity in the educational environment drawing on Carly Lassig’s threefold categorisation of creativity developed through her doctoral research and grounded theory of adolescents creativity (1) namely:
 
1 Creative Personal Expression - expressing aspects of self – personality, emotions and ideas in novel ways            
2 Creative Task Achievement - using creativity to achieve a particular task or external demand    
3 Creative Boundary Pushing - extending typical and expected knowledge in order to pursue new understandings and outcomes.
 
This way of viewing creativity has triggered new insights for me. While acknowledging the wisdom in ‘you can’t make blanket claims about education’… I am going to argue that Carly’s threefold categorisation of creativity offers a crude first order mapping of learner practices and creative responses within our education system.
 
I blame my need for pictures to explain ideas on my being a geologist but perhaps I was attracted to geology in the first place because narrative pictures are an important feature of communication in the discipline. So I created a picture from Carly's categorisations.

If it was be possible to map particular contexts, practices and outcomes accurately we might anticipate that most situations in education where creativity is manifest, would plot within the conceptual space near the base of the triangle with creative self-expression tending to characterise early years and primary level  of the education system and the arts and perhaps humanities disciplines at secondary and tertiary level.
 
At secondary and tertiary levels of our education systems creative effort is more likely to be focused on problem solving in disciplinary contexts perhaps with some opportunity for creative self-expression. Creative effort in research-based post-graduate education and perhaps research-based project work at undergraduate level is directed towards task accomplishment and extending the boundaries of knowledge fields. Again, both of these contexts may well be accompanied by some opportunities for creative self-expression.


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​So is Ken Robinson, in his much watched TED Talk (2) ‘Do schools kill creativity?’, wrong in the assertions he makes? Is it not the case that he is seeing creativity through only one of the three lenses that Carly identifies? When we view our education systems as whole systems, are they trying to encourage creativity and apply creative effort in the three different ways that Carly Lassig reveals.
 
In doing some background research for this post I discovered an interesting TEDx talk by Tim Leunig “Why real creativity is based on knowledge”(3). It offers a different and I believe a more considered and accurate representation of creativity in schools to that offered by Ken Robinson. This passage in an RSA blog post (4) captures the proposition.
 
“What is striking about the two talks is how different are the definitions of creativity on which they are based. To Robinson, creativity is about imagination, self-expression and divergent thinking. In contrast, Leunig’s examples of creativity show how, through the use of logic and the application of scientific principles, existing knowledge can be marshalled to create innovative new solutions to longstanding problems. To Robinson, creativity is natural – something you’re born with. Whereas for Leunig, it is highly dependent on the prior acquisition of biologically secondary knowledge – something you need to be taught. For Robinson, creativity is an alternative to literacy, and is often displayed by those who struggle academically; people who display what Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner would describes as an alternative or non-cognitive form of intelligence. For Leunig, creativity is a cognitive competence that gains form and substance within particular knowledge domains – domains to which the illiterate cannot gain access.”
 

Looking at the systems level of education (not the experiences of individual learners), it is my belief that, although we might criticise our systems of education for placing too much emphasis on focusing creative effort on externally motivated tasks and assessment exercises at the expense of creative self-expression, this is not surprising given that this type of creativity serves the knowledge economy rather than health and wellbeing of individuals. I now see more clearly that the creative effort within our educational systems is biased towards preparing people for disciplined ways of working in the Pro-c(5) domain of creativity. This is why, I argued with Carly Lassig in a recent Creative Academic Magazine article(6), we need to recognise an ed-c domain for creativity.


What works at a systems level for a society that creates this type of system does not necessarily 'work' for individuals in particular learning contexts. The system is organised for populations and societies not for individual needs, interests, aptitudes, talents and so on. At this implementation level it is down to the interests, skills and expertise and motivations of the key agents in the system - the teachers and their assistants and their parental allies, in encouraging and coaching individuals to discover for themselves their own creative spirit. It is at this level that people feel that the ‘system’ is not working for them. It is at this level that people feel the creative spirit that drives them to express themselves in particular ways is quashed and the potential as an imaginative creative being is inhibited. And this goes to the heart of the problem of creativity in education - how is creative effort at the level of individuals and small groups actually inspired, encouraged, supported, facilitated within this blended system of creative effort? It seems to me that this is the level where pedagogy really matters. Where teachers who care about the creative development of their students must develop a repertoire of skills and practices to encourage creative self-expression alongside the more discipline-based and assessment-driven problem solving which may demand qualities of detachment, objectivity, evaluation, critique, assessment and judgement that are likely to inhibit or destroy self-expression.
 
The words of Tim Ingold, who was commenting on a paper I had asked him to review, ring in my ears. "First, it seems to me that the paper touches on a key area in which the actual practice of science (here, geological mapping) flies in the face of ‘official’ scientific protocols, and comes much closer to the work of art (and indeed of anthropology). For in it, imagination and experience are creatively fused rather than held apart, as official science requires; moreover that fusion is deeply embedded in the personal sensibility of practitioners, in their hands and minds, in their perceptual acuity and ways of working. Geologists literally become one with their rocks! And that is quite contrary to the principle of scientific objectivity which requires that scientists remain personally immune to what they study, an immunity conferred by ‘methodology’. I have written about this in my Anthropology and/as Education book (specifically, pp. 70-1)."

I take these words to mean that somehow we have, through our education systems, to bring together the science of problem solving in which creativity plays a part, and the art of creative self-expression. People as they interact with their problems and the things they care about in their particular environments are the agents for blending these different dimensions of creativity together to create new meanings, new things and solutions. It is this blending of creative thought and effort that makes people and not machines. This should be the goal of the ed-c domain of creativity to lay the foundations for creativity in domains where experience, knowledge and expertise are grown not through books and lectures but through a world of enactment in a world in formation.
 
Sources
1 Lassig, C. J. (2012) Perceiving and pursuing novelty : a grounded theory of adolescent creativity. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. Available at: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/50661/
2 Ken Robinson Do Schools Kill Creativity TED talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&t=28s
3Tim Leunig “Why real creativity is based on knowledge https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=93&v=vajIsWwHEMc&feature=emb_logo
4Julian Astle Do Skills Really “Kill Creativity”?  RSA Blog Post 25th April 2018
https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2018/04/do-schools-kill-creativity
5 Kaufman, J and Beghetto R (2009) Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity Review of General Psychology Vol. 13, No. 1, 1–12 1
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228345133_Beyond_Big_and_Little_The_Four_C_Model_of_Creativity
6 Jackson N.J. & Lassig, C. (2020) Exploring and Extending the 4C Model of Creativity: Recognising the value of an ed-c contextual- cultural domain Creative Academic Magazine #15 Available at:
https://www.creativeacademic.uk/magazine.html
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Evaluating our own acts of creative self expression

15/4/2020

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For the past two weeks I have been facilitating a discussion about creative self-expression on the #creativeHE facebook forum. As always I have found the sharing of perspectives to be really valuable in developing a better understanding of the core theme.

We are now in week three and I have inviteed participants to share a story of when they have engaged in an act of creative self-expression and to provide a commentary on how their creativity featured. I decided to use the story of the rock towers I made on my recent trip to Scotland (see my last post). I developed a new tool to help me describe and evaluate the role of creativity and used it to evaluate my story.



holiday_in_scotland.pdf
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WORD VERSION OF THE SELF-EVALUATION TOOL version 16/4/20
template_self_evaluation_of_creative_self-expression.docx
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ADDENDUM evaluating the idea of creative self-expression using the 4C contexts and norms framework
addendum.pdf
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     Creative Academic 
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    I am thankful for all the opportunities I  have to use my creativity and experience the creativity of others

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