Re-imagining the Creative University for the 21st Century

Abstract

"The Creative University"1 was the theme for an international conference held by the Centre for Global Studies in Education, University of Waikato, New Zealand, 15-16 August, 2012. It focused around ideas associated with education and the creative economy, knowledge formation, global creation and the imagination, under the following description: Education and research have been transformed in the development of knowledge economies. The knowledge, learning and creative economies manifest the changing significance of intellectual capital and the thickening connections between on one hand economic growth, on the other hand knowledge, creativity (especially imagined new knowledge, discovery), the communication of knowledge, and the formation and spreading of creative skills in education. Increasingly economic and social activity is comprised by the 'symbolic' or 'weightless' economy with its iconic, immaterial and digital goods. This immaterial economy includes new international labour markets that demand analytic skills, global competencies and an understanding of markets in tradeable knowledges. Developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) not only define globalisation they are changing the format, density and nature of the exchange and flows of knowledge, research and scholarship. Delivery modes in education are being reshaped. Global cultures are spreading in the form of knowledge and research networks. Openness and networking, cross-border people movement, flows of capital, portal cities and littoral zones, and new and audacious systems with worldwide reach; all are changing the conditions of imagining and producing and the sharing of creative work in different spheres. The economic aspect of creativity refers to the production of new ideas, aesthetic forms, scholarship, original works of art and cultural products, as well as scientific inventions and technological innovations. It embraces open source communication as well as commercial intellectual property. All of this positions education at the center of the economy/ creativity nexus. But are education systems, institutions, assumptions and habits positioned and able so as to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges?.