Towards the creative university: Five forms of creativity and beyond

Abstract

The Creative University is susceptible to multiple interpretations which are moving in a fluid conceptual space. This conceptual openness can be adequately understood only as a set of discursive formations that reflect underlying societal changes. It is becoming a commonplace to suggest that creativity should no longer be seen as a matter of heroic individuals at work, for creativity is always a networked matter, but that reflection has to be widened to encompass a sense of underlying shifting societal forces, with the economy central stage and hence the emergence of the hybrid idea of the creative economy. Qua institution, the creative university sits uneasily between discourses of economicism and societal flourishing. The creative university, accordingly, has to be seen in this milieu, which is steering the university but which also is affording it new possibilities for creativity. Five levels of creativity are identified that serve as domains in which these forces and affordances coexist. One such level, university reflexive creativity, is singled out as the most significant of the five. The creative university, it follows, unfolds as sets of interactions between individuals, institutional structures and corporate agency. Even as the constraints multiply, so too ever-wider possibilities for the creative university may be opening.