I clearly recall my time leading teacher professional development. Teacher practice was hard to shift. But it was very rarely a result of an 'I can't be bothered' attitude. It was much more likely that the thought process was 'Yes I see what you are saying, and why this would be a good idea, but.. what would it look like in my daily practice?'. And once you were able to show that, the almost universal response was 'aha, I get it, righto then...let's crack on with it'.
I think this 'fostering creativity' and this 'learning city' thing are similar. What could it look like? I use the word 'could' because I reckon that there isn't ONE formula, there isn't ONE way, to do this. What's more, I think that any city or organisation needs a multitude of approaches and responses. After all, that's creativity isn't it? I wanted to try to capture a little of what it already looks like in Ōtautahi Christchurch right now.
The Greater Christchurch Schools' Network (GCSN) works with schools and the city's libraries to bring creative opportunities to school aged children. These are typically digitally focussed (because that is the 'raison d'etre' of GCSN). Here is a sampling of the activities on offer in 2024.
Then there's 'kidsFest', an annual festival of activities for children that has run in Ōtautahi since the 1990's
There's the work of Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch and its annual 'learning days' celebration. This celebration aims to showcase learning, and the value of learning, to connect more and more of those who work in that area in the city, beyond the more usual compulsory school sector.
The 'climate change' campus, set up on the original site of Avonside Girls' High School in the east of the city, attempts to connect young people with the issues around climate change, and what they can do to mitigate the existential dangers of the current climate crisis.
Cities typically also have their own performance based cultural institutions. In Ōtautahi Christchurch, our very own Court Theatre is something of an icon.
There are a number of other 'players' in the market place. There's the 'Egg Academy', the brainchild of Kane Stewart:
The 'Word' festival in Ōtautahi, certainly not unique to the city, and not a 'small player':
The Canterbury Poets' Collective:
And let's not forget that there are also many not for profit clubs and societies that offer creative growth opportunities.
For example dance clubs:
https://www.christchurchrocknroll.org.nz/
... and craft clubs:
The Christchurch City Council information web page on craft groups etc
My concern about many of these is whether or not they serve the 'democratisation' of learning. Do they succeed in serving those most vulnerable in our community? I recall the story of a young man with whom I worked in a school.. he was a seriously good rapper. He left school, and (I think) went the way of the gangs. As a society we lost the benefit of his amazing creativity, and may in the future face the social and economic costs of a human being who crosses the law. I hope not.
Then there is what is happening in the schooling sector itself. I'm yet to be convinced that schools in general give creativity the emphasis it demands or deserves, but certainly within schools in the Manaiakalani network creativity is a central part of their underlying pedagogy. There are two school clusters in Ōtautahi that are part of the network (although not all schools in each Kāhui Ako participate): Uru Mānuka in the west, and Te Pai Tūhura in the northeast.
This summarises their underlying pedagogy.
One kura in the Uru Mānuka kāhui ako tries to place creativity at the centre of what it does.
This gives you a glimpse into what this could look like, it is all fabulous stuff. I'm not sure that it is not enough though. More effort, more thought, more resource, needs to be applied to the challenge of creating creative communities, communities in which there is a clear 'creative vibe', or perhaps just as importantly there is a clear and visceral 'learning vibe', communities in which creativity and learning are 'just the way we are'.
In this series of posts my aim is to argue for deliberate and intentional actions that support creativity in cities and towns, in schools, everywhere. I am arguing for public art, for public education, for public library services .. the list could go on.
I can already hear the libertarians arguing that this is all a waste of money, that public art and public education means we have to tax people and so we take away their freedom of choice (in terms of how they might choose to spend the money that they lose in taxes). In doing so they show that they either cannot or will not understand some fundamental aspects of their own free market models. They completely miss the mark in understanding anything at all about public and merit goods in a market economy.
Public goods are defined as follows:
"A public good has two characteristics:
Non-rivalry: This means that when a good is consumed, it doesn’t reduce the amount available for others. e.g. benefiting from a street light doesn’t reduce the light available for others but eating an apple would.
Non-excludability: This occurs when it is not possible to provide a good without it being possible for others to enjoy. For example, if you erect a dam to stop flooding – you protect everyone in the area (whether they contributed to flooding defences or not.
A public good is often (though not always) under-provided in a free market because its characteristics of non-rivalry and non-excludability mean there is an incentive not to pay. In a free market, firms may not provide the good as they have difficulty charging people for their use."
While the street light example is perhaps the economics teacher's classic example of a public good, public art is also a public good under the economic definition. The fact that I look at a piece of public art doesn't in any way diminish anyone else's experience in looking at it (provided I don't get in the way). It isn't 'used up' when I gain its benefit, it isn't 'used up' by my own act of consumption, so it is non-depletable, and non-rival. It is also difficult or impossible for a private provider to charge for its use because by definition these works are in public spaces.
Merit goods are defined as follows:
"A merit good has two characteristics:
People do not realise the true personal benefit. For example, people underestimate the benefit of education or getting a vaccination.
Usually, these goods also have a positive externality.
Therefore in a free market, there will be under consumption of merit goods."
The spill over benefits of increased education will not typically be recognised by those consuming it, and so it will be under consumed. Increased levels of education are for example related to greater worker productivity, and decreased crime. There does seem to be a causal link rather than a simple correlation with regard to crime. Yet these benefits are often not directly available to the consumer of that education, and so are not factored into decisions about the quantity of education that an individual will consume.
Put simply, to use the jargon of the free market, these are examples of market failure. i.e. the market fails to provide the quantities of these goods that are optimal for society. This is exactly WHY it falls to governments (central and local) to provide these goods. The argument most often is not about whether or not to provide these goods, but rather about how much of these goods to provide. I suspect that many libertarians might argue for none at all.
I won't go into the graphical analysis of externalities of consumption as they relate to this issue. Feel free to dig deeper yourself.
Way way back .. in the day .. I completed an undergraduate degree in economics. I'd always planned to be a teacher (since aged 7 years, would you believe), but did briefly entertain the idea of being a professional economist. I was never good enough .. whew.. dodged a bullet!! However that body of knowledge to some degree persists in my head (the cynical might say it is seared into my brain and left me permanently scarred), so I hope you'll forgive this wee foray into some speculation around creativity and economics.
The issue of the moment seems to be the efficacy of the education system, and talk about creativity might well be easily dismissed as 'woke', as 'soft', as missing the point about the need for the 'three Rs', to which many educators will no doubt be letting out long sighs and gasps.
I'd have to say that the literature generally seems to be very supportive of the efficacy of creativity as a vehicle, as an impactful approach, to education, and something that benefits society in many ways. So this has me thinking about how we foster greater creativity. This lead to some simple (some would say simplistic) concepts from economics. Why economics? I wonder if the only way to get real change is via the traditional 'market signals' of prices. Do we need to flick the switch of 'self interest' that lies at the heart of neo-liberal economics in order to get the 'buy in', the support that this all needs?
Just a cautionary note: I am not arguing that what you will read below is correct. It is intended as something of a 'provocation'. It is less important to be right, than it is to be engaged, at the moment.
I was struck by a connection with what economists call the 'elasticity of supply'. Alfred Marshall wrote of the concept of time periods in economics. These are not defined by our usual measures of time, but rather by the variability of the factors of production, or inputs, that firms use. Marshall describes the momentary, short run, and long run time periods. Here is a typical undergraduate summary. The economy's resources or factors of production are typically classified as land (all natural resources), labour (all human inputs), capital (all man-made goods used to make other goods), and entrepreneurship (the willingness to take risks, and to organise production). I have found varying definitions for Marshall's time periods, but the most universal seem to be these:
The momentary time period is that in which no factors of production can be changed.
The short run is that time period when some factors can be changed, but some cannot.
The long run is that time period in which all factors can be varied.
The supply curves look like this:
In the momentary time period, no changes in price will induce changes in the quantity supplied from producers. They simply cannot vary any inputs, therefore they cannot vary outputs.
In the short run increases in price will induce some increases in output, because some factors of production (natural, human, and entrepreneurship, in particular) can be varied. However the producers don't have enough time to vary capital inputs (machinery and buildings are the big ones here).
In the long run an increase in prices will induce larger increases in quantity supplied, because producers have enough time to build new buildings, buy new machinery, invent new processes etc i.e.. they are able to vary ALL of the inputs into production
I have been thinking about a relationship between prices and creativity. I wondered if there might be a similar general relationship between prices and creativity in the economy. I am NOT saying that producers BUY creativity.
The model I am suggesting assumes that we might have some way of measuring creativity in order to quantify it along an axis. Attempts have been made, but rather than talking about creativity they typically talk about innovation. In an article titled "What’s the Real Difference between Creativity and Innovation?" by Sarah Stone, published on June 16, 2022
"Creativity involves generating original and unique ideas, while innovation is about implementing those ideas to create value. Understanding these distinctions is essential for organizations and individuals looking to remain competitive in their respective fields. "
However if you'll forgive me the looseness here, I am trying to suggest a concept rather than a strictly econometric relationship.
In that momentary time period, there is no time to be 'additionally creative in an economic sense.
In the short run, as prices vary, it is possible to vary to some degree the amount of creativity and innovation, and their consequential impact on production. However because producers have 'staked their claim', 'drawn their line in the sand', with their specific capital investment, they will be unwilling to make many changes their current investments. They will see current plant and processes as 'sunk costs' from which they need to garner a return. Therefore they will be relatively unwilling to invest in new processes, unless in some way they see themselves at risk of being whisked away by the pace of change. The current AI revolution may be a case in point.
In the long run, all bets are off, and creativity and innovation could rule.
So I wonder if the 'chunky' nature of capital inhibits creativity. Once producers are locked into a specific set of capital investment decisions, do they then effectively turn their back on new creative solutions as they seek to recover the 'sunk costs' of their capital investment?
This approach looks at individual markets, but what about the economy as a whole?
So, as prices rise in an economy, do they in fact induce more creativity, innovation if you prefer, from producers? It is of course possible that as prices rise, producers are getting adequate reward from their existing processes and capital investment, and so in fact their incentive to innovate and be creative diminishes.
I adapted an old Keynesian model to the following:
In the longer run as prices rise, they induce increased creativity, which in turn increases GDP and incomes.
Interestingly, the relationship could actually be the opposite. In a paper titled 'Does innovation promote economic growth? Evidence from European countries', Rana P. Maradana, Rudra P. Pradhan*, Saurav Dash, Kunal Gaurav, Manju Jayakumar and Debaleena Chatterjee, 2017, the authors establish that while it seems reasonable that increased innovation leads to economic growth, the relationship can also move in the opposite direction. Increased economic growth can lead to increased innovation. Quoting from the paper Abstract:
"The paper examines the long-run relationship between innovation and per capita economic growth in the 19 European countries over the period 1989–2014. This study uses six different indicators of innovation: patents-residents, patents-non- residents, research and development expenditure, researchers in research and development activities, high-technology exports, and scientific and technical journal articles to examine this long-run relationship with per capita economic growth. Using cointegration technique, the study finds evidence of long-run relationship between innovation and per capita economic growth in most of the cases, typically with reference to the use of a particular innovation indicator. Using Granger causality test, the study finds the presence of both unidirectional and bidirectional causality between innovation and per capita economic growth." (my emphasis)
So IF innovation and creativity tend to go hand in hand (that might be quite a leap), then we might be able to expect growing economies to generate more creativity across communities.
And how does this connect with the concept of the learning city? There seems to be a cyclic relationship between growth and creativity/innovation. Creativity leads to innovation which leads to economic growth which leads creativity which leads innovation which leads to ... ... etc
And I've already written about how creativity and learning seem to be inextricably linked. Is learning the kick starter to creativity? Is creativity the kickstarter to learning? Does it matter? What impact would we have on learning if we engendered more creativity? What impact would we have on creativity and innovation if we engendered more learning? In particular what impact would we have either way if we built a whole city permeated with the creative and learning ethos?
The issue seems to be that we think about the circuit breaker(s) that will set this cycle on it's way.
References
'Does innovation promote economic growth? Evidence from European countries', Rana P. Maradana, Rudra P. Pradhan*, Saurav Dash, Kunal Gaurav, Manju Jayakumar and Debaleena Chatterjee, 2017
I kind of like the word vibe. 'Like, you get the vibe, man'. It's not the sort of word you want politicians to use about economic recessions. You'd hope they were slightly more data informed, more economically and data literate. But maybe it is the sort of word you could use when thinking about the creative environment, and about creativity in general. Maybe it's also a word you could use when thinking about the extent to which a city values, nurtures, and supports, learning, the degree to which a city is learner friendly. My online Cambridge dictionary defines 'vibe' like this:
"the mood of a place, situation, person, etc. and the way that they make you feel"
I've been wondering about the significance of the 'vibe' of the places in which we live, the vibe of our environment. Why might it matter? As I've wandered around a number of towns and cities in Te Wai Pounamu, I've been noticing the 'vibe' of those places. One way in which we pick up the vibe about creativity is with displays of public art works.
At the bottom of this post I've added a series of photos of some of the pieces of public art I've seen and experienced. Have a browse.
The 'creative vibe' could of course equally be generated through performance art, but the ephemeral nature of that is problematic. We see a wonderful change in the cityscape of Ōtautahi Christchurch during the World Buskers' Festival 'Bread and Circus', but I'd wonder what the residual effect is as memory of the event fades.
The small scale retail scene also sends me a 'vibe' when I see small retail stores selling artworks and a general array of what are often 'unique' items, especially when I see the same stores opening their doors year after year after year,..,. it takes something special to ensure the longevity of these businesses. That tells me that there are enough people who value that tangible side of creativity to support those businesses. This is something I rarely pick up in the retail malls (although there are some exceptions to that). Given the social place of malls these days, I wonder if it is possible for them to influence the 'creative disposition' of their local populations in this way? The trouble with that is of course that their management is answerable to shareholders, and influencing the creative dispositions of their locals is not their core business - no apology needed.
I do think there is such a thing as a 'creative vibe' in schools. I believe it is possible to nurture and sustain creativity in schools. My previous experience working with the Manaiakalani network and the 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy showed that this can be done, and when schools have a pedagogy that includes creativity you are more likely to see young people who value and believe in their own creativity. You get what you pay attention to. It takes vision and leadership, it takes guts, it takes time, it takes a huge amount of talking and doing, but.. it CAN be done.
The Hornby High School vision
I am 'wondering' whether such a thing as a 'creative vibe' in communities, towns, and cities, is real, or merely the result of what I 'want to see', a product if you like of my own confirmation bias. And if so, is it a necessary part of a creative city, and also therefore of a learning city, because I believe that creativity and learning go hand in hand.
You could be forgiven for asking the question 'so what'. Why is this of any interest or significance? My undergraduate background in economics kicked in (oddly) and that lead me to think about the 'Creative Economy' and its benefits, and in the process of reading and thinking about this I came across the Canadian Heritage publication 'The Creative Economy: Key Concepts and Literature Review Highlights' (2013). In this the authors make this statement:
"For the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the creative economy is an evolving concept based on creative assets potentially generating economic growth and development (2008):
• It can foster income generation, job creation and export earnings while promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development. • It embraces economic, cultural and social aspects interacting with technology, intellectual property and tourism objectives. • It is a set of knowledge-based economic activities with a development dimension and crosscutting linkages at macro and micro levels to the overall economy. • It is a feasible development option for innovation, multidisciplinary policy responses and inter-ministerial action. • At the heart of the creative economy are the creative industries." (Page 4)
And more importantly:
"The Conference Board of Canada, along similar lines, suggests that there is a growing understanding and appreciation of the relationship between the arts, the cultural industries and broader society stating that “a creative economy extends beyond the culture sector to harness creativity in order to bring about positive social and economic changes across a broad spectrum of industries, sectors and social organizations” (The Conference Board of Canada, 2008, p.3)." Page 6)
And again:
"A significant social impact of the creative economy is its contribution to employment with the creative industries generally accounting for around 2 to 8 per cent of the workforce in the economy (UN, 2010) (including Nova Scotia at around 4.5 per cent and Canada at 3 per cent). The creative industries are both knowledge intensive, requiring specific skills and high level qualifications, and labour intensive (such as the theatre or film industry) where high creative output occurs. According to Florida, the quality of these kinds of jobs may provide greater work satisfaction because of the creative skills required – therefore driving innovation in the wider economy (2002).
Another important social aspect of the creative economy, particularly the cultural industries, is its role in fostering social inclusion." (Page 10)
The authors also reference the link between creativity and learning:
"Important links have also been made to education. In schools, the role of arts and culture in forming the social attitudes and behaviour of children is well recognized." (Page 11)
This takes me back to the paper 'Replanting creativity during post-normal times' (O'Connor, Anderson, Freebody and Ginns, October 2020) in which the case for creativity in schools is well argued. With respect to the economic benefits, they state:
"Creative citizenship clearly provides an economy with a competitive advantage (Buchannan et al, 2018). Increasingly, New Zealand will require workforces that can not only solve problems but pose new ones, synthesise ideas, take well managed risks to develop ideas, products and services of value. This clearly speaks beyond the contribution that the creative sector makes to the economy, recognising that internationally the trade of creative goods and services has doubled throughout the past twenty years (UNESCO, 2013). As tourism dwindles post-COVID-19 the creative sector both as a domestic market but also in the international trade of film, music, and visual art will become an important part of diversifying the New Zealand economy. More importantly, it will be the competitive edge a creative workforce gives across all sectors of the economy." (Page 11)
This statement about the impact of creativity on learning stands repetition too:
Much of the research suggests that fostering creativity through the arts empowers children to better learn throughout other subjects and areas of their lives raising both personal competencies and academic success. Syllabuses and curriculum documents over the last decade have increasingly mandated creativity (Jefferson and Anderson, 2017), yet research indicates there has been no discernable or systematic rise in creativity within schools. (Page 18).
If we accept this connection between creativity and learning (and there is a lot of evidence to support the connection) then this again leads me to make a connection between creativity and the concept of the 'learning city'.
This next part may be too big a leap, but I am wondering if supporting a more creative city may be a precursor to nurturing a 'learning city'? Is it possible that thriving creative arts sectors lead to more creativity and innovation across the economy generally? Could it be that civic investment in public art works supports the growth in that 'creative vibe', which in itself then supports more creative thinking, attracts people of a more overtly creative disposition, and so generates more innovation, and hence economic growth? Does it mean that 'creativity' might become a 'way of being' in a city for more and more people?
Here is a selection of photos I've grabbed from some of the places I've been in over the past couple of years, and some of those pieces of 'public art' that I've seen.
Of course the 'vibe' will be set by more than just public art works. Here are just a couple of other views of Ōtautahi Christchurch.
References
'Replanting creativity during post-normal times', O'Connor, Anderson, Freebody and Ginns, October 2020
'The Creative Economy: Key Concepts and Literature Review Highlights', Canadian Heritage 2013
I'm once again sitting in one of the Ōtautahi Christchurch City Libraries. It happen every now and then. They're not bad places to go, to 'be'. I'm there waiting, I'm there hoping to make productive use of my time, I'm there thinking about stuff. I'm there trying to read an article on creative cities. The literature I find usually focusses on the 'creative sector' of artists, dramatists, writers .. you get the idea. I like to imagine something much more, I like to imagine a creative city that is a'learning city', and I wrote about that here.
I'd actually started today's session trying to 'polish' a poem I wrote, a part of a series in which I'm trying to focus on our lives under capitalism. I'll post it at the bottom of this piece in case you are interested. In doing that I spent a lot of time 'staring', thinking, imagining. It's easy to get distracted when in that state and so I noticed the people around me. There's the group of folk joining in the organised 'games' session. There are numerous parents and grandparents (at a guess) looking after pre schoolers for the afternoon. There's a succession of folk mostly of my age seeking help from library staff to find something or other.
But there's also the group of folk who look to me to be sitting lost in despair. Young people who ought to be in school, adults who are not in work, the sick, the elderly, people who (based purely on a visual judgement - yep, we can all be judgemental eh) are quite possibly living lives of poverty. They seem to carry a sense of hopelessness, of despair.
Our public libraries serve such an important role in our communities: connectors, listeners, carers, encouragers, sanctuaries, maybe even givers of hope. And the people who staff these places, people we have traditionally called 'librarians', are so important. They remind me so much of teachers too in this modern age, people from whom society now demands such a wide range of skills - knowledge specialists, communicators, listeners, carers, IT gurus.
I wonder if there is another role missing here today: maybe our libraries need trained social workers, on staff and available at all times, or... maybe ... our libraries need specially trained 'creatives' on staff. After a career in education, I think that being able to offer creative opportunities, creative encouragement and nurturing, to those who are perhaps overwhelmed with hopelessness and despair, or who are simply lonely or lost, has the potential to offer 'salvation', the potential to offer purpose and reconnection, that are not easily found elsewhere.
Sitting a couple of seats away from me is a young woman who is I suspect of school age, who appears to be restless, trying to fill her time with a phone, maybe waiting for her mates to come from school. Who knows.
As I sat silently polishing the poem, I wondered if that young woman sitting there might have a 'voice' that she'd like to use, to yell her despair at the world? Having just yesterday watched Tracey Chapman reprise 'Fast Car' at the 2024 Grammies, I wondered if sitting there two seats away might be another Tracey, or another Tusiata Avia, who has something to say to the world, if only she could find a way to realise her voice?
Perhaps what we need is a network of creatives who occupy every public library space in the city. How much new talent would we find? How many potential social problems would we head off, how many Justice dollars or social welfare dollars might we save, by giving a sense of purpose, of wholeness, to a whole new group of human beings? Yes, maybe for those under 16 they should be getting this from our schools, but these are people who for a range of reasons have already disengaged from that network. That doesn't make them worthless. That doesn't mean they ought to be consigned to the scrap heap. They still have that same human potential that we all carry.
And this needn't be limited to creatives. Why not a scientist exploring the natural world? Technologists ... but I get ahead of myself. What we are discussing is another potential piece of the puzzle of how we democratise learning. Those right wing libertarians amongst us would not have a bar of this, of course. Their free market ideology relies upon power imbalances, and winners and losers, despite the fact that economic theory does not say that. The model of perfect competition that lies at the heart of their thinking, for example, assumes 'Perfect Knowledge' for markets to operate efficiently. How does that come about when we readily accept the disenfranchisement of some in society? If we were truly libertarian would we all be working to ensure that this 'perfect knowledge' was a reality? I'll switch my 'cynicism circuits' off right there.
We already see examples in which creatives inhabit library spaces. There's 'Egg Academy' that offers holiday (and other) programmes for young people, Kim's 'Creative Trust', and Imagination Station that operates inside Tūranga. There are more, I'm just not well enough informed to list them. The first two certainly aren't available all the time, and that's what I'm wondering: what sort of social and economic impact could we have if we equipped libraries with this sort of additional talent and resource? Could we at the very least spark curiosity amongst some of our most disaffected, some of our most vulnerable, and so perhaps steer them towards the sight of their worth and their potential? I am excited about that whole idea of living in a city in which curiosity is rampant, where people want to know what, why, how, where about anything and everything in life.
This needn't be about some sort of altruistic 'do good' philosophy either, if that worries you. Every young person who fails to achieve their potential is an opportunity cost to society as in lost potential, and possibly a direct dollar cost too. Why would we willingly accept, and in fact knowingly engineer, such things when we know the consequences, and we have alternatives?
I recently read a proposal from Dr Hafsa Ahmed, Lincoln University, and a trustee of Akō Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch, looking at what a learning city could look like if we think of it as a city wide learning campus? This is a grand vision, an exciting prospect, and not something that could happen overnight. But like any dream, it requires tangible first steps. What would happen if a tangible first step was to somehow fund creatives in every city library?
