The Creativity Market: Creative Writing in the 21st Century (New Writing Viewpoints, 8) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847697100 ISBN 13: 9781847697103

Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

This book focuses on creative writing both as a subject in universities and beyond academia, with chapters arranged around three organising sub-themes of practice, research and pedagogy. It explores the 'creative' component of creative writing in the globalised marketplace, making the point that creative writing occurs in and around universities throughout the world. It examines the convergence of education, globalisation and economic discourses at the intersection of the university sector and creative industries, and foregrounds the competing interests at the core of creativity as it appears in the neo-liberal global discourse in which writers are enmeshed. The book offers case studies from the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and Singapore that are indicative of the challenges faced by academics, postgraduate students and creative industry professionals around the world.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dominique Hecq is Associate Professor in Writing at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Dominique is also Editor of Bukker Tillibul: The Online Journal of Practice-Led Research.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Creativity Market

Creative Writing in the 21st Century

By Dominique Hecq

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2012 Dominique Hecq and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-710-3

Contents

Contributors, 
Acknowledgements, 
In Lieu of a Preface, 
Introduction, 
1 Creative Writing: The Ghost, the University and the Future Graeme Harper, 
2 Banking on Creativity: My Brilliant? Career Dominique Hecq, 
3 Creativity and the Marketplace Jen Webb, 
4 The Publishing Paradigm: Commercialism versus Creativity Jeremy Fisher, 
5 As Good As It Gets? National Research Evaluations Gerry Turcotte and Robyn Morris, 
6 Creative Writing, Neo-Liberalism and the Literary Paradigm Jeff Sparrow, 
7 Nothing is Free in this Life Antonia Pont, 
8 The Ghost in the Machine: Creative Writing and its Malcontents Phillip Edmonds, 
9 Creativity, Compromise and Waking Up with the Funding Devil Mike Harris, 
10 Entering the Fictitious: A Play in Two Acts Christopher Lappas, 
11 Using the Spectrum to Theorise Apparent Opposition in Creative Writing Doctorates Vahri McKenzie, 
12 Outlying the Point that Tips: Bridging Academia and Business Pavlina Radia, 
13 Selling It: Creative Writing and the Public Good Thom Vernon, 
14 On the Commercialisation of Creativity in the Merlion State Eric Tinsay Valles, 
Afterword: Creativity, the Market and the Globalisation Challenge Kirpal Singh, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Creative Writing: The Ghost, the University and the Future

Graeme Harper

Creative Writing Today

The vast majority of creative writers today do not write or distribute their works of creative writing through what would commonly be considered avenues of the creative industries. The majority of creative writers today write beyond the realm of organised industry, their writing being outside of an economic system of direct control and exchange, and if they do distribute their works at all, they do so, today, via the internet and in a manner we might broadly call 'free'. This is not said naively, and it is not intended to suggest that economic systems don't impose more general or indirect controls. Nevertheless, in direct terms, creative writers are not required to engage with the creative industries and the choice to do so is, indeed, exactly that: a choice.

It could easily be argued that this has long been the case, with the opportunity for simply writing and printing works having long been present, even if central systems of manufacture and distribution have influenced creative writers as they have influenced other individuals. But the impact of contemporary digital technologies, which have brought about new avenues of personal and personalised exchange, have reduced distribution costs to almost nothing and increased opportunities for distribution a thousand-fold. While there have always been opportunities for the individual creative writer and exchange of works of creative writing, the contemporary world thus recognises and, indeed, encourages immediate interchange between writers, readers, other writers and the wider world.

Why, then, we might wonder, are we frequently still operating in universities, as if creative writing is aligned so closely with a centralised economic system of exchange that we have even sometimes seen the phrase 'of publishable quality' used as an assessment tool to question or confirm the quality of a piece of creative writing submitted for a course of university study? Questioning 'publishability' is absolutely not the same as questioning the quality of creative achievement itself, nor is a focus on portions of the creative industries (e.g. publishing, performance or media industries) the same as a focus on the undertaking of creative writing. Confusing the two fundamentally constitutes what Gilbert Ryle (1951) calls a 'category-mistake' – on which more, later.

Essentially, we need to consider the distinct mismatches (alternatively, misunderstandings or misalignments) that have occurred between our considerable human engagements with creativity and, specifically here, with creative writing and the ways in which creativity has been incorporated or discussed in economic and political systems. Firstly, how have we promoted and advertised human creativity? Secondly, what is the condition of creativity itself? Thirdly, how has creative writing been mapped around universities over time? Finally, on what basis is creativity and higher education currently touted and how does this relate to the current state of play with creative writing?

As it always seems useful to note in any discussion of creative writing, it must also be remarked that creative writing is first and foremost action. That is, creative writing produces completed artefacts, and physical evidence of the making of those artefacts (e.g. other artefacts in the form of drafts, emails, conversations, notes, diaries and doodles), but, most of all, creative writing involves the actions of human beings, human beings doing something – both physical and mental activities. Creative writing actions are primary; the artefacts that emerge are secondary. Creative writing is no different in this to other creative activities: human creativity generally is mostly evidenced in human action, regardless of the field of endeavour.

Hubs of Abundance and Illustriousness

Established in February 2008 by Great Britain's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), 'Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy' was said to acknowledge 'the vital role that the creative industries play in the British economy' (DCMS, 2008: 1) and to highlight 'the need for the UK to invest in businesses and individuals [my emphasis] in order to ensure that the UK remains globally competitive' (DCMS, 2008: 3). Creative Britain included, in its £70.5 million strategy, 26 'agreed commitments', including 'giving all children a creative education', 'research and innovation' and 'promoting the UK as the world's creative hub' (DCMS, 2008: 76–77). But what is being promoted here by reference to the creative?

In a similar, hub-orientated vein, Dorothy Louise Mackay, in an article wonderfully entitled 'Advertising the Medieval University', quotes a 13th century circular sent out by Charles I, advertising the University of Naples. Here is an extract from that circular:

We have brought here men learned in all branches of scholarship, so that there may come to drink of this university, as from an abundant well, both young and old, the beginners and those who have attained recognition, those wishing to study the trivium and the quadrivium, canon and civil law, as well as theology. Wherefore, let them come, in so far as they are able, to this university, as [they might come] to a great feast which is ornamented by the presence of illustrious guests and which overflows with an abundance and variety of refreshing food. (Mackay, 1932: 516)

Come, the king calls, to 'feast' on this university education. 'Let them come [...] to this university [...] which overflows with an abundance and variety'. Published, as this circular was, in 1272, who would have thought that the forms of persuasion evident in it would be so familiar here in the 21st century?

There has long been a difference between advertising as 'taking or giving notice of something' and advertising as 'an institutionalised system of commercial information and persuasion', as Raymond Williams (1980:...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1847697100
• ISBN 13: 9781847697103
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 229
• Herausgeber: Hecq Dominique
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland