Between creativity and innovation? how to become a traitor in art education

pp. 155-167

in: Jan Jagodzinski, Visual art and education in an era of designer capitalism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

Teachers of art in an information age are caught by a profound contradiction that shapes their working lives with the students they teach. This contradiction revolves around the tensions between what is nebulously called "creativity" and what more often is known as "innovation." The two spheres shadow one another, and it is the central claim of this chapter that the difference between them marks the very contradiction of teaching art that is shaped by the larger enterprise of designer capitalism. In a nutshell, I want to develop the idea that creativity belongs to a realm where evaluation and critique, in and of themselves, do not apply and hence presents the very conflict between the appraisal of art and its education in general. On the other side lies innovation, for which there are antecedents that enable evaluation to take place and "value" to be bestowed. Innovation is most often referred to as "creative thinking" and the like,¹ where "[p]raxis is thus achieved through creative thinking, "thinking about thinking" (metacognition) and critique blended with creative imagination and expression" (McCormack and Titchen 2006, 241, original emphasis). As a form of self-reflexivity, creative praxis as applied to professional development or to the teaching and improvement of classes will be considered as a form of innovation rather than creativity "proper." Innovative designer capitalism is centered on the ego as a form of self-reflexivity.