Professional and Everyday Creativities: Gender, Improvisation, Meaning-making
Over the last two decades, theoretical discussions around creativity have turned around addressing existing dichotomies in its conceptualization such as professional/everyday and public/private, to mention the two most relevant to the theme of this special issue. Cultural studies have been critical of approaching creativity in terms of individual talent and the elite (‘creative class’), in economic terms (‘creative industries’) or in terms of exclusive locations (‘creative city’). In addition, scholars within gender studies have pointed out that definitions of creativity tend to exclude activities typically practised by women. Some of the most forceful rearticulations of creativity have drawn on Raymond Williams’s notion of ‘common culture’ and Michel de Certeau’s theorization of ‘practices of everyday life’ to look for creative practices beyond the economic context and instead emphasize community- based aspects of creativity, its cultural specificity and quotidian locations (‘vernacular creativity’). Interest in the communicative and social dimensions of creativity has also been fuelled by technological advances and the blurring of the boundaries between producers and consumers of new media (‘convergent culture’). This special issue aims to examine current debates on creativity explicitly from the perspective of gender and to enrich our understanding of gender-based creative practice with new areas and reconfigurations of meaning-making. The special issue is divided into two parts or ‘clusters’. The first cluster of articles addresses the divides between the professional/amateur and economic/non-economic gain, looking in turn at professional, convergent and everyday creativities. Central to the articles in the second cluster are the concepts of connecting either with the self or with a community, often by means of improvisation forced by circumstances and/ or by the crafting of identity as a creative practice. Additionally, the first cluster is followed by an ‘exhibition’ of the work by the Irish artist Jennifer Walshe, whose themes resonate in various ways across the two clusters.
Oates-Indruchová, L. und Mikats, J. (Hrsg.) (2022): Professional and Everyday Creativities: Gender, Improvisation, Meaning-making, Special Issue, in: Cultural Studies, Vol. 36, No. 5, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2021.2011935.
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