The genesis of this blog emerged whilst I was out running this morning. With each passing year, running gets a little bit more challenging and the days of wishing that the junction at the top of the road is clear of traffic, so as not to prevent a PB, have gone. Now with an ever decreasing stride length, I’m hopeful of carmageddon at the junction thus allowing me to catch my breath and treat myself to a little stretch.
However, as mentioned previously, I do find repetitious exercise good for thinking and this morning I managed to blank out the aching knees and reflect on recent PhD activity. I had, though, a few of those hot-cold moments; the ones where you suddenly think it’s all going wrong and the world is at an end, but then you reconcile things in your head and it’s all okay again.
The first was about running and creativity. As I ran through some woods, it hit me that both of my employer participants had mentioned in their interviews how they love nature and exercise (running and walking) for inspiring creative thoughts. ‘Wow, I’m experiencing that right now’ I thought but then suddenly I questioned myself as to whose experience I was reflecting on. Had my long standing fondness for exercise and creative thought influenced, subconsciously or otherwise, my data collection? Another mile down the path and various mental run-throughs of the interviews later, I convinced myself I hadn’t (just to be certain I checked the audios again when I got home….and I may even persuade myself that this, in an emic sense, is actually a positive thing…..am I in a better place to understand my participants position?)
A revisit of the Everyday Creativity Conference I recently attended at The University of Manchester, provided the next momentary opportunity to tear up my results and forget it all. I have never, and would never, claim to be an expert or a marvellous academic of creativity, but I thought that I had a fair grasp of the subject area……until that is, I reflected upon the various sessions of said conference. The theoretical and philosophical depth in Manchester was astounding and the enthusiastic nods of approval from other delegates, who clearly had a much more developed understanding than I, made me wince (hopefully internally, although I can’t actually remember). So, at about the halfway point of my run today, I was composing a goodbye email to my supervisor. But then I ran past a new housing development which sparked a memory of one of the conference papers from a post-grad at the University of York, who had undertaken some research into everyday creativity during the construction of retirement homes. Her applied study had yielded some results which suggested that often people think they are not creative when they could be considered to be……ooooh, which agreed with my findings too….maybe I’m not so bad after all. Sure, there’s always more I can learn and understand, but maybe I shouldn’t beat up my applied approach so quickly at the sight of deep theory.
The final hot-cold moment……..same conference, a very nice Prof from Brighton asked me at lunch if my PhD was an ethnography. Not wanting to spray him with the complimentary food and, more importantly, to buy myself a bit more thinking time, I chewed my cheese and pickle sandwich with much greater diligence than usual. With absolutely no backing to my views and with a bit of panic I blurted “Well…..not by definition. But I think to a greater or lesser extent, you can’t divorce the issues of culture from the study of creativity.” That in itself, wasn’t the problem; this arose later when I read an article (Glaveanu, 2010) which agreed with my position on culture. That’s a good thing surely? Well it is but reconciling this with the words of my supervisor, namely, “so where is the originality in your work?” the hot flush returned. Am I adding anything? Am I original? I suppose only time will tell but having considered it in the final mile this morning, I think the engagement with the good number of employers during the data collection, in tandem with the application of some uncommon methods, should bring something of value and will hopefully provide a meaningful contribution. Revisiting that hot flush is probably a healthy thing to do however (in the long term anyway).
Now wheezing at my front door, the synopsis of my run from a subject perspective was – it seems creativity and culture shouldn’t be disconnected; findings suggest that people are often being creative but they just don’t realise or recognise their actions as such; there appears to be some agreement that space and exercise are helpful in promoting creative thoughts. From a personal perspective – the only good thing about getting slower at running is that it gives me more time to think.
JW.
References
Glăveanu, V.P. (2010) Paradigms in the study of creativity: Introducing the perspective of cultural psychology. New Ideas in Psychology, 28, 1, 79-93.
Ph.D, me and a bit of creativity 