Culture, creativity and education
Our globalized world has been witnessing enormous and rapid socio-economic,
political and technological changes that have greatly affected people’s traditions,
livelihood and lifestyles in the context of what some have called the
Asian century (Asian Development Bank, 2011).1 Economies have struggled
to become increasingly knowledge-based and reliant on constant creativity
and innovation, with a growing need for today’s education systems to equip
learners with the competencies required for innovation societies. A ‘creative
class’ has been argued to be the driver of growth (Florida 2012). Research has
revealed that creativity enhancement is often a transformative process for the
individual, and personality attributes, cognitive ability, talent, environmental
factors, motivation and knowledge of the field are necessary in developing a
person’s creativity (Piirto 2011). But culture also impacts upon creativity, which
is valued as ‘a motor of economic and social innovation’ in a world that is experiencing
rapid cultural changes and increasing cultural diversity. The impact of
culture can be seen in the ‘development of new products and services (including
public services), driving technological innovation, stimulating research,
optimizing human resources, branding and communicating values, inspiring
people to learn and building communities’ (KEA European Affairs 2009: 5).
The UNESCO’s Roadmap for Arts Education (2006) makes explicit the linkage
between inter-cultural understanding and arts education, asserting that education
in and through the arts stimulates cognitive and creative development and
has the capability of making how and what learners learn more relevant to the
needs of individuals and of the modern societies in which they live. These are
necessary in this increasingly complex and troubled century ‘for creating good
citizens, for promoting a culture of peace and for ensuring a sustainable future’
(UNESCO 2006: 4). Culture enables and drives development within a number
of cultural sectors including the creative industries, cultural tourism and heritage,
both tangible and intangible (UNESCO Havana 2013). Conversely, culture
is shaped by, and is the product of, human creativity:
it is generated by our different responses to the problems of meaning
and practicality with which we are confronted. How we see events is
deeply affected by the ideas and values we bring to them. History is
marked by the often profound changes in consciousness, in ways of
seeing the world which came about through the constant interaction
of ideas and events: between science, religion, morality, politics and the
arts, and between tradition and innovation.
(NACCCE 1999: 6)
The manifold usage of the word ‘culture’ makes it a very difficult term to
define; but it is beyond the scope of this paper to address it. The term ‘culture’
has been used in diverse ways as in ‘school culture’ (Fullan 2007), ‘culture
of “teaching to the test”’ (Paton 2012), and ‘examination-dominated culture’
(Fok et al. 2006). For the purposes of this article, we take note of six ‘inadequate’
but mutually related and mutually reinforcing conceptions about
culture that ‘greatly diminish the utility of the culture concept as an analytica