I was drawn especially to this chapter by Paul Tosey, cutely entitled Interfering with the interference. Although Tovey is from the Management discipline, he provides thought-provoking analogies from the creative arts and music areas to make excellent points: He suggests that "creativity is triggered by constraining events or circumstances", and that this view of creativity "does not entail a romantic notion of total artistic freedom in which constraints are negative". He says, "Necessity is the mother of emergence as well of invention".
Hmmm . . provides me with a whole new perspective on all those undergraduates cramming for exams or leaving projects right 'till the last minute. He also puts forward the metaphor -- "change as drama" . . . as they say here in Australia, 'I reckon!'
So, obviously I'm recommending this thought provoking book to those of you engaged with teaching in the so-called 'creative' disciplines – or as Erica McWilliam asks more widely – Is creativity teachable? Conceptualising the creativity/pedagogy relationship in higher education.
Tosey leaves us with this wonderful musical anecdote:
"A well-known Congolese drummer, TaTitos, was asked how new compositions are created in that culture. TaTitos replied that there are three methods. In the first, a new piece of music is presented to someone in their dreams; in the second, musicians notice and build on mistakes they make while they are playing and generate new variations from those errors; in the third, someone consciously constructs a new composition. However, TaTitos added, there are no known examples of successful composition using the third method" (pp 29-30).
I'd also like to add, 'Technique, (dare I say) Craft and Experience', a discussion that so often seems to be missing. But that's a story for another day . . . In the meantime, I came across this fascinating presentation by Aniruddh Patel, called 'Music and the Mind':
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