This edited book explores the value of creativity within and beyond arts education in a range of international contexts. The book as a whole explores the variety of ways that creative skill can be fostered through arts education. This exposes the complex and, at times conflicting understandings of, and aspirations for, creativity itself. The challenges and opportunities associated with the global context in which creativity is fostered are highlighted throughout. The book is divided into three sections each of which focuses on a different area of arts education and practice. The opening chapters address arts practice and arts-based research, explore the challenges associated with creativity in arts education through the visual arts as well as creative writing and story building. This section closes with an epistemological and ontological examination of the concept of creativity within arts education. The latter chapters, focusing on drama and dance and embodied learning, focus on active practice, emphasising the lived experience of creativity in arts education. Eighteen chapters in total give voice to a range of perspectives on creativity in a variety of contexts. Given this scope, the following review is concerned with Part 2: Creativities in Music, Music Teacher Education and the Music Industry (pp. 119-220, chapters 8 to 13).
Chapter 8: Developing Creative Ecologies in Music Education: Intercultural Explorations and Encounters in a Creative Music Intensive by Leon R. de Bruin describes the Australian Art Orchestra’s 2016 Creative Music Intensive: a 10-day residency for 20 music students in which improvisatory practices of Indigenou Australian culture (Wagilak traditional songmen) and Korean p’ansori singing were actively explored and developed. The conversational and interactive nature of this musical experience result in a process of active meaning making, negotiating and collaborating. The chapter asserts the benefits of drawing together diversity within the local and allowing difference to inform the generation of new ways of knowing. De Bruin notes: ‘At a time when understanding, respecting and celebrating difference requires renewed vigour and revitalisation, glocal musical and arts initiatives and movements that actualise local intercultural activity are of heightened importance’. (p. 134)
Chapter 9: Exploring Links between Children’s Creativity Development and a World Music Education Program by Shari Lindblom also focuses on musical improvisation. Lindblom outlines a set of workshops designed for primary aged children exploring improvisation through Javanese gamelan, Hindustani tabla and West African djembe. Consideration is given to factors that promote or undermine creativity in this context before exploring the extent to which the workshops were seen to positively influence children’s levels of creativity. A range of data sources inform outcomes including qualitative interviews and observations as well as musical and general creativity testing.
Chapter 10: Music, Mathematics and Creative Processes by Fiona King is concerned with the integration of music into a generalist primary curriculum. King presents such integration as achievable without forcing relationships and asserts that music and mathematics teaching can be drawn together to mutual benefit. There is, however, the warning that sound pedagogy is required if meaningful learning in both areas is to be achieved. Having argued that the integration of music can positively inform musical and mathematical learning, King presents a case for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education to be reconceived as STEAM education and therefore benefit from the inclusion of the arts.
Chapter 11: Assessing Creativity in English School Music Education: A Case of Mistaken Identity? by Martin Fautley is not concerned with a specific example or examples of practice as seen other chapters. Instead an overview of the place and scope for creativity within the English secondary school music curriculum is explored. Fautley exposes the manner in which creativity has been compromised in music education in England as a result of the increasingly performative measures placed upon students, teachers and schools.
Chapter 12: Training Pre-Service Teachers to be Creative: A Case Study from an Australian University by Sharon Lierse examines the development of a teacher training module that is designed to foster teacher creativity and the teaching of creativity at a primary school level. Although reference is made to the teaching of visual art, music, dance, drama and media arts, the creative activities discussed within the chapter relate exclusively to the visual arts. Lierse makes a case for ensuring that creative experimentation is made accessible to teachers from all backgrounds and contexts.
Chapter 13: ‘Digital Audio Ecofeminism (DA’EF): The Glocal Impact of All-Female Communities on Learning and Sound Creatives’ by Elizabeth Dobson explores the benefits of creating spaces for women to engage with digital audio technologies. The chapter addresses five DA’EF communities all based in North America. The conversations with these communities lead Dobson to observations in three areas: the efforts made to include the marginalised, the construction of knowledge through talk and the challenging economics of organising DA’EF communities.
Despite the range of contexts addressed through these chapters, some common themes are present in each. The concept of creativity, and its potential associated meanings, is necessarily attended to by all authors, each emphasising the variety of interpretations of creativity that are available. There is a shared rejection of creativity as a singular construct, favouring concepts of creativities as plural. These discussions repeatedly return to two texts by Burnard (Reference BURNARD2012a; Reference BURNARD and ODENA2012b). The issue of the glocal or glocalisation is also present throughout. Authors celebrate the foregrounding of local issues and the manner in which these interact with the global. In chapters by de Bruin and Lindblom, the glocal emphasis allows new meanings to be co-constructed through the interaction between individuals, each presenting unique combination of global and local. Dobson identifies globalisation as symptomatic of the capitalist values that her research opposes and celebrates the glocal as a means of refocusing on the globally situated local. Lierse notes that a glocal perspective is essential in order to practically engage with diverse locally situated and globally engaged communities.
The book aspires to present international perspectives on creativity in arts education. The section addressing music includes North American and English perspectives, though the Australian perspective is dominant, making up four of the six chapters. The shifting international perspective exposes the disparate interpretations of the place and value of creativity within society. Lindblom begins her chapter by emphasising the importance of creative learning in educational development before briefly summarising the perspectives and approaches taken to teaching creativity different countries. Her description stating that ‘the United Kingdom promotes creativity in its national curriculum’ is subsequently called into question by Fautley’s exposition of the marginalisation of creativity in the English secondary music curriculum. The book as a whole seeks to celebrate arts as a means of developing creativity, a skill particularly valuable in the 21st century, and the efforts to present varied international perspectives help to demonstrate the diverse value of creativity in different contexts.
