The Case for Creativity
The Problem
3.1 There are currently a number of obstacles to expanding the scope of creativity which directly correspond with the factors in 1.4:
- Low expectations of 'excluded' people
- Poor tools
- Poor mentoring and support.
3.2 The Creator. The degree of social exclusion and alienation amongst those who have never worked (particularly males between 15 and 30) and the long term unemployed is such that it appears to be almost intractable; and yet it constitutes a market which ought to have some capacity to produce for itself. The crux is whether people with relatively narrow skills bases can create alone or whether they will need to create collaboratively. If the latter is an imperative than learning to collaborate through good facilitation will be a necessary precondition for success. This is bound to be difficult as one major reason for poverty is that the poor (particularly men) are bad at asking and collaborating. Nonetheless, if it is established that many people do not have the skills to create alone and cannot acquire the skills to collaborate, our society will be faced with a massive problem of alienation driven anti social behaviour and criminality. It is therefore important to understand the possibilities and limits to creativity among people with relatively low skills levels. It is also vital that we acquire a much better understanding of the collaborative process; whether, for example, it must necessarily be simultaneous and face-to-face or whether it can be facilitated virtually and even asynchronously.
3.3 The Tools. No matter how positive the attitude of the potential creator, providing the right tools is essential. Our digital content tools base is extremely narrow as it is based on:
- Standard, upgradeable systems
- High skills levels
- Self motivated, self tuition
- Network validation and problem solving.
These characteristics enable producers to profit from core products which can be upgraded by concentrating on the top half of the market; which need not be user friendly because of the skills of the target market; which shift the cost of problem solving to the consumer; and which therefore rank new features higher than good design. There has been a particular problem in the area of tools designed to react to increasing user competence and tools to enable collaboration; the available range are largely designed for single entry level autonomous operation.
3.4 Mentoring/Support. The usual form of mentoring and support is to base this either on a product such as an application or on a structured training course to achieve a given outcome, such as word processing. There has been very little evidence of high level mediator intelligence which analyses the creator and matches her growing capacity to a market need; or, conversely, analyses an area of creative deficit and rationally decides to reverse this or concentrate on a different strength.