Exploring the Possibility of a Creative Generation
By Jeff M. Poulin
Published July 23, 2020
Editor’s Note: This submission was devised several months before the world changed with the rise of a global health crisis and the unraveling of institutional racism in the United States. It has since been updated.
Last year, I presented “Towards an Understanding of the Creative Generation” at the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, AATE’s, conference, where we learned together and discussed how we talk about the outcomes of our work and innovate within our practice to best prepare the next generation for an ever-changing future.
Wow, did we have no idea what was coming.
Throughout 2019, I traveled across the country and around the globe, exploring the concept of the Creative Generation–or “Gen C”–which is popularized in Brian Solis’ literature of consumer marketing as an intergenerational group of people who care deeply about creation, curation of culture, connection, and community.
My initial inquiry was focused on redefining how the field of arts and cultural education discussed its intended outcomes for learners, and ultimately, how we might change our practice to reflect those outcomes. Over time, the inquiry developed into multiple studies, centering on young people, thinking outside the box, and proposing new contextual frames for the field of theatre education to view its work.
Now, in 2020, amid the global pandemic, an impending recession, and constant civil unrest resulting from police brutality and community reckoning with systems of white supremacy and a history of racism, we, as theatre educators must rethink, redefine, and re-invent our work to support the next generation of creatives to be most aptly positioned to address the world’s greatest challenges.
Rethinking Our Language
On March 24, 2018, I stood in my apartment in Washington, D.C., as the city was abuzz with the nation’s latest protest, “A March for Our Lives.” Since fall 2016, Sunday morning protests were regularized in the wake of the presidential election. People were mobilized.
However, “March for Our Lives” was different; students led it: young artists, creatives, and activists. I watched in awe as a group of young people raised their voices to change the country for the better.
For years, I had worked as an arts education advocate and traveled the country touting talking points on the benefits of the arts. However, as I watched the march, I realized the outcomes of arts and cultural education I had once propagated were outdated — it was the qualities in these young creatives driving a new national conversation about the issues facing them that we needed, as an arts education field, to tell. As an academic and researcher, I got focused and asked the question: How does the field of arts education in the United States currently talk about its intended outcomes?
To answer this essential question, my team of researchers assembled a focus group with 15 national leaders in the U.S. arts and cultural education field. These participants identified a binary trend between the intrinsic and extrinsic values of arts education. The focus group leaned towards justifying an extrinsic value to arts education.
In a review of literature on the topic, we found that ever since the late 1980s, the regularly-cited data about the benefits of the arts has fallen mainly into the category of “instrumental,” or utilitarian, value — meaning benefits are not about the value of the arts themselves, but are about an extrinsic purpose, like achieving higher grades.
Most of the organizations we studied emphasized the following advantages of arts education: lower dropout rates, higher academic achievement, raised standardized test scores, and higher college graduation rates.
The outcomes expressed from an arts education did not exist as a realistic demonstration of how arts education programs are implemented with young people in schools and communities.
As our focus group indicated, most educational programs using arts and cultural pedagogies amplify youth voice, build leadership skills, and encourage democratic and civic participation; such elements support young creatives to participate in efforts of social transformation.
As the scholar Mohamed Rabienotes, social transformation refers to global non-governmental organizations restructuring all aspects of life — from culture to social relations, politics to economy, the way we think to the way we live.
In our work, we have suggested naming the practice creative social transformation to classify the intended outcomes of arts and cultural education.
From there, we proposed a bold shift in language. What if we adopt a whole new vernacular for arts education?
Inspired by the work of Martha Nussbaum and utilizing the new language of creative social transformation, we proposed a new description of creative capabilities:
- Creative Thinking: Pioneered by Dr. Peter O’Connor, the ability to identify challenges and employ creativity to envision solutions.
- Cultural Consciousness: The process of understanding one’s own cultural identity and developing a respect for, and participation within, other diverse cultures.
- Connectivity: A commitment to engaging with peer or social groups regardless of time or location, through virtual and interpersonal means.
- Concern for Community: Regardless of means,acting as a servant-leader to strengthen one’s community.
With these new definitions, we stated our hypothesis, reformed our research questions, and expanded our scope of inquiry.
Redefining Our Work
Over the next six months, we conducted 30 case studies of highly-regarded arts education programs in 24 nations. We specifically explored three questions within the frame of Gen C:
- How can young people be supported in the pursuit of creative community action?
- How can adults — such as artists, educators, and cultural and community leaders — cultivate young people’s creative capabilities?
- How can young people and adults commit to creative community action and navigate the strict systems that govern their work?
Around the world, what we found was astounding.
First, we found that the folks who operate at the intersection of arts and culture, education/youth development, and social transformation, struggle to articulate their work through a common shared language and often use antiquated rationale for defining their impact.
As a result of little shared language, leaders within the field are disconnected from each other and suffer from severe isolation, desiring meaningful communities of practice.
Finally, due to isolation, individuals and organizations within this field, lack mechanisms to share knowledge and effective practices, leading to stagnated pedagogies.
Overall, the challenges are neither new nor surprising. Still, they give us a foundation to better support the next generation of young creatives, along with artists, educators, and cultural and community leaders.
With a new understanding of the challenges facing our field, underpinned by data, we propose two paradigm shifts:
- Connecting issues of policy, pedagogy, and practice in arts and cultural learning environments deeper into the civic and social contexts.
- Reflecting the objectives of arts and cultural education organizations as civic institutions, rather than cultural institutions.
Through these two paradigm shifts, we believe that practitioners and leaders can be better positioned to describe their work and articulate their impact in alignment with the circumstances of the world today.
Re-Inventing Our Objectives
Arts and cultural education are a fundamental, civil, and human right too often forgotten in the dialogues about the necessary tools of development for our youth. I believe that the adoption of the language of Gen C is essential for delivering on the promise ascribed in international doctrine and American law.
I see magnificent young leaders like Malala Yousefzai, Greta Thunberg, and the student leaders of March for Our Lives redefining our collective future. Considering the capabilities developed through arts and cultural education, one would classify all of these young people members of the Creative Generation, employing their creative capabilities to drive acts of social transformation.
In the year 2020, with the unprecedented circumstances facing our globalized community, I wonder how creative social transformation can help us fix the broken systems of white supremacy and oppression that govern our work.
In what ways can young creatives lead these efforts? And in what ways can we, as arts educators, cultivate the next generation’s creative capabilities?
Jeff M. Poulin is an American educator, non-profit administrator, and social entrepreneur whose work is grounded in social justice and seeks transformative solutions to society’s greatest challenges. As a recognized leader, Jeff has led numerous national and international initiatives advancing arts education around the world.
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