Conversations on Creative Process, Methods, Research and Practice provides unique insights into the experiences of eight established creative practitioners who use their creative process in a professional and personal context. Each of them details their creative processes and how being creative has helped them to achieve a fulfilling work/life balance. Interviewees discuss how their creativity has helped them to overcome challenges or difficulties they have faced in their lives including grief, health issues, prejudice, divorce, maternity and creative blocks. This book uses original material – research and interviews – to explore the nature of the creative process from the perspective of understanding the activities, thoughts and feelings that shape an individual artist’s creative practice and how this might inform a wider collective understanding of creativity and how it can help us to live well. The book suggests that individual creative practice is a means of coming to know the self and your place in the world a little better and perhaps a little differently. This innovative book is suitable for students, scholars and practitioners using creative and arts-based research and methods in a wide range of disciplines and subjects including the social sciences, education, creative writing and communication and media studies.

Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice. This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods: • arts-based research • embodied research • research using technology • multi-modal research • transformative research frameworks. Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research. Creative Research Methods has been cited over 750 times.

"With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

Discover how the creative brain works across musical, literary, visual artistic, kinesthetic and scientific spheres, and how to study it.

Contrary to popular belief, the practice of art isn’t just a product of innate talent or artistic vision; artwork emerges from an intentionally constructed and maintained artistic practice. Developed from interviews with more than 75 mid-career artists, Creative Practices for Visual Artists examines the methods and approaches highly successful artists use to stay creatively robust for a lifetime. Offering practical strategies and concrete solutions, it also looks at the impacts of digital and social media, as well as recent changes in the educational system that can hinder the formation of a strong artistic practice. Artist and educator Kenneth Steinbach addresses key issues such as: the role of embodied research and non-objective experimentation; reframing one's approach to studio time; forms of productive conflict; the positive role of anxiety; and the importance of failure for the artist. The book will be useful to students and emerging artists, the instructors that teach them, and established artists looking to develop stronger studio habits. The companion website, www.creativepracticesbook.com, provides links to artists' websites and further information.

Provides concrete guidance, grounded in scientific literature, for researchers to build creative confidence in their work.

An interactive journal that serves as a joyful, inspirational guide to building the life you've always dreamed of, using the principles and creative process of an award-winning product designer. Life, just like a design problem, is full of constraints -- time, money, age, location, and circumstances. You can’t have everything, so you have to be creative to make what you want and what you need co-exist. Design the Life You Love is a joyful, inspirational guide to building the life you’ve always wanted, using the principles and creative process of an award-winning product designer. Through four steps that reveal hidden skills and wisdom, anyone can design a life they love!

This book addresses one of the most exciting and innovative developments within higher education: the rise in prominence of the creative arts and the accelerating recognition that creative practice is a form of research. The book considers how creative practice can lead to research insights through what is often known as practice-led research. But unlike other books on practice-led research, it balances this with discussion of how research can impact positively on creative practice through research-led practice. The editors posit an iterative and web-like relationship between practice and research. Essays within the book cover a wide range of disciplines including creative writing, dance, music, theatre, film and new media, and the contributors are from the UK, US, Canada and Australia. The subject is approached from numerous angles: the authors discuss methodologies of practice-led research and research-led practice, their own creative work as a form of research, research training for creative practitioners, and the politics and histories of practice-led research and research-led practice within the university. The book will be invaluable for creative practitioners, researchers, students in the creative arts and university leaders. Key Features*The first book to document, conceptualise and analyse practice-led research in the creative arts and to balance it with research-led practice*Written by highly qualified academics and practitioners across the creative arts and sciences *Brings together empirical, cultural and creative approaches*Presents illuminating case histories of creative work and practice-led research

In Research in the Creative and Media Arts, Desmond Bell looks at contemporary art and design practice, arguing that research activity is now a vital part of the creative dynamic. Today, creative arts and media students are expected to develop a range of research competencies and critical capacities in their creative project work. This book plots the basis for a research culture in the creative and media arts. It provides an illuminating genealogy of artistic research, revealing the intimate connections between art and science over the centuries and identifying some of the founding figures of practice-based artistic research. Bell explores the research that artists undertake through a number of case studies, talking to a range of contemporary artists and media makers about their work and the role research plays in this. He also traces the dialogues between art practice and a range of other humanity disciplines, such as history, anthropology and critical theory. His analysis reveals how contemporary art practice is now so locked into a set of interlocutions about process and purpose that it increasingly resembles a research practice in and of itself. Research in the Creative and Media Arts is a comprehensive overview of the relationship between research and practice that is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers in the fields of art and design, art history and visual culture.

This book explores learning in the arts and highlights ways in which art and creativity can ignite learning in schools, informal learning spaces, and higher education. The focus is on learning in, with, and through the arts. Written from a range of international perspectives, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Art Learning and Creativity draws upon the fields of cognitive science, art education, technology and digital arts; the learning sciences; and museum studies to explore the theoretical underpinnings of artistic creativity and inspiration, and provide empirical explorations of mechanisms that support learning in the arts. Critical factors that help to facilitate the creative process are considered, and chapters highlight connections between research and practice in art learning. This volume offers a rich variety of positions and projects which underpin creativity in schools, museums, and other venues. An illustrative text for researchers and educators in the arts, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Art Learning and Creativity demonstrates how artistic ways of thinking and working with artists empower art learners and support their needs and opportunities across the lifespan.