The Humanity of Creativity - QUT's decision to end Arts.

So for the first post I thought why not get into something that hits right at home. It has been close to three years since the VC at QUT (Peter Coaldrake) announced that he would close the then School of Humanities and Human Services and remove the option of a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Social Science from the course list. Alot of controversy surrounded the decision including some significant 'creative' accounting on behalf of QUT corporate to prove their case for the dismissal of the Arts program from QUT (for more on the story see Mark Bahnisch's blog entry back in 2007 on the issue). One of the more controversial statements from Professor Coaldrake on the decision relates to his belief in the future of the Creative Industries program. In a media release he said;

Professor Coaldrake said QUT's strength in humanities was its Creative Industries faculty at Kelvin Grove, which was internationally competitive."For us, that is the new humanities," he said.

The main focus of this post will be on this notion of creativity and how it works in our current economy. But before I do, I should mention that as 2009 draws to a close, the Humanities program (minus the Human Services which are now located in the Health faculty) ceases to exist. Along with it a group of academics and other staff within the school have lost their positions. Now it's a real shame, I think, to believe that we live in an age where the critical Arts are no longer needed. I for one studied Social Science and have almost completed my PhD in the discipline of Sociology (perhaps more alligned with Social Theory) and find that the critical skills (alongside some strong empirical research capabilities) makes you quite attractive to employers in research and policy design. Of course, a Bachelor of Arts is limited. But in my opinion, so is a straight Bachelor of Business, or dare I say, the much lauded Bachelor of Creative Industries.Indeed. we are getting to the stage that the piece of paper without the words 'honours' or 'masters' or even 'doctorate' is worth little.

And this is where the heart of this post. Creativity. Is there a problem with the Creative Industries? That is not the point of the post. I'm not one to stir up other disciplines and call them hopeless, useless, good for nothing, about as worthless as the New Zealand dollar at the moment (no cynicism intended here). In my opinion, all disciplines deserve their place in a University setting. Creative Arts indeed is one of them. At the expense of Social Science, Humanities, Critical Thought? Now we get to the meat and potatoes (ok...bad pun since I'm vegetarian).

What is the purpose for advancing the Creative Industries so? On this question in 2003, Thomas Osbourne (Sociologist from the UK) proposed an interesting argument. Using the Foucaldian approach from governmentality analysis Nikolas Rose, Osbourne contends in his paper Against Creativity that being creative has now become an obligation in our contemporary economy. Through various instruments of governmentality including expertise such as the 'psy sciences', the notion of 'being creative' has now become a type of capital. The ability to 'create', to innovate or think 'creatively' is a resource not just within the visual arts or other traditional industries that require it, but now pervades a multitude of industries. For Osbourne, creativity is an attempt to 're-enchant' the world against the mundane and banal conditions of advanced modernity (a problem that Weber foresaw). But like the Weberian analysis would point to, the eventual conclusion of such attempts is a commodification, a capitalisation or a corporatisation (to use other words) of creativity. Osbourne (2003: 523) writes that 'what we have is a romanticism and subjectivism tied to the very demands of rationalization (economic performance and efficiency) and 'science' (the expertises of creativity).'

What does this mean essentially? To put it bluntly and in terms understandable to the lay public, the once individualised nature (I dare not use the term authentic) of creativity has now become a commodity, something to be bought and sold and a domain now owned by the corporate world (Toby Miller for instance asks the question 'who owns Youtube again? For a lecture on the subject of Facebook and Myspace see here). To use political terminology however, we could also say that the 'obligation to be creative' (as Osbourne suggests) has now also become part of the neoliberal paradigm. On that point I do not want to dwell.

In my own research into self exploration and self authenticity, I find that within the 'self-help' industries, creativity is now a firmly implanted ideal. To become self-authentic, it is often touted that one must find their 'creative' outlet. It is almost as if you cannot become authentic within the self without finding 'the artist within' or the 'musician awaiting to burst out'. Such notions in my mind are indeed tied back into the wider discourse where being creative has become an ultimate moral ideal, but one that can be critiqued.

From this point of view and that of Osbourne or even the more recent piece by Toby Miller called From Creative to Cultural Industries (ruthlessly subtitled - Not all industries are cultural, but no industry is creative), we can begin to see why it is that QUT has taken the stance to enhance the Creative Industries and denounce the traditional humanities/social sciences. Inevitably, the corporate decision to remove the Arts program in favour of more focussed effort on the Creative is one based in an ideal which is now fundamentally part of neoliberal/economic rationalist paradigms and corporate dollars. Yet, with all this teaching on how to think creatively, who is teaching to think critically as part of the fundamental value core of the school?