Fashioning cross-cultural creativity: Investigating the situated pedagogy of creativity

Creativity can be regarded as universally and internationally endorsed as a key trait for students and graduates across disciplines. This endorsement comes despite differing definitions of what creativity is and how it may manifest itself in creative individuals and products and in different contexts. The descriptor ‘creative’ has been applied to certain educational practices and institutions who claim advantage over others as mediators of creative education. This ‘creativity-branding’ is also evident at city and national level, with countries claiming competitive advantage for housing a high prevalence of creative people or products, often concentrated within ‘creative cities’. London is one such creative city with a reputation for fostering creativity especially within its long-established art schools. London has claims to being the location of several of the world’s most respected fashion schools and attracts students from the UK and internationally to study in its creative colleges. The diversity found within higher education institutes is often cited as part of their creative appeal, however there is evidence that students coming from cultures with differing definitions of creativity may find their work marginalised or negated. This paper explores London’s position as a creative city with respect to contemporary definitions of creativity across art and design, and discusses some of the issues educators in the creative arts face as we attempt to teach creative subjects in increasingly diverse classrooms and with an understanding of creativity as a culturally-situated practice.