G325: Section A: Theoretical Perspectives in

Media
Question 1a)

Creativity
What skills did we
develop?
What is creativity?
• A work in progress – skills development and future projects?

• A sense of future direction for other projects?

• Sense of stylish and artistic development?

• Challenging conventions or replicating / furthering knowledge of them?

• Creativity is something unambiguously positive/ desirable

• “The making of the new and the rearranging of the old” (Bentley, 1997).
•Creativity involves thinking or behaving
imaginatively.
•The imaginative activity is purposeful – set
against a meaningful objective.
•The processes must generate something original

Relate this to your own coursework?

The creation of bringing something new into

existence – “this particular understanding of
creativity involves the physical making of
something, leading to some form of
communication, expression or revelation”. (David
Gauntlett)

Could talk about media language- mediation: how

you communicated a preferred meaning?
Creativity and Your Coursework

Creativity is often prescribed within social

boundaries – is it instrumental? Is it
controversial? Who is judging the creativity? Is
there an agenda? What is the ideology embedded
within this creativity?

In Media Studies your coursework is often

influenced by your
social/cultural/environmental/biographical
background and ideas – so how have you tried to
expand the boundaries of the social norm?
For your coursework you could look at your work’s:

• Composition and Framing (and all other micro elements)

• Abstract natures of communications and representations and identities
• Narrative
• Language and Rhetoric
• Layout

You must also take into account the technology you have used and how this has afforded you the
opportunities of being ‘creative’ in some of the above areas:

“If creativity is not inherent in human mental powers and is, in fact, social and situational, then
technological developments may well be linked to advances in the creativity of individual users”
(Banaji, Burn and Buckingham, 2006).
There is no absolute judgement. All judgements are
comparisons of one thing with another (Donald Laming).

In terms of your work is it a ‘knowledge object’ or an ‘art

object’ – what is its purpose and how have you
communicated this?
 Please think of these questions as
part of your 750 write up.
• Do you think you were creative (in terms of discussion on ppt) or not
throughout your coursework?
• Did the technology enhance your creativity or not?
• What ideas did you communicate and what stylistic techniques did
you use? How did it relate to your interests/vision of identity?
• Was your product influenced by your social environmental?
• Was this original or did you add something extra to an original media
text?
• Would you take any creative skills into future projects or have you
been influenced to engage these skills in any other projects?