Te Auahatanga me te Ara Auaha Creativity and Creative Process: The Bright Creative Life

Abstract

Discussions on creativity available in the English language are dominated by western theorists and western philosophical understandings. These understandings emphasise individuality, innovation, the rational, and the necessity of a creative product. However, feminist, non-western and indigenous theorists assert the importance of culture, community and the non-rational, such as the spiritual, and place less emphasis on creative products. A Feminist Participatory approach informed by Indigenous Peoples' worldviews (FP-I) provides a lens through which creativity may be viewed with an appreciation of the wider lived experience of the creative person. For a dance practitioner or researcher, this wider lived experience may include rational and scientifically verifiable elements, but also non-rational elements of relationship, community, culture, spirituality and the natural world. The Bright Creative Life approach arises out of such a worldview and includes preferring, practising, gathering, selecting, finding quiet spaces, laying creative work aside, and ritual, prayer and meditation.