I've been in the creativity business for 30 years, having graduated from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College in 1980 (BA - first minor in creative studies), 1983 (Graduate certificate) and 2001(Master of Science in Creativity and Change Leadership).
Over the years there have been tremendous changes in the field. The number of practitioners and books have been growing steadily since the early 1990's; some do a service to our profession, others not.
Creativity is becoming a professional competence - there are those that use it in their day to day work and others who specialize in supporting those individuals, and others, be at their best. What's missing from the creativity profession,though are ethics and competencies by which creativity professionals abide: what are the ethics creativity professionals follow? what beliefs do we have? what are our competencies? In a bottom line fashion the question is this: What are clients guaranteed of when they engage a creativity professional? Why would they engage one at all? What's the difference between a creative professional and a creativity professional?
I began looking into this in earnest during the summer of 2009, and presented my initial findings and thoughts at the Mindcamp just north of Toronto a few weeks ago. Reception was profound with tremendous encouragement to keep the conversation, newly opened, going. The earlier blog post contained some of my findings - there will be more to follow...
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Marci:
ReplyDeleteI have very mixed feelings about your thoughts here. On one hand, what could be wrong with standards (especially high standards)?
On the other hand, this sort of thinking is typically used to turn an endeavor into a profession that then suffers from all of the pathologies that all formalized structures suffer from. They become hidebound, calcified, resistant to change. They become exclusionary. They engage in turf wars with adjacent professions and institutions. One can point to many other professional groups as examples (MDs vs. LPNs, ophthalmologists vs. optometrists, OB/GYNs vs. midwives...)
I must tell you that I lean away from the creation of standards especially in a profession that does not involve life or death decisions. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Let the clients and beneficiaries of your services decide the value. This seems more in keeping with the distributed-power zeitgeist of our internet age and, frankly, much more consistent with the attitude and ethos of creatives and innovators.