While makerspaces are rightly recognized as places for getting people of all ages together to experiment with materials, technologies, processes, and narratives, they are inevitably limited by physical resources of time, space, and money. The appealingly inclusive concept of a “makerspace mindset”—that is, a worldview that admits the possibility of gathering and collaborating a creative fellowship without borders—can facilitate the goal of a global learning community. To meet that goal, however, new thinking must identify how to equitably direct efforts toward a more expansive and sustainable culture for creating. Articulating how and why the vast array of events, environments, tools, or toys that encourage people to create can promote making and connecting is the first step. This article elaborates on our existing work regarding platforms for creativity to consider those principles the makerspace mindset must manifest to encourage learning for a lifetime. We argue that imagining the makerspace mindset as a key plank in platforms for creativity can inspire the development of more and better ways for us to learn about ourselves and others by making and sharing. Framing the makerspace mindset with platforms for creativity illuminates the potential for making and learning to grow creative, curious individuals who together will form an engaged society of learners at large.
We established the Creativity Everything lab at Ryerson University in 2018 as a place that would support and unlock ‘all kinds of creativity for all kinds of people’. In this article, we detail the transdisciplinary roots of our work, and outline some of our activities and the thinking behind them. As a team of researchers developing projects and experiences that embrace a wide range of creators and creative practices, we are fashioning the lab to facilitate the actions of doing and making in a range of spheres: in everyday life, professional creative practice, and in learning and research. Three case studies – our ongoing efforts at supporting learning for students, a research project on platforms for creativity, and the community outreach of the 2019 Creativity Everything FreeSchool – explore how teaching, research, events, and collaborations in multiple media intersect in a multifaceted system for relating to and engaging with creativity. Our studies suggest that creative practice-as-research helps people make connections that fuel curiosity and experimentation. We argue that engaging in multiple perspectives of the “everything” of creativity better equips our students, university, and public to reap its benefits and rewards.
We established the Creativity Everything Lab at Ryerson University in 2018 as a place that would support and unlock “all kinds of creativity for all kinds of people.” In this article, we detail the transdisciplinary roots of our work and outline some of our activities and the thinking behind them. As a team of researchers developing projects and experiences that embrace a wide range of creators and creative practices, we are fashioning the lab to facilitate the actions of doing and making in a range of spheres: in everyday life, professional creative practice, and in learning and research. Three case studies – our ongoing efforts at supporting learning for students, a research project on platforms for creativity, and the community outreach of the 2019 Creativity Everything #FreeSchool – explore how teaching, research, events, and collaborations in multiple media intersect in a multifaceted system for relating to, and engaging with, creativity. Our studies suggest that creative practice as research helps people make connections that fuel curiosity and experimentation. We argue that engaging in multiple perspectives of the “everything” of creativity better equips our students, university, and public to reap its benefits and rewards.
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