EXHIBITION STATEMENT

“Who are you as a creative?” Students in the Creatives In Progress workshop were tasked to answer this broad and difficult question as the course navigated aspects of creative life. In this workshop, Arts Faculty supported students’ creative development using three strategies: creative and career exploration, creative professionalization, and development of a personally tailored creative portfolio. Along the way, students learned new strategies for improving interview and presentation skills for formal and informal situations, best practices in career planning as informed by their values and (creative) interests, and how best to present their creative work for a variety of audiences.
 
In addition to drawing on Arts Faculty expertise in artistic/professional practice and curation, this workshop educated students on best creative practices as published by a variety of scholars. Students engaged with the work of scholars such as American-Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi whose creative concept of “flow,” a mental state in which one is highly focused, to understand how their creative paths help achieve ideal modes of productivity. Students learned from MIT’s Design Thinking Program methods for creating projects using “Ideation” and “Prototyping” which help refine ideas. Using elements of Stanford Designing professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evan’s Designing Your Life workbook, students were able to identify what creative processes helped them engage in this “flow,” and construct a “creative compass” that enabled them to set career and life goals.