Clowns, fuzzy worms and blooming flowers: becoming a ‘creative child’ through arts consumption

Abstract

ABSTRACT Focusing on three ‘Instagram-ready’ art installations, this article suggests that a special kind of consumer – the ‘creative child’ – is being developed at the intersection between immersive art spaces and social media technologies. Using a multi-method approach blending ethnography in art exhibitions and netnography on Instagram, the study elaborates on how a consumer ‘becoming’ – a never-ending process of forming the self – emerges from affordances of these environments that foster the elements of childlike creativity: imaginativeness, emotiveness and playfulness. It argues that ‘becoming’ goes beyond the social media performance of the self. Through approaching adult consumers as ‘creative children’, the study illustrates how the consumer is enabled to tap into creativity in novel ways, and how following the therapeutic ethos and reconnecting to the ‘inner child’ can create a sense of an open future, full of possibilities.