Creative convergent culture: Practice to profession

Abstract

Two aims stem from the neopragmatist perspective employed in this research. The first is identifying and defining a creative convergent culture embedded in contemporary professions blossoming from visual communication technological improvements. The second is the challenges faced by creative educators trying to keep pace with this culture populated by technologically, organically educated students and incorporating both into their curricular and higher education structures. By collecting and interpreting data gleaned from creative professional interviews and a nationally (United States) distributed, post-secondary, creative educator survey, I was able to unravel the ideologies in disparate but intimately related academic fields, such as graphic design and mass communication. I found that the meta-disciplinary space of media arts (MA) encompasses student learning to navigate and produce informed aesthetics. Consequently, graduates who enter the creative professions are most successful if they are able to research problems, competently write and ethically design.