Creative spaces in higher education

Abstract

This chapter addresses the problems that higher education as an organization has to face when creative spaces are established. Building spaces for creative education is complex and includes mental and affective dimensions for embodied, sensory and artistic practices to unfold throughout all disciplines. Creative spaces in education are material and discursive, and their establishment by means of ‘metamorphotic’ processes encompass the ways in which spaces are conceived, designed, used and understood. The consequences of these material–discursive practices in education have the potential to impact future creative industries in several ways: creative education might provide creative entrepreneurs with skills and knowledge. Secondly, a paradigm-change in education might influence policies at micro (educational institutions) and macro (governments) levels, leading decision makers’ attitudes and actual resolutions in a direction that is more open to arts-based spaces and original material frames. Thirdly, a socio-political mindset that is more open towards creative interventions might offer creative industries and entrepreneurs better employment opportunities. Even though needed, the metamorphosis of the educational space for creative purposes meets a number of practical challenges. The present chapter addresses these topics in a performative and associative style, by means of drama, disseminating original empirical data.