The construction of everyday creative identity

Abstract

Exploring everyday creative identity is important because everyday creators are often recognized as problem solvers whose fluency and flexibility influences those in their networks. Researchers who study the nuanced circumstances that support everyday creative identity call for further study. Our model of everyday creative identity elaborates on existing theories with a focus on people who make things just because they want to. We predicated the model on qualitative interviews with everyday creators in England and the U.S. who discussed how they came to feel creative, speaking after they worked at their pursuits. Our analyses uncovered themes incorporating creative agency and impulse, contextual creative affordances, and sense of creative accomplishment as they feed into creative identity and self-efficacy. The resulting recursive model illustrates how acts of making come together to underscore everyday creative identity. We maintain that this gradation in understanding the formation of everyday creative identity is crucial in supporting everyday creators and those whose creative identities have yet to be formed.