Creative Agency Research Articles

On the [translated] record: Journalistic translation and creative agency in India’s multilingual reporting

This paper considers what influences the translation process for writers in Indian journalism: tools that guide, and structures that constrict. From in-depth interviews with Indian journalists conducted in New Delhi from 2018 to 2019, I examine creative agency in the context of multilingual reporting in India, to examine news stories not just as factual bytes of daily events but as creatively written short essays of journalistic translation. Indian journalists offer perspective on their writing processes from the initial assignment of a story idea to the fruition of the piece in publication. This research delves into how Indian journalists think about the multilingual reporting they do and the attention they pay to journalistic translation when moving from a spoken Hindi interview to an English-language article. I broadly interrogate the skopos, or aim, of journalistic translation in the context of Indian news, noting the vernacular push-and-pull of multilingual reporting disseminated in Hindi and English, or other Indian languages. I investigate how Indian journalists cope with moments of the “untranslatable” in their everyday work, if and when they recognize situations of journalistic translation, and what they consider to be underlying impacts of translated news in multilingual reporting from India. Journalists have creative agency in the way they share information that influences the skopos of multilingual reporting. Thus, the language transferred from sources to readers takes on new meanings that can have major impacts on audiences’ reading of news stories.

Music As Extended Agency: On Notation And Entextualization IN Improvised Music

ABSTRACT This article presents results from fieldwork with two groups of improvisers using different forms of notation in their creative practice. Such practices raise fundamental questions about the relation of notation to performance. Drawing on theories of entextualization in linguistic anthropology, I argue that, contrary to many arguments for a performative understanding of music, performance is partly about creating something that has an identifiable existence, transcending space and time. The notations and compositional systems used by improvisers are a means of achieving this entextualization of their musical utterances. One of the main findings of my fieldwork was that improvisers frequently speak of acting ‘in service of the music’, a phrase commonly associated with composition-centred musical discourse. Drawing on the work of Karin Barber and Alfred Gell, I argue that this idea represents a process of entextualization that is not a negation of performers’ creative agency, but an extension of it.

Virtual Reality as a Vehicle for Reimagining Creative Literacies, Research and Pedagogical Space

In recent years, virtual reality technologies have become increasingly accessible; and in educational contexts, this technology has the potential to expand the literacy of creativity and provide re-orientations for pedagogical thinking and meaning making. Using the Parallaxic Praxis methodology (Sameshima et al., 2019) to generate data understandings in a research project exploring teacher creativity, artist￾researchers used Google Tilt Brush to investigate: How do entanglements of language, literacy and VR alter the pedagogical space of creativity? How is creativity enabled in VR? And, what does this dynamic pedagogical space offer to educators? Pedagogical sites of learning from the virtual renderings generated new perspectives to examine the intersections of creative agency, literacy and expression, learning spaces and research design—all of which are increasingly important as educational practises evolve in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Creative Agencies in Participatory Sound Art: Two case studies

This article explores the distribution of creative agency between artists and audiences in participatory sound art through the lens of perspective theory. In contemporary creativity studies, perspective is taken to mean the way in which an actor’s perception of the environment is structured by their intention to act. According to Vlad Glaveanu, constructing and taking new perspectives constitutes a necessary condition for creative acts as it reveals new affordances of the creator’s materials. In this article, I investigate the perspectives of sound artists and participants through ethnographic case studies of Katrine Faber’s participatory performance Let Us Sing Your Place and Benoît Maubrey’s interactive Speaker Sculptures. In Faber’s performance, the participants use their voices to recreate the soundscape of a place described by one of them. Maubrey’s sculptures are large structures built out of loudspeakers through which the participants can play their own sounds via Bluetooth, phone lines or directly plugged-in microphone. Analysing ethnographic observations and interviews with artists and participants in the two case studies, I discuss how their perspectives are constructed and communicated through artwork’s materialities. Exploring the particularity of perspectives induced by participatory sound art, I show how it challenges a number of conventional ideas about sound and auditory culture.

Indonesia’s Creative Economy Agency’s Communication Strategy in Supporting Creative City

The creative economy as the basis for a city to grow has led to a concept of creative city. Communication and support from all stakeholders, including the government, economic actors, academics, and the community, are necessary to foster creative behavior in the city’s economy. This paper examined the Indonesian government’s role through its creative economy agency in engaging relevant stakeholders through its communication campaign program. This paper employed a qualitative research analysis to identify the communication strategy. Interview, participatory observation, and library study were data collection tools. The research finding shows that the creative economy agency adopted the communication campaign strategy, consisting of situation analysis, plan, implementation, and assessment. A campaign program called “socialization and facilitation of registration of intellectual property rights for creative economic actors” had enabled creative actors to build awareness regarding the necessity of having their intellectual property protected, which becomes the basis for the creative city.

A Manifesto for Posthuman Creativity Studies

This article advances a manifesto for a posthuman creativity studies that highlights the emergent, collective, and ecological aspects of creativity, offering propositions that problematize any individualist or human-exceptionalist approach to the field. We attend to a range of extra/ordinary affects, encounters, and modalities for expanding creative possibilities in the 21st century. Beginning with a recognition that creativity must be rewilded from its current capture in economic and educational discourses, we argue for more sustainable re-engagements. In the specificity of these encounters, we manifest 10 commitments to posthuman creativity as the foundations for a more dynamic and more-than-human creative agency.

Self-regulation practice of advertising industry in Malaysia: Outlook of industry players awareness and application.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of advertising practitioners and advertising agencies creative teams in Malaysia specifically within the process of modifying creative output with reference to the two self-regulatory rules that govern the advertising industry in Malaysia. Players in the industry are required to take responsibility and abide by the rules outlined in two Advertising Self-Regulations (ASR) that are part of the Malaysian Code of Advertising Practise and the Communications and Multimedia Content Forum of Malaysia. In this study, in-depth interviews were conducted as a part of the qualitative method to get critical feedback on the holistic view of ASR. A total of nine informants representing three categories of senior industry insiders such as regulators, advertising practitioners and creative agency members were involved through in-depth interviews through the selection of purposive sampling method. The study has revealed many advertising practitioners have recognised their internal and external duties to guarantee a favourable image from the creative material they generated or authorised. Which have also reflected mostly positive outcomes through the concept of knowledge, relevancy, and acceptance of the code of practise.

A Web-Based Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Program (Strong & Deadly Futures) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander School Students: Protocol for a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial.

BackgroundThere are no available school-based alcohol and drug prevention programs with evidence of effectiveness among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth. To address this, we codeveloped the Strong & Deadly Futures well-being and alcohol and drug prevention program in partnership with an Indigenous creative design agency and 4 Australian schools.ObjectiveThis paper presents the protocol to evaluate the effectiveness of Strong & Deadly Futures in reducing alcohol and other drug use and improving well-being among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth.MethodsThe target sample will be 960 year 7 and 8 students from 24 secondary schools in Australia, of which approximately 40% (384/960) will identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The study design is a 2-group, parallel cluster randomized controlled trial with allocation concealment. Recruited schools will be block randomized (ratio 1:1), stratified by geographical remoteness, by an independent statistician. Schools will be randomized to receive Strong & Deadly Futures, a web-based alcohol and drug prevention and social and emotional well-being program that delivers curriculum-aligned content over 6 lessons via an illustrated story, or health education as usual (control). Control schools will be supported to implement Strong & Deadly Futures following trial completion. Surveys will be administered at baseline, 6 weeks, 12 months, and 24 months (primary end point) post baseline. Primary outcomes are alcohol use (adapted from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey), tobacco use (Standard High School Youth Risk Behavior Survey), and psychological distress (Kessler-5 Psychological Distress Scale). Secondary outcomes are alcohol and drug knowledge and intentions, alcohol-related harms, binge drinking, cannabis use, well-being, empowerment, appreciation of cultural diversity, and truancy.ResultsThe trial was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council in January 2019, approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Sydney (2020/039, April 2020), the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of New South Wales (1620/19, February 2020), the Western Australian Aboriginal Health Ethics Committee (998, October 2021), and the ethics committees of each participating school, including the New South Wales Department of Education (2020170, June 2020), Catholic Education Western Australia (RP2020/39, November 2020), and the Queensland Department of Education (550/27/2390, August 2021). Projected dates of data collection are 2022-2024, and we expect to publish the results in 2025. A total of 24 schools have been recruited as of submission of the manuscript.ConclusionsThis will be the first cluster randomized controlled trial of a culturally inclusive, school-based alcohol and drug prevention program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth; therefore, it has significant potential to address alcohol and other drug harms among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth.Trial RegistrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12620001038987; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=380038&isReview=trueInternational Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/34530

Youth Creative Agency Toward Art Museum Futurity: Re-imagining Inclusive Practices Through Youth Participatory Action Research

ABSTRACT Teen-centric programs have proliferated in art museums across the U.S. and much of Europe, and scores of these programs target young people—and youth of color, specifically—as a way to grow museum audiences and relevance to a diverse public. However, few studies examine how teen-centric programs impact the youth involved and how they make sense of their experiences. In this article, teen and adult co-authors show how they used youth participatory action research as a critical pedagogical and methodological framework to (1) co-create spaces for youth participation and (2) generate youth narratives and research analyses within the context of an art museum teen advisory program in the U.S. The findings and reflections on practice offer critical insights on youth agency and the possibilities and limitations of inclusivity discourses within neoliberal art museums.

Against Integrity: A Feminist Theory of Moral Rights, Creative Agency, and Attribution

Against Integrity: A Feminist Theory of Moral Rights, Creative Agency, and Attribution

Understanding Creative Musical Agency Through Composition in Secondary Instrumental Ensembles

Understanding Creative Musical Agency Through Composition in Secondary Instrumental Ensembles

The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination

The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination

LEARNERS’ AGENCY IN FOCUS: INTRODUCING THE 21ST CENTURY ACADEMIC WRITING PEDAGOGY IN INDONESIA

The notion of transformative learning has been echoed by the Indonesian government in the National Standard of Education (2020, 2015). A shift from the teacher-centric into the student-centric pedagogy is a prerequisite to trigger the learning transformation. However, in the field of English language teaching (ELT) in particular, there remains a firm reliance on the dogma of modern linguistics that positions linguistic description and grammatical mastery as the key for meaning-making mechanism. Consequently, such monolithic ELT pedagogy expects a steady compliance from the students in relation to learning, and thus learners’ creative agency was removed. This paper is a reflection on how the learning of academic writing unit was approached differently by using a multisensorial-multicognitive pedagogy as informed by neuroscience, thus breaking away from linguistics as the sole informing theory for learning language. This new academic writing pedagogy embraces language learning as a complex system, thus incorporating other bio-psychological components in learning such as rhythm, intonation, movement, emotion, and aesthetics. This paper highlights how these components were used creatively in the three innovative learning tools – Verbotonal Approach, Reading for Emotions, and Aesthetics – to support agentive learning practice in academic writing course. This new pedagogy was developed in a doctoral research project in an Australian university and was proven effective to help students transform their learning practices.

The Art Model as Performer

In this paper, I argue that modelling occupies a curious role in the art making process, and that it constitutes a hybrid art form. Modelling is intriguingly under-research in aesthetics, despite it being a cornerstone of art education and deeply involved in various art practices. It functions both within a supportive role to further the goals of art making, while also retaining the creative agency and performance of the professional model upon which the artist, photographer, or wider crew rely. This ability entails not merely helping to steer a posing session, but experimenting with and adapting to any unexpected issues that arise in the course of the session. To understand the salient performative qualities of modelling, I first focus on expert movement, improvisation, and style. Second, I reflect on how modelling corresponds to creativity and skill. Finally, I propose that the model is a performer, and that, ultimately, modelling should be recognised as a hybrid collaborative art form which incorporates qualities of various performing arts.

Being the environment: Conveying environmental fragility and sustainability through Indigenous biocultural knowledge in contemporary Indigenous Australian science fiction

In contemporary Indigenous Australian fiction, all (non-)human animals, plants and the land are interconnected and interdependent. They are aware that they are not in the environment but are the environment. The planet and its non-human inhabitants have a creative agency and capacity for experience that demands our ethical consideration. In this article we investigate how Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Tribe novels and Ellen van Neerven’s novella Water empower environmental awareness by promoting sustainability and protection of the environment – within their fictional worlds and beyond. We argue that the human–nature relationship explored in these science fiction texts conveys the importance of Indigenous biocultural knowledge for resolving twenty-first-century global challenges. We clarify the role of fictional texts in the broader cultural debate on the power and importance of Indigenous biocultural knowledge as a complement to western (scientific) understanding and communication of environmental vulnerability and sustainability. Contemporary Indigenous Australian literature, this article shows, evokes sympathy in readers, inspires an ecocentric view of the world and thus paves the path for a sustainable transformation of society, which has been recognized as the power of fiction. Indigenous Australian fiction texts help us to rethink what it means to be human in terms of our relationship to other living beings and our responsibility to care for our planet in a holistic and intuitive way.

The Poetics and Politics of Custom: Law, Literature, and Time

The Poetics and Politics of Custom: Law, Literature, and Time

International students and Ukrainian universities: dilemmas of agency and change

ABSTRACT This paper examines the agency of international students in the context of university transformations in post-Soviet Ukraine. Conflict-driven political, social and economic changes in the country have laid the groundwork for the redesign of institutional policies related to the internationalization of Ukraine’s higher education. However, it is not clear to what extent local universities have managed to engage the creative power and agency of international students in these transformations. By examining how international students’ agency is constructed at 12 public universities, and triangulating comparative findings with data from the Ukrainian State Centre for International Education at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, and from publicly available sources including social media, this study delves into the complexities of student agency development in the postcolonial discourses at Ukrainian universities. On a theoretical level, this paper enriches the knowledge base on tensions between institutional and human agencies in international higher learning.

Creative agency in action

Interested in exploring a form of learner agency that moves beyond a focus on using it to get better results? This article explores what happened when Year 11 students in a cross-curricular course were granted full control of their learning, and offers three strategies for starting out on a creative-agency path.

Effect of a waiting room communication strategy on imaging rates and awareness of public health messages for low back pain

Abstract Background Few studies have investigated the effects of waiting room communication strategies on health-care behavior. Objective We aimed to determine the effect of a waiting room communication strategy, designed to raise awareness of potential harms of unnecessary imaging, on lumbar imaging rates in the emergency department (ED). Methods We conducted a controlled experimental study with a replicated time series design. The design included a 6-week run-in time. Following this there were alternating 1-week intervention and control periods. The intervention group received a communication strategy describing the potential harms of unnecessary imaging for low back pain, shown on a 55” LCD screen positioned in the ED waiting room. The communication strategy was designed by a creative innovation agency and included five digital posters and a patient leaflet. The control group received standard messaging for the waiting room at the time, shown on the same 55” LCD screen, and access to the patient leaflet. The primary outcome was the number and proportion of people presenting to ED with low back pain who received at least one lumbar imaging test, measured using routinely collected ED data. Secondary patient-reported outcomes (patient satisfaction and awareness of campaign messages) were collected from a sample of people presenting for any condition who responded to a text-message-based survey. Results For the imaging outcome, 337 people presenting to ED with low back pain were included over a 4-month period (intervention n = 99; control n = 238). All had available data on lumbar imaging. Use of lumbar imaging was 25% in those exposed to the communication strategy [95% confidence interval (CI) = 18% to 35%] compared with 29% in those exposed to the standard waiting room messaging [95% CI = 23% to 35%; odds ratio (OR) = 0.83, 95% CI = 0.49 to 1.41]. For the patient-reported outcomes, 349 patients presenting to ED for any condition responded to the survey (intervention n = 170; control n = 179; response rate = 33%). There was uncertain evidence that the intervention increased awareness of the communication strategy leaflet (OR = 2.00, 95% CI = 0.90 to 4.47). Other measures did not suggest between-group differences in patient satisfaction or awareness of the campaign messages. Conclusion A communication strategy displayed in the ED waiting room may slightly reduce the proportion of patients with low back pain who receive lumbar imaging, although there is uncertainty due to imprecision. The campaign did not appear to increase awareness of campaign messages or affect patient satisfaction in a sample of patients presenting to the ED for any reason. Larger studies should investigate whether simple, low-cost waiting room communication strategies can raise awareness of unnecessary healthcare and influence health-care quality. Trial registration ACTRN12620000300976, 05/03/2020

Taking wing: Vulnerability and queer/trans resistance in The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the vulnerabilities of groups including lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals, as well as migrants. Zeyn Joukhadar’s novel, The Thirty Names of Night (2020), comprises two alternating narratives of three generations of Syrian Americans questing to establish their identities in societies that quell otherness. Drawing on the insights of Jean-Michel Ganteau, I trace the novel’s representations of vulnerability, but supplement Ganteau’s theoretical analysis with another category, that of resistance, illustrated by the intersectional queer and trans resistance Joukhadar’s text limns. This analysis is informed by work by Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam. I argue that while The Thirty Names of Night represents the vulnerability of non-hegemonic characters, it emphasizes the resistance, collective strength and creative agency of such individuals. Reading this internationally published text during a pandemic enables an empathetic understanding of intersectional struggles to prevail against prejudices and othering.