ABSTRACT
The importance of looking after our mental health has been a prominent topic of discussion nationally, regionally and locally since the United Kingdom experi-enced increased levels of stress and uncertainty caused and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. People working in the arts, culture and health sectors – such as health professionals, artist practitioners, academics, charities and volunteer groups – are concerned with how the pandemic has adversely and disproportion-ately impacted vulnerable members of society. Encouragingly, invested groups and stakeholders in non-clinical practice have reported on the successes of everyday creativity in the form of psychosocial programmes that tackle social isolation by using the arts and culture as non-clinical opportunities to improve well-being. This article focuses on the Lived Experience Network (LENs) to highlight how involving experts by experience in research provides deeper understanding of what works and what does not when co-creating meaningful everyday creativity to counter social isolation. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Notes from the Field.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic propelled the arts and leisure into crisis. Public and policy responses have shown positive adaptations and the potential of everyday creativity (EC) in response to restrictions. This is the first qualitative evidence review on EC in home-based arts. We reviewed over 2000 research papers published within the past 10 years. Nine papers met our inclusion criteria. Four domains of EC are identified (i) self-actualization;(ii) time, process and immersion;(iii) relationship building and connection;(iv) learning and development. EC in home-based arts is potentially transformative but also complex and contested. We offer a novel, multidimensional understanding of EC. Our findings are significant for shaping future research and policy in the arts and leisure, including advancing conceptual understandings of EC in leisure, highlighting the relationship between ‘elite’ and ‘everyday’ forms of creativity, and examining the role of EC in navigating crisis and restriction, and connections between EC and inequalities. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
In this paper I explore the way everyday forms of creativity responded to the first wave of the coronavirus. I argue that these creative responses did two things. First, they demonstrated the rich agency that ordinary people have in shaping and sharing their experience of lonely isolation. Second, through the creative works generated and circulated, a critical lens was placed on the way that the pandemic carried forward the inequalities inherent in modern systems of governance. The article is divided into two main sections: the first looks at a range of creative works made by ordinary people to reconnect them to the social world. The second section looks at the creative works that were explicitly politicized and activist in nature, turning loneliness into a political project.
ABSTRACT
For much of 2020, countries around the world fought against the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries went into lockdown to control the fast spread of the virus. The unusual restrictions and confinement of the lockdown brought about new challenges for people's everyday lives. With flexibility, adaptability, and problem-solving at the core of its nature, creativity has the potential to help people cope with harsh and uncertain circumstances. Were people more, the same, or less creative in their everyday life during the period of lockdown, and in which ways? What are the emotions and motivations underlying their creative or non-creative behaviors? The current study aims to explore these questions from a cross-cultural perspective. A total of 754 comparable employee samples from three Chinese and three German cities were asked about their moods during the lockdown period, their self-rated level of creativity in daily lives before and during the lockdown, and their motivations behind their creative activities. Significant increases in creativity were observed in all everyday activities in both countries with only two exceptions in the German sample. Despite minor differences, a common pattern was found across cultures: whereas the activating positive mood could directly lead to the increase in creativity in some everyday activities, such a direct Mood-Creativity link was limited in the activating negative mood circumstances. In such circumstances, motivation intervened to enable the link to creativity. It was also found that this indirect effect of motivation between mood and creativity was more pronounced with the German participants.