A space where ideas can take shape in the creative arts

I’m an Australian novelist who had writer’s block during my PhD in creative arts and found myself flailing so wildly that I turned to neuroscience for help. I later turned this crisis and the resulting research into a book, The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: A Writer Looks at Creativity and Neuroscience. Since then, I’ve continued to dig through neuroscience to find out what they know about promoting creativity.

I didn’t think my fascination would lead to the creation of an international ‘creativity bar’.

I began using my research to teach creative writing, which is traditionally taught without any neuroscience, first at the University of Sydney, then at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art, at the invitation of the head of the school, Stephen Sewell, himself a playwright. , who understood that neuroscience offers us a useful way to think about creativity. When a group of neuroscientists spent a year studying the effectiveness of our course with a series of 22 objective before-and-after tests and a subjective test, I was thrilled and even more so with the results. It turned out to be our doctrine strengthened the flexibility of the students’ ideas by 34 percent and their originality by 65 percent.

I didn’t think I’d be teaching anyone other than writers, but that research allowed Kim Cunio, head of the School of Music at the Australian National Universityinvited me to teach his composers to be more creative. I was initially reluctant, but I had long been aware that despite the difference in our results, we practitioners, regardless of our disciplines, fall into a common language when we talk about the task of creating every day.

So for three fascinating years I taught composers. It was Covid-19so the classes were on Zoom, but the students often were too musiciansalways wrote favorable reports afterwards, which confirmed the findings of the research for me. Cunio said: “Composers are so fragile as they acquire their skills that what is often most difficult is the task of keeping the inner songbird alive as they grow – this project was a big part of that process.”

The composers were eager to share what the creative process was like for them, which resonated with my practice, so I felt like I had found my tribe with them. To keep in touch with them, I decided to start a “creativity bar,” so called because by then they were often performing in bars, and I set it to once a month. As the musicians got busier, I started inviting the poets, novelists, visual artists, directors, and screenwriters I came across during my research.

I knew from the beginning that we wouldn’t talk about the ideas that emerged in the final work because, when so newly formed, they are vague and often only felt. Artists learn that if they are put into words too early, they disappear. For many of us, ideas only become clear at the end. The work must grow within the artist in its own time.

What we are talking about instead is the felt experience of associative thinking, so different from linear, logical, analytical – in Heidegger’s word, ‘calculative’ – thinking. We examine the emphasis that associative thinking places on ending all other thinking so that it evaporates when that rule is broken; the dependence on meditation, that is, often knowing nothing, just a sense of knowing (as Kenneth Bowers et al. wrote); his unexpected jumps; the unsolicited emotions it evokes; connecting seemingly unrelated, often ridiculous things; it conjures up disturbingly lifelike images and even voices. After all, it takes place in a completely different brain network than analytical thinking – which, purely from experience, seems to have a different modality.

As the bar for creativity continues to rise, as a practitioner I have discovered what a joy and relief it is to share common experiences with this strange thinking – for example when the work seems dull and uninspired and the most bizarre thing we have ever undertaken, and yet we feel strangely compelled to stick with it. This compulsion is always a sign, I have learned, that the work expresses something essential to us, and perhaps it will ultimately resonate with others. At this stage we can all agree that it’s tempting to give up, but then comes the flood of relief when the work suddenly comes to life and talks back. These exchanges about the process evoke the same sense of relief that anyone might feel as they groan and cheer wildly with colleagues at a Friday night drink.

Visual artist Patricia Townsend said: “I was wondering if the findings of my research with visual artists would also apply to poets, novelists, composers and other forms of art. Then Sue Woolfe contacted me and I got the chance to find out. The creativity bar has given me a valuable space to meet creative people from other disciplines and share the highs and lows of what it is like to be involved in creating a new work.”

Since a key element of the bar is that everyone is often in the early stages of work, I knew these revelations needed to be protected, so I decided not to invite critics or learned onlookers, no matter how well-intentioned. Everyone had to be equally vulnerable.

When I invite an artist, I make sure he or she agrees that what we talk about is never shared with others. For this reason I do not record sessions, although I recently broke this practice when I invited the Portuguese potter and PhD student Paulo Tiago Cebeca to talk to us and he needed a recording of the session for his candidacy. I had received so many apologies from the group that I offered to share the recording, but I carefully gave all participants 24 hours’ notice to object.

I always propose topics that can vary anywhere in practice; I often invite a member who has just opened an exhibition, published a book or composed a piece, to talk about what it was like to have ‘spectators’ – that old-fashioned word we find so useful – and occasionally I invite a speaker.

Composer Wendy Suiter said of the bar: “To have others deeply interested in my own insights after years of working in the abstract, elusive medium of music, and the joy of having our stumbling words taken seriously by the other practicing artists, as we struggle to find a The way of putting such inner processes and feelings into words, honestly sharing our own thoughts, creative struggles and processes, and sometimes our products, is a very affirming experience.”

As research continues to inform our discussions, I am using the University of Sydney’s Zoom site. The creativity bar is now halfway through its third year and seems stronger than ever. Every year I check to see if the artists want to continue, and every year they do.

Does talking about doing our work improve the final work? Not directly, but if a work of art seems artless, fellow artists know that behind it are not only the years of learning the discipline (an estimated average of ten years, but I would say a lifetime), but also of learning the skills required by associative art. by thinking them over and putting them into practice patiently, without losing courage. I would like to think that the bar helps us achieve tenacity.

It’s only recently that I’ve realized the truth of what one artist said: Where else in the world is there another place where we as practitioners can share our concerns without judgment or shame? And if that’s true – why is that so?

Sue Woolfe is an honorary fellow in the discipline of English and Writing at the University of Sydney. She is the author of five fictional works, including Leaning towards infinity (Ligature e-books), which won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Prize for the Pacific region in its original publication year, and came second in awards including the Commonwealth Prize and the US Tiptree Award for Speculative Fiction.

To receive advice and insights from academics and university staff straight to your inbox every week, sign up for the Campus Newsletter.