Creativity, Health and Sustainability: A wholearchy of learning

In order to create a learning environment which prioritises health and wellbeing we propose a focus on creativity over content as an approach to structuring support and skills development. Building on our collective experience in devising engagement activities and training programmes for students and staff at universities, arts schools, and conservatoires, we suggest ways of embedding a creative approach at the outset.

In this creative-critical paper, we offer reflections on forms of learning that grow organically, and where all elements are embedded in the system and support each other as a wholearchy rather than a hierarchy. This is learning that grows like a body, from the inside, all limbs at once, rather than sequentially. Underpinning this is what we perceive to be the threefold contribution of the performing arts to the wider field of knowledge: a grounding in embodied practice, collaboration as the main way of relating and an orientation towards adaptability to prepare practitioners for a continuously changing professional landscape. What we have learned from teaching in an arts context can be useful for people in all educational contexts.

We draw on contemporary performance literature that focuses on practical knowledge and how this knowledge emerges. We explore ideas around creativity, especially in its everyday version, as a practice that enhances wellbeing. We reflect on projects around our key themes of embodiment, collaboration and adaptability, all of them situated in the performing arts. Our interdisciplinary and practice-led approach cuts through the work we are presenting, as these projects allow for rich conversations across differing disciplinary positions.

We ask how considerations of our own creative health, and the creative health of our discipline can be entangled within our teaching and learning context, offering recommendations for future curricula (and the challenges they raise). In doing so, we examine how the performing arts are uniquely placed to provide spaces of healthy creativity for an uncertain future.