Reflection as creative process: Perspectives,challenges and practice

The role of reflection in the conservatoire curriculum

At the RCS we believe that our graduate ‘should be an excellent and reflective arts practitioner who leads, creates, achieves and innovates’. Reflection is given pride of place within our curricula. In the programme outcomes for our two undergraduate programmes in music (BMus and BEd), for example, a few keywords relating to learning appear consistently – these include scaffolding reflection in practice, praxis, theoretical knowledge and understanding as well as capacity for self-evaluation. Reflection is considered essential for the growth and personal development of an artist, and indispensable in helping students plan their artistic trajectory. It enables them to map their development within an ever-shifting landscape. Without observation and critical thought, no creative endeavour, process or project can be both successful and sustainable. Furthermore, our belief is that the processes of reflection underpin the practice of conceptual and embodied critical thinking, a skill essential to students at all times, but particularly in the last 2 years of their course when they have had the benefit of 2 years of foundational training, are beginning to find their own creative voices and to think in a more focussed way about the industry they plan to enter. At the RCS, critical thinking is foregrounded as a development and logical progression from reflection. In learning how to reflect on and evaluate their practice, students gradually progress to more independent critique informed by theoretical knowledge and understanding of the discipline. Reflection is thus intertwined with independent critique and theoretical knowledge as well as an understanding of the specific disciplines within which students are working.

Why is the practice of reflection so central to a conservatoire education? The reflective ability is a defining characteristic of the lifelong learner, encouraging and enhancing a questioning mind. It can occur at different points of the creative process (collaborative or otherwise) and it can have very different functions. Schön (1983, 1987) for example identifies ‘reflection-on-action’, ‘reflection-in-action’ and ‘reflection-through-action’. On one hand, other scholars such as Zeichner and Liston (1996) have also argued that a teacher’s reflective practice is central to developing their own capabilities and skills, defining them as active participants that that control of their own professional development. Students, however, often just assume that reflection comes ‘naturally’ and instinctively to excellent practitioners and that they do not need to think about it; that it cannot be taught or learned and that it is largely instinctive. On the other hand, our experience as teachers and practitioners has shown us that nothing can be further from the truth. In practice reflection is a specific skill that has to be learned in order for students to heighten their awareness of self, practice and context. Not only can reflection be taught – it must be taught, particularly in the contemporary conservatoire context if we are to develop creative and critical thinkers capable of developing and managing sustainable careers.

Students often approach their Conservatoire training with the specific intent of purely focussing on improving and enhancing their abilities in a specific instrument(s), and with the aim of becoming professional performers on graduation. For some students, the benefits of any activities that do not obviously advance this goal are non-existent. Within this context, they may consider the very concept of critical or reflective thought superfluous to their training as musicians, alien to their mind-set even, not stopping to consider how their own daily performing practice is in fact an embodied form of thinking. Furthermore, any time spent away from the practice room may well be considered lost time. As teachers, however, we know that reflection engages students in a deep and sustained conversation with their work process rather than just with the artistic product. More importantly, it underlines the significance of constantly re-evaluating and reviewing both working methods and outputs, and of developing an ability to locate and analyse a heightened experiential moment in their work, this being a quality they will find crucial in their working lives.

One of the main difficulties that we can experience when we try to ‘teach’ reflection to conservatoire students is a deep misunderstanding and abiding mistrust of what this might entail. Reflection is very often an activity that students perceive to be quite separate from their day-to-day artistic practice. From the outset, our main aim must, therefore, be to align and integrate reflection with creativity, to establish it as a process, as a ‘doing’ activity rather than as a distant, albeit assessable add-on. In other words, we must work hard to avoid abstracting reflection to the extent that it becomes estranged from practice. The challenge, as an educator, or facilitator, or ‘meddler-in-the-middle’ is to enable a process of acculturation to reflection that is genuinely aligned with practice, bearing in mind that the typical Conservatoire student generally just wants to ‘do’ and is reluctant to make time to ‘reflect’.

Reflection thus needs to be contextualised as an indispensable skill enabling students to make new connections and to explore and question their processes. As practitioners we know that some of our best ideas and our most creative moments occur in an uncertain space. By providing such experimental space in the curriculum in which reflection is an integral part, we can enable students to experience reflection as a creative attribute necessary to their professional practice, skills portfolio and ongoing self-evaluation. The ultimate aim is to enable thinking that, as Robinson puts it, ‘is a break with habitual patterns of thought’ (2001: location 2538). Teaching the art of reflection and enabling students to harness the power of the reflective process means teaching them to master a number of core but transferable skills (not necessarily always taught in this order): (1) articulation of a problem or question important to their practice; this entails knowledge of both their own material and its context, (2) documentation – information gathering, which can take place in any shape or form, followed by a process of systematizing how the information is presented (systems may be personal and allow students autonomy and ownership of processes), (3) problem-solving – investigating the underlying problem or question and (4) visualization – examination of options for next steps including possible consequences; projecting and imagining possible solutions.

Empowering students to explore their creative thought processes, and connecting those processes to their own practice, whether this relates directly to their performance training or to other areas of their work, ensures that they get a sense of the importance that independent thinking may have for their own personal development. At this point, it is hoped that the perceptive student sees the link between reflection and creativity. Furthermore, the process may also provide a practical and humanised context in which to connect reflection and practice, often outside students’ own specialist areas. Two examples of this approach to reflection at RCS are outlined later in the paper, focusing on interdisciplinary collaborative projects and work-based learning experiences.

Towards a framework for reflection as creative process

Creativity is commonly perceived, at least in popular consciousness, as almost exclusively the purview of artists and people working in the creative industries. Often, students perceive it as a mystical or even mythical quality, one that they either possess or do not. If they are pursuing a performing arts degree, many of them assume they are ‘creative’ in some way or another. Indeed, music students often see their creative identity as inextricably tied to their instruments, although creativity clearly should not be a key criterion reserved solely for the students’ principal discipline. Closer investigation and deeper conversations with students will generally demonstrate, however, that they are unwilling to interrogate the concept, let alone challenge or attempt to locate it more specifically. It is perhaps inevitable that students think they are ‘naturally’ or ‘intuitively’ creative without pausing to ask, in the words of Csikszentmihayli (1996), ‘where that creativity lies’, how it works and what defines it. It is within this context, therefore, that reflection becomes so important for a new undergraduate. It is our role and the task of reflection to challenge and deconstruct the concept that creativity is simply tied to performing ability, and to help students identify a range of creative spaces. Csikszentmihayli (1996: 50–51) argues that a creative person is ‘well trained’, possesses ‘an enormous amount of knowledge’ in a specific field and is able to ‘adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.’

Creativity is rooted in reflection and vice versa, a link not immediately obvious to students. Csikszentmihayli (1996: 80, 95, 105) argues that the driver for the creative process, which in itself is a process ‘less linear than recursive’, is initially a problem that needs solving or a ‘task to be accomplished’. This process is only successful if the mind is ‘open and flexible’. A key component of creativity is the ability to engage in a specific cultural habitat – or habitus, defined by Bourdieu as ‘the product of the work of inculcation and appropriation’ (1977: 85) – to explore and generate new ideas within that domain, and the ability to transfer that creative element into other areas of knowledge.

Perhaps the main prerequisite for understanding and practising both reflection and critical thinking is curiosity and an open mind. Csikszentmihayli (1996:53) argues that ‘without a good dose of curiosity, wonder, and interest in what things are like and in how they work, it is difficult to recognise an interesting problem. Openness to experience, a fluid attention that constantly processes events in the environment, is a great advantage for recognising potential novelty.’ Such openness to experience implies a willingness to experiment, to challenge and question current practice. Underpinning the ability to experiment is a deep and secure knowledge of our own practice(s) which form the foundations on which we can experiment. Therefore, by not closing the door on challenge and experimentation, we are then better able to recognise innovation when it happens. Robinson (2001: location 327) suggests that ‘real creativity comes from finding your medium, from being in your element’; in other words, ‘being in your element’ is further enhanced by accepting the challenge of interrogating the individual’s artistic process. In enabling students to recognize and articulate the knowledge that they posses, and providing them with opportunities to challenge and strengthen that practice, we are also empowering students to make their own voices heard in the artistic milieu with which they will engage on graduation. In the context of our own music students, we first have to enable them to see beyond their identity as performers before they can fully understand and embrace their creativity. For example, music students training for a career in the orchestra find it very hard to visualize themselves in other roles. However, their training as orchestral musicians does not limit them to one role throughout their entire career. In reality, orchestral musicians are possessed not only of superb technical and expressive musical abilities but also of a range of other skills that are both malleable and transferable. They are collaborative and disciplined, able to work in small groups, sometimes under extreme pressure, capable of bringing to life an artistic vision that is not their own, but well able to challenge that vision if and when the need arises.

Reflection is one medium through which students might recognise those elements within and around their practice where they are in their element; and by making these connections reflection starts to become a really fruitful process. Central to this understanding of reflection and its connection to recognising and enabling creativity is the role of critical thought rather than judgement. It is difficult to be unsympathetic to the brand of criticism Foucault (1997: 326) identified as a kind of criticism that ‘would not try to judge, but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; […] Perhaps it would invent them sometimes – all the better.’ Reflection enables an imaginative and critical approach to work and process. Critical thought enables us to engage and challenge our ideas and those of others; in this way students gradually become able to recognize and evaluate valuable (not necessarily original) outcomes and products. Similarly, the relationship between technical brilliance and artistic excellence is not one of direct proportion. Our principal study/performing students are continuously encouraged to attain excellence and perfection through diligent practice and disciplined commitment to achieving solid technical foundations. Only once these technical foundations are built can room be made for the more fluid and possibly threatening concept of creativity that underpins artistic achievement.

But is creativity really an individual endeavour in this way? Many of our artists in training seem to think so, given the hours spent in practice rooms and performing solo on stage. Robinson (2001: location 355) suggests that creativity flourishes ‘where there is a flow of ideas between people who have different sorts of expertise.’ In other words, he is suggesting that creativity occurs when people work closely together. In the case of our hypothetical music student putting hours into the solitary practice room, once the technical foundations are solid and practice is ready to be challenged, the aforesaid student working in groups can gain much. In a conservatoire curriculum, principal study students often also work in chamber groups as well as with smaller ensembles. This is always a fertile space for them to explore both their individual and collective creativity. Throughout their time in such specialist education such as that provided by a conservatoire, it is imperative that as teachers we challenge students’ preconceptions about creativity and its role in their practice early on in their undergraduate training. They need to understand that even if they are training for solo performance, creativity is not always an individual undertaking and ‘requires a trust in oneself that is virtually impossible to sustain alone’ (John-Steiner, 2000: 172). The insights gained from such collaborative music making can be filtered back into individual practice work and vice versa.

Robinson (2001: location 164) makes an extremely persuasive case that creativity is a skill that can be taught, nurtured and developed. We live, he observes, in a world that values ‘intellectual labour and services’ while the current market requires graduates ‘who are creative, innovative and flexible.’ At the RCS, collaborative projects and work-based learning are two key ways in which our curriculum encourages students to find the locus of their creativity in ways and places they had not thought to look for it. The two examples of conservatoire practice outlined below are underpinned both by reflection and by critical thinking. Through participating in collaborative projects and work placements, students find the freedom to explore areas outside their own comfort zones, and they often discover new skills and areas they would like to develop. These insights lead to transferable knowledge that students can then deploy within their own discipline and beyond.

Reflection and collaboration

Collaborative projects are both built on, and imply, a keen understanding of the relationship between the individual and the community. Burnard (2013: 11) notes that social perspectives of creativity ‘are based on the conviction that creativity is vital to all societies, to all fields, domains and cultures’. Successful collaborative projects demonstrate students’ grasp of the concept of complementarity, and its role in empowering teams to solve problems collectively. The added benefit of interdisciplinary projects is that students bring significantly different skill sets, experiences, perspectives, abilities and methodologies to bear. Ideas and new ways of thinking often emerge through the process of creative conversations, and the early stages of collaborative projects function as a theatre for imaginative play. In many ways, these laboratory conditions function as thought experiments, supporting and stimulating creative and possibility thinking. Within these working contexts roles become negotiable and malleable.

Participants in a project may make different contributions, and at times their level of involvement can be quite different. Nevertheless, they can still sustain the shared vision because collaboration, as John Steiner has persuasively argued, ‘thrives on diversity of perspectives and on constructive dialogues between individuals negotiating their differences while creating their shared vision’ (2000: location 153). As students work to devise a performance together and as the work goes through its various iterations and permutations, the valuable group processes of discussion, negotiation and critical thought feed into students’ individual reflective processes, enabling them to self-evaluate and reposition their ideas from the perspective of a critic, and to foster a deeper understanding and knowledge of where their work ‘develops new ground and where one is borrowing or imitating’ (2000: location 269).

The best way of demonstrating to students that creativity is neither an individual pursuit nor a mystical concept (at least not entirely) is to put them in a situation where they can experience it in action. Interdisciplinary work provides students with the opportunity to question one another’s approaches and assumptions; it requires them to present their ideas persuasively and articulately to an audience of peers who may not share those same beliefs. By cultivating and developing these methods, students are actively thinking about how they need to approach these challenges and reflect on the best strategies for their practice. In their first year, all students at the RCS, regardless of their discipline, participate in a cross-conservatoire, interdisciplinary module designed to explore creative and collaborative processes, underpinned by research skills, through production of student-led interdisciplinary work. Tutor/mentor support during such group work is designed to help students relate and connect with their creative self sometimes through interdisciplinary artistic work outside their immediate area of expertise. These processes free students’ ability to think and work reflectively.

Assessment ranges from examination of applied processes and group practical work to a reflective statement; all assessment modes are underpinned by the knowledge, beautifully articulated by Robinson (2001: location 355) that ‘creativity prospers best under particular conditions, especially where there is a flow of ideas between people who have different sorts of expertise. It requires an atmosphere where risk-taking and experimentation are encouraged.’ This cross-disciplinary collaborative module engages the student in partnerships with their peers where they can confront ‘shifting realities and search for new solutions’ (John-Steiner, 2000: location 106). Whether or not the partnerships created during this first year experience last is not important. What is crucial is that students understand the way that competing and at times contradictory perspectives may all feed in to the same final product, since ‘opposition and dynamic tension often yield new understanding’ (John-Steiner, 2000: location 794). Some of the best reflective submissions that we see in this area are those where students reach their own conclusions about the conflicting practices of collaborative work, question their habits and recognize the need to leave their comfort zones and become part of a community of practice instead. Here they demonstrate an understanding of the interdependence between critical and analytical thinking, organization and entrepreneurship.

Collaborative work and group presentations of such work are incorporated in our core modules throughout the undergraduate programmes, the intent being to support students in attaining independence in articulating and internalizing the process of exploration, and in practising the art of collaboration through working with colleagues. Collaboration encourages students to reach out of their comfort zones, to challenge themselves in a situation where the culture of perfectionism is not prevalent in their minds. The process of reflection and of documenting the new challenges experienced is crucial in enabling them to articulate these experiences fully before transferring their learning to other areas of their practice. This capturing of experience is done in different ways – through blogs, video diaries, creative writing as well as multimedia work. Collaborative work is essential to this articulation, communication and critical thinking, and ensures that the process is also creatively successful and relevant. We recognise that ‘art requires reflective discussion to create and shape meaning.’ (Hilton, 2006: 33). Through the collaborative learning approach we also enable students to critique ideas, processes and products in ways that enable them to recognize when and how they are producing valuable outcomes. In working with their peers, students begin to recognize that the process of creativity is dynamic, and can involve multiple areas of expertise. Documenting the process of creativity is thus transformed into an embodied method of reflection because students decide on and sometimes design their own ways of capturing processes and ideas.

In other modules, core to our music students we encourage them to work together in exploring and developing research skills. In music history for example, students are asked to give a group presentation as their first assessed component, rather than submit a piece of written work. In general, we have found that in this format students engage more fully with the concepts under discussion, and take ownership of the research presentation, aligning it closely with a performance on their main instrument. Presentations of collaborative work, whether they result in a performance or in a research presentation, share the underlying principle of critical evaluation which Robinson characterises as one that ‘invokes a shift in the focus of attention and mode of thinking as we attend to what is working or not working. This can happen throughout the process of generating ideas: it can involve standing back in quiet reflection.’ (Robinson, 2001: location 2513) In our experience, therefore, collaboration and ensemble work help students become both active learners and creative individuals.

Reflection and work-based learning

Work-based placement forms the principal focus for learning in a selection of our modules related to community music as well as to teaching contexts. Placements may be arranged in a range of settings: nursery, primary and secondary schools; community centres; health and social care settings; voluntary organisations specialising in arts provision; and attachments to projects run by professional arts organisations. Some placements enable students to focus particularly on working with young people and adults with specific disabilities and communication support needs. One of the main learning outcomes we expect from our work-based learning placements is students’ ability to use critical reflection to analyse personal and professional development with the ultimate aim of informing future directions for learning.

Within this context too, however, students are reminded that creativity plays a central role, particularly because reflective insights often occur when we are out of our element – and then requires us to reconceptualise and rethink the situation we are in. Csikszentmihayli (1996: 23) argues that ‘creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context.’ Similarly, Robinson notes ‘creative insights often occur by making unusual connections, seeing analogies between ideas that have not previously been related.’ (2001: location 2538). This wider social context of music underpins our work-based learning curriculum, locating it within the larger cultural dimensions within which our graduates will seek to lead sustainable careers.

We hope that the placement triggers students to engage in some ‘joined up thinking’, where following a placement in an external context, they are then able to start to think about how this might fit in with their learning trajectory. Student experience of placement-based learning aligns with Robinson’s statement that ‘there is no substitute for putting people in situations where their abilities may be tested differently or where different aspects of their potential are called upon and revealed’ (2001: location 3419). The benefit of this form of learning however needs to be appropriately contextualized – students are prepared for this type of placement through classes and seminars that explore personal and professional development looking at the ways in which music, rather than existing in a vacuum, functions in social, cultural and community contexts. This enables us to discuss diverse and new contexts with students, and to reflect with them on the process of managing changing careers. Students develop a reflective approach to their own understanding of their role as creative artists. Within the context of a work-based placement, they are also then able to consider the possibilities of a portfolio career, and to think more deeply about the role of identity, self-presentation, and self-promotion. Work-based learning can be a sustainable and effective route into the profession, as well as an eye-opening and even momentous experience for the future career of the participants.

The practice of reflection

Teaching the art of reflection can be a challenging process if it is abstracted from context and taught as a skill in isolation from the practice to which it is so central. Embodied reflection enables students to understand and scrutinize the locus of their creativity better, to focus on its context and application as well as its processes and products. Such reflection enables identification, articulation and problematisation of both process and product. Key skills in the process of developing the practice of reflection such as articulation, problem-solving and visualization are transferable and crucial for any undergraduate, but perhaps particularly so for arts graduates working in embodied and often non-verbal disciplines, and navigating an uncertain and ever-changing artistic landscape.

A collaborative and social perspective on creativity, experienced and documented by students through reflective practice identifies both intellectual dynamics as well as the cultural factors at play. By aligning the practice of reflection with contemporary theories of creativity and integrating it into more practical tasks and collaborative work, students have the opportunity to appreciate the value it can bring to their practice. From a teaching perspective, reflection becomes the locus for merging creative, practical and academic practices. The methods of embedding reflective processes in both collaborative and work-based learning offer students the opportunity to participate in the teaching, engage in debate, develop decision-making and leadership skills, engage with practice-based research and participate in peer learning. Through this process of developing ownership of embodied reflection students are gradually enabled to recognize, articulate and question any intriguing problems or opportunities they may come across. It is through such reflection that creativity regenerates.