Confluence Approaches and the Systems Model of Creativity

This chapter explores ideas on creativity that are pivotal for the argument we are presenting in this book. They are at the heart of our curriculum and pedagogical approach which we present later in this book. It is here, in this chapter, that we look at various confluence approaches, including a reiteration of Bourdieu’s sociological approach, and focus in detail on the systems model of creativity initially put forward by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The idea that creativity needs to be examined and understood as a complete system is increasingly being argued for and evidenced in the literature on creativity. Beth Hennessey and Teresa Amabile, in their 2010 Annual Review of Psychology article reviewing research work into creativity, asserted that ‘deeper understanding of creative behavior will require more interdisciplinary research based on a systems view of creativity that recognises a variety of interrelated forces operating at multiple levels’ (Hennessey and Amabile, Annual Review of Psychology 61:569–598, 2010, p. 591). Later, in 2017, Hennessey wrote in the special issue celebrating fifty years of The Journal of Creative Behavior that ‘seven years have passed since the publication of that paper, and an examination of the most current research suggests that a growing number of publications are now reflecting a systems approach as well as a multidisciplinary perspective’ (Hennessey, The Journal of Creative Behavior 51(4): 341–344, 2017, p. 341).