David Gauntlett | Toronto Metropolitan University (original) (raw)
Papers by David Gauntlett
We can all play a role in nurturing creative mindsets; ' Creativity can be supported by parents, ... more We can all play a role in nurturing creative mindsets; ' Creativity can be supported by parents, teachers, businesses, and even communities. As a matter of fact, it is very important that support is offered by everyone involved. A child growing up in a family that encourages creativity, in a culture that values creativity, with teachers who support creativity, has excellent chances of fulfilling his or her creative potentials'. Runco, 2013 Creativity is often thought of in individual terms. We can think of particular figures, such as Leonardo da Vin ci, Virginia Woolf, Ai Weiwei, or Steve Jobs, who are thought to have possessed so much creativity that they were able to transform the world around them. And we can buy books which tell us how to become 'more crea tive' and therefore change our own lives. Certainly, indi vidual creativity can be nurtured, supported, and devel oped, as we have seen in previous reports from the LEGO Learning Institute. But we can be equally sure that crea tivity does not flourish in a vacuum.
It has become something of a cliché to observe that despite many decades of research and hundreds... more It has become something of a cliché to observe that despite many decades of research and hundreds of studies, the connections between people’s consumption of the mass media and their subsequent behaviour have remained persistently elusive. Indeed, researchers have enjoyed an unusual degree of patience from both their scholarly and more public audiences. But a time must come when we must take a step back from this murky lack of consensus and ask – why? Why are there no clear answers on media effects?
This chapter looks at LEGO as a tool for supporting creative thinking, developing creative cultur... more This chapter looks at LEGO as a tool for supporting creative thinking, developing creative cultures, and contributing to processes which might make a difference in how the world works. My thoughts about these ambitious themes are not plucked from nowhere, and nor are they those of a passive observer, but they might be treated cautiously for a different reason, because they draw upon my experience of several years of close collaboration with the LEGO Group in Billund, Denmark. I am an academic, a Professor in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster in London, UK, but this means I have also – very happily, for me – been able to work with LEGO on a number of projects, as part of their ongoing collaboration with selected academic researchers. From 2005, I worked with the LEGO Group on the development of the consultancy process, LEGO Serious Play, and since 2008, I have worked with the LEGO Learning Institute and the LEGO Foundation exploring play, creativi...
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2021
We established the Creativity Everything lab at Ryerson University in 2018 as a place that would ... more We established the Creativity Everything lab at Ryerson University in 2018 as a place that would support and unlock ‘all kinds of creativity for all kinds of people’. In this article, we detail the transdisciplinary roots of our work, and outline some of our activities and the thinking behind them. As a team of researchers developing projects and experiences that embrace a wide range of creators and creative practices, we are fashioning the lab to facilitate the actions of doing and making in a range of spheres: in everyday life, professional creative practice, and in learning and research. Three case studies – our ongoing efforts at supporting learning for students, a research project on platforms for creativity, and the community outreach of the 2019 Creativity Everything FreeSchool – explore how teaching, research, events, and collaborations in multiple media intersect in a multifaceted system for relating to and engaging with creativity. Our studies suggest that creative practic...
Global Studies of Childhood, 2020
While makerspaces are rightly recognized as places for getting people of all ages together to exp... more While makerspaces are rightly recognized as places for getting people of all ages together to experiment with materials, technologies, processes, and narratives, they are inevitably limited by physical resources of time, space, and money. The appealingly inclusive concept of a “makerspace mindset”—that is, a worldview that admits the possibility of gathering and collaborating a creative fellowship without borders—can facilitate the goal of a global learning community. To meet that goal, however, new thinking must identify how to equitably direct efforts toward a more expansive and sustainable culture for creating. Articulating how and why the vast array of events, environments, tools, or toys that encourage people to create can promote making and connecting is the first step. This article elaborates on our existing work regarding platforms for creativity to consider those principles the makerspace mindset must manifest to encourage learning for a lifetime. We argue that imagining th...
MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung, 2005
This article introduces an emerging area of qualitative media «audience» research, in which indiv... more This article introduces an emerging area of qualitative media «audience» research, in which individuals are asked to produce media or visual material themselves, as a way of exploring their relationship with particular issues or dimensions of media. The process of making a creative visual artefact – as well as the artefact itself (which may be, for example, a video, drawing, collage, or imagined magazine cover) – offers a reflective entry-point into an exploration of individuals» relationships with media culture. This article sets out some of the origins, rationale and philosophy underlying this methodological approach; briefly discusses two example studies (one in which children made videos to consider their relationship with the environment, and one in which young people drew pictures of celebrities as part of an examination of their aspirations and identifications with stars); and finally considers some emerging issues for further development of this method.
Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 2017
Conjunctions, 2014
This article is a conversation between David Gauntlett and Amy Twigger Holroyd, who have shared i... more This article is a conversation between David Gauntlett and Amy Twigger Holroyd, who have shared interests in craft, making, sustainability and social change. Our discussion starts with the importance of small steps towards creativity: the personal satisfaction of making something yourself and of gaining recognition from others. These ‘micro’ steps, combined together at the macro level, become significant in contributing to social change. In particular, we explore the ways in which amateur making is important for sustainability – through offering an alternative to the mass consumption model and building a sense of engagement with the world. We then explore the idea of design as a process of action, change and creativity, which can be used to address social and environmental problems – whether by designing systems to support activity and reflection, or by creatively intervening in the complex systems within which we live.
Springer Series on Cultural Computing, 2015
Human beings have been creative, and made things, for many thousands of years. Indeed, the eviden... more Human beings have been creative, and made things, for many thousands of years. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the first human tools were made almost two million years ago (Donald, 2001). Digital technologies and the internet have not initiated creativity, therefore, but they have certainly given creative practices a boost, by enabling several things to be achieved much more simply and quickly: connections between people, distribution of material, conversations about it, collaborations, and opportunities to build on the work of others.
Choice Reviews Online, 2000
Only for you today! Discover your favourite tv living television culture and everyday life book r... more Only for you today! Discover your favourite tv living television culture and everyday life book right here by downloading and getting the soft file of the book. This is not your time to traditionally go to the book stores to buy a book. Here, varieties of book collections are available to download. One of them is this tv living television culture and everyday life as your preferred book. Getting this book b on-line in this site can be realized now by visiting the link page to download. It will be easy. Why should be here?
/a-tale-of-two-books/ A tale of two books: digital transformations are creeping across the face o... more /a-tale-of-two-books/ A tale of two books: digital transformations are creeping across the face of academic life May 27 2012 In response to Patrick Dunleavy's posts on the future of e-publishing in academia, David Gauntlett writes on his experiences of publishing ebooks, and how Kindle selfpublishing could be an approach which gets books to readers at a far more affordable price, as well as being surprisingly better for authors too.
How to move towards a system that looks to 'publish, then filter' academic research Both the 'gre... more How to move towards a system that looks to 'publish, then filter' academic research Both the 'green' and the 'gold' models of open access tend to preserve the world of academic journals, where anonymous reviewers typically dictate what may appear. David Gauntlett looks f orward to a system which gets rid of them altogether. Every week there's something new in the open access debate. A couple of weeks ago the Finch report concluded that all publicly-f unded research should indeed be made available f ree online (hurray!). But it f avoured the so-called 'gold' model of open access, in which the highly prof itable academic journal industry carries on as normal, but switches its demand f or big piles of cash away f rom library journal subscriptions and over to authors themselvesor their institutions (boo!). Campaigners such as Stevan Harnad questioned why the Finch committee had not f avoured the 'green' model, where authors put copies of their articles in f ree-to-access online repositories-the answer being, it was assumed, a successf ul blitz of lobbying by the publishing industry. T he 'green' model, which f avours the interests of society over the interests of publishers, is clearly the best option. But whichever solution prevails, the promise of straightf orward f ree access to all this research is exciting. To be honest, though, I am most enthusiastic about open access as a stepping stone on the way towards a situation where we get rid of academic publishers altogether, and shif t to the 'publish, then f ilter' model. If you're not sure what 'publish, then f ilter' means, then let me explain. Publishing things used to be an expensive business-getting a text to be typeset, printed and (in particular) distributed to readers, libraries or bookstores involved an enormous amount of ef f ort. T heref ore it was rational to be very cautious and selective about what things would be published. Filtering theref ore had to be done by a small number of gatekeepers on behalf of everybody else. But we no longer live in that world. Today, an author can make their text look presentable, and pop it on the Web f or anyone to access, very easily. So all of the previous assumptions can be turned on their head. T his doesn't mean that researchers will suddenly publish a f lood of random jottings-authors, mindf ul of their own reputations, will hopef ully prepare their texts caref ully bef ore release. But once they've written a nice article, why can't we just access the thing straight away? T he author can put the text online, let people in their networks know about it (via a blog, Twitter, or announcement on an email list), and interested people will see it and, if they f ind it valuable-or just think that it looks potentially valuable-will share it with others. Two obvious good things about this model are: it's immediate (rather than the standard model, where you wait two years f or the thing to appear); it cuts out the process of pre-publication 'peer review', in which anonymous random people f orce you to make pointless changes to your caref ully-craf ted text. 'Publish, then f ilter' isn't a new idea. It's one of the most basic ideas that got everybody excited about the Web in the f irst place. T he process of people being able to publish whatever they like, without gatekeepers, and then drive it to broader attention, was discussed in the book Web Studies, which I edited and contributed to in the late 1990s and published in 2000, when dinosaurs roamed the earth-and although that volume hopef ully contained some original insights, that was not one of them. Clay Shirky popularised the elegant 'publish, then f ilter' f ormulation in his book Here Comes Everybody, published 2008, but had been using the phrase f or many years bef ore that. In 2002, he told an audience at the BBC: "The order of things in broadcast is 'filter, then publish'. The order in communities is
LEGO Learning Institute, Summary, PDF …, 2009
This was a paper presented at the International Broadcasting Symposium, University of Manchester,... more This was a paper presented at the International Broadcasting Symposium, University of Manchester, in 1998. It is based on material in the book, Video Critical: Children, the Environment and Media Power (John Libbey Media, ...
Youth and the Global Media: Papers from the 29th University …
This paper discusses a qualitative and broadly ethnographic study in which groups of schoolchildr... more This paper discusses a qualitative and broadly ethnographic study in which groups of schoolchildren aged between seven and eleven were shadowed (and superficially supervised) by the researcher as they recorded videos, using camcorder equipment, on the subject of'the environment'. 1 The findings of this project, introduced in the second part of the paper, are seen to provide a
David Gauntlett has developed research projects where participants are asked to make a visual art... more David Gauntlett has developed research projects where participants are asked to make a visual artefact, such as a video, drawing, collage, or metaphorical models in Lego, to explore identities and their connections with media. ...
extended version of material from Media, Gender and Identity …, 2002
Media, Gender and Identity, second edition, is a book by David Gauntlett, published in 2008. The ... more Media, Gender and Identity, second edition, is a book by David Gauntlett, published in 2008. The book’s website at www.theoryhead.com offers a number of free ‘extras’. This is one of them. ... The text is © David ...
We can all play a role in nurturing creative mindsets; ' Creativity can be supported by parents, ... more We can all play a role in nurturing creative mindsets; ' Creativity can be supported by parents, teachers, businesses, and even communities. As a matter of fact, it is very important that support is offered by everyone involved. A child growing up in a family that encourages creativity, in a culture that values creativity, with teachers who support creativity, has excellent chances of fulfilling his or her creative potentials'. Runco, 2013 Creativity is often thought of in individual terms. We can think of particular figures, such as Leonardo da Vin ci, Virginia Woolf, Ai Weiwei, or Steve Jobs, who are thought to have possessed so much creativity that they were able to transform the world around them. And we can buy books which tell us how to become 'more crea tive' and therefore change our own lives. Certainly, indi vidual creativity can be nurtured, supported, and devel oped, as we have seen in previous reports from the LEGO Learning Institute. But we can be equally sure that crea tivity does not flourish in a vacuum.
It has become something of a cliché to observe that despite many decades of research and hundreds... more It has become something of a cliché to observe that despite many decades of research and hundreds of studies, the connections between people’s consumption of the mass media and their subsequent behaviour have remained persistently elusive. Indeed, researchers have enjoyed an unusual degree of patience from both their scholarly and more public audiences. But a time must come when we must take a step back from this murky lack of consensus and ask – why? Why are there no clear answers on media effects?
This chapter looks at LEGO as a tool for supporting creative thinking, developing creative cultur... more This chapter looks at LEGO as a tool for supporting creative thinking, developing creative cultures, and contributing to processes which might make a difference in how the world works. My thoughts about these ambitious themes are not plucked from nowhere, and nor are they those of a passive observer, but they might be treated cautiously for a different reason, because they draw upon my experience of several years of close collaboration with the LEGO Group in Billund, Denmark. I am an academic, a Professor in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster in London, UK, but this means I have also – very happily, for me – been able to work with LEGO on a number of projects, as part of their ongoing collaboration with selected academic researchers. From 2005, I worked with the LEGO Group on the development of the consultancy process, LEGO Serious Play, and since 2008, I have worked with the LEGO Learning Institute and the LEGO Foundation exploring play, creativi...
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2021
We established the Creativity Everything lab at Ryerson University in 2018 as a place that would ... more We established the Creativity Everything lab at Ryerson University in 2018 as a place that would support and unlock ‘all kinds of creativity for all kinds of people’. In this article, we detail the transdisciplinary roots of our work, and outline some of our activities and the thinking behind them. As a team of researchers developing projects and experiences that embrace a wide range of creators and creative practices, we are fashioning the lab to facilitate the actions of doing and making in a range of spheres: in everyday life, professional creative practice, and in learning and research. Three case studies – our ongoing efforts at supporting learning for students, a research project on platforms for creativity, and the community outreach of the 2019 Creativity Everything FreeSchool – explore how teaching, research, events, and collaborations in multiple media intersect in a multifaceted system for relating to and engaging with creativity. Our studies suggest that creative practic...
Global Studies of Childhood, 2020
While makerspaces are rightly recognized as places for getting people of all ages together to exp... more While makerspaces are rightly recognized as places for getting people of all ages together to experiment with materials, technologies, processes, and narratives, they are inevitably limited by physical resources of time, space, and money. The appealingly inclusive concept of a “makerspace mindset”—that is, a worldview that admits the possibility of gathering and collaborating a creative fellowship without borders—can facilitate the goal of a global learning community. To meet that goal, however, new thinking must identify how to equitably direct efforts toward a more expansive and sustainable culture for creating. Articulating how and why the vast array of events, environments, tools, or toys that encourage people to create can promote making and connecting is the first step. This article elaborates on our existing work regarding platforms for creativity to consider those principles the makerspace mindset must manifest to encourage learning for a lifetime. We argue that imagining th...
MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung, 2005
This article introduces an emerging area of qualitative media «audience» research, in which indiv... more This article introduces an emerging area of qualitative media «audience» research, in which individuals are asked to produce media or visual material themselves, as a way of exploring their relationship with particular issues or dimensions of media. The process of making a creative visual artefact – as well as the artefact itself (which may be, for example, a video, drawing, collage, or imagined magazine cover) – offers a reflective entry-point into an exploration of individuals» relationships with media culture. This article sets out some of the origins, rationale and philosophy underlying this methodological approach; briefly discusses two example studies (one in which children made videos to consider their relationship with the environment, and one in which young people drew pictures of celebrities as part of an examination of their aspirations and identifications with stars); and finally considers some emerging issues for further development of this method.
Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 2017
Conjunctions, 2014
This article is a conversation between David Gauntlett and Amy Twigger Holroyd, who have shared i... more This article is a conversation between David Gauntlett and Amy Twigger Holroyd, who have shared interests in craft, making, sustainability and social change. Our discussion starts with the importance of small steps towards creativity: the personal satisfaction of making something yourself and of gaining recognition from others. These ‘micro’ steps, combined together at the macro level, become significant in contributing to social change. In particular, we explore the ways in which amateur making is important for sustainability – through offering an alternative to the mass consumption model and building a sense of engagement with the world. We then explore the idea of design as a process of action, change and creativity, which can be used to address social and environmental problems – whether by designing systems to support activity and reflection, or by creatively intervening in the complex systems within which we live.
Springer Series on Cultural Computing, 2015
Human beings have been creative, and made things, for many thousands of years. Indeed, the eviden... more Human beings have been creative, and made things, for many thousands of years. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the first human tools were made almost two million years ago (Donald, 2001). Digital technologies and the internet have not initiated creativity, therefore, but they have certainly given creative practices a boost, by enabling several things to be achieved much more simply and quickly: connections between people, distribution of material, conversations about it, collaborations, and opportunities to build on the work of others.
Choice Reviews Online, 2000
Only for you today! Discover your favourite tv living television culture and everyday life book r... more Only for you today! Discover your favourite tv living television culture and everyday life book right here by downloading and getting the soft file of the book. This is not your time to traditionally go to the book stores to buy a book. Here, varieties of book collections are available to download. One of them is this tv living television culture and everyday life as your preferred book. Getting this book b on-line in this site can be realized now by visiting the link page to download. It will be easy. Why should be here?
/a-tale-of-two-books/ A tale of two books: digital transformations are creeping across the face o... more /a-tale-of-two-books/ A tale of two books: digital transformations are creeping across the face of academic life May 27 2012 In response to Patrick Dunleavy's posts on the future of e-publishing in academia, David Gauntlett writes on his experiences of publishing ebooks, and how Kindle selfpublishing could be an approach which gets books to readers at a far more affordable price, as well as being surprisingly better for authors too.
How to move towards a system that looks to 'publish, then filter' academic research Both the 'gre... more How to move towards a system that looks to 'publish, then filter' academic research Both the 'green' and the 'gold' models of open access tend to preserve the world of academic journals, where anonymous reviewers typically dictate what may appear. David Gauntlett looks f orward to a system which gets rid of them altogether. Every week there's something new in the open access debate. A couple of weeks ago the Finch report concluded that all publicly-f unded research should indeed be made available f ree online (hurray!). But it f avoured the so-called 'gold' model of open access, in which the highly prof itable academic journal industry carries on as normal, but switches its demand f or big piles of cash away f rom library journal subscriptions and over to authors themselvesor their institutions (boo!). Campaigners such as Stevan Harnad questioned why the Finch committee had not f avoured the 'green' model, where authors put copies of their articles in f ree-to-access online repositories-the answer being, it was assumed, a successf ul blitz of lobbying by the publishing industry. T he 'green' model, which f avours the interests of society over the interests of publishers, is clearly the best option. But whichever solution prevails, the promise of straightf orward f ree access to all this research is exciting. To be honest, though, I am most enthusiastic about open access as a stepping stone on the way towards a situation where we get rid of academic publishers altogether, and shif t to the 'publish, then f ilter' model. If you're not sure what 'publish, then f ilter' means, then let me explain. Publishing things used to be an expensive business-getting a text to be typeset, printed and (in particular) distributed to readers, libraries or bookstores involved an enormous amount of ef f ort. T heref ore it was rational to be very cautious and selective about what things would be published. Filtering theref ore had to be done by a small number of gatekeepers on behalf of everybody else. But we no longer live in that world. Today, an author can make their text look presentable, and pop it on the Web f or anyone to access, very easily. So all of the previous assumptions can be turned on their head. T his doesn't mean that researchers will suddenly publish a f lood of random jottings-authors, mindf ul of their own reputations, will hopef ully prepare their texts caref ully bef ore release. But once they've written a nice article, why can't we just access the thing straight away? T he author can put the text online, let people in their networks know about it (via a blog, Twitter, or announcement on an email list), and interested people will see it and, if they f ind it valuable-or just think that it looks potentially valuable-will share it with others. Two obvious good things about this model are: it's immediate (rather than the standard model, where you wait two years f or the thing to appear); it cuts out the process of pre-publication 'peer review', in which anonymous random people f orce you to make pointless changes to your caref ully-craf ted text. 'Publish, then f ilter' isn't a new idea. It's one of the most basic ideas that got everybody excited about the Web in the f irst place. T he process of people being able to publish whatever they like, without gatekeepers, and then drive it to broader attention, was discussed in the book Web Studies, which I edited and contributed to in the late 1990s and published in 2000, when dinosaurs roamed the earth-and although that volume hopef ully contained some original insights, that was not one of them. Clay Shirky popularised the elegant 'publish, then f ilter' f ormulation in his book Here Comes Everybody, published 2008, but had been using the phrase f or many years bef ore that. In 2002, he told an audience at the BBC: "The order of things in broadcast is 'filter, then publish'. The order in communities is
LEGO Learning Institute, Summary, PDF …, 2009
This was a paper presented at the International Broadcasting Symposium, University of Manchester,... more This was a paper presented at the International Broadcasting Symposium, University of Manchester, in 1998. It is based on material in the book, Video Critical: Children, the Environment and Media Power (John Libbey Media, ...
Youth and the Global Media: Papers from the 29th University …
This paper discusses a qualitative and broadly ethnographic study in which groups of schoolchildr... more This paper discusses a qualitative and broadly ethnographic study in which groups of schoolchildren aged between seven and eleven were shadowed (and superficially supervised) by the researcher as they recorded videos, using camcorder equipment, on the subject of'the environment'. 1 The findings of this project, introduced in the second part of the paper, are seen to provide a
David Gauntlett has developed research projects where participants are asked to make a visual art... more David Gauntlett has developed research projects where participants are asked to make a visual artefact, such as a video, drawing, collage, or metaphorical models in Lego, to explore identities and their connections with media. ...
extended version of material from Media, Gender and Identity …, 2002
Media, Gender and Identity, second edition, is a book by David Gauntlett, published in 2008. The ... more Media, Gender and Identity, second edition, is a book by David Gauntlett, published in 2008. The book’s website at www.theoryhead.com offers a number of free ‘extras’. This is one of them. ... The text is © David ...