Musings on Being Creative – Process and Product
Read time: Under 4 minutes
In just a few days, after weeks of preparation, teachers will return to classrooms all over Alberta to inspire learning in thousands of students. Lesson plans will unfold, and many teachers will work with their students to create something new through brainstorming and collected ideas. It may sound simple but perfecting the process of creating a work with a group of students is no easy task.
Jennifer Roberts, Education Coordinator at Arts Commons has a passion the creative arts and its ability to inspire and support learning. She’s worked as a poet, playwright, performer, clown, yoga instructor, and aesthetic educator for over fifteen years and one of her favourite exercises to engage in is intricacies of process.
If your connection to the arts is based on going to see a show, or a dance, reading or listening to poetry, watching a movie or listening to music; live or on the radio - then congratulations! You are the most important person in the room. The performing arts don’t exist without someone to receive them.
However, if your experience of the arts has been as an audience only, then you might not know the messy business of process that leads to that performed experience.
The subjects I wish to explore here are: process and product in the realm of Arts and Education.
You might think the product is the natural end of any and every process. Sadly, it isn’t. So, let’s break this down, starting with process.
Often a good process will reveal billions of new ideas, of which eight of them will be worthy of focused attention and maybe three of them will eventually lead to that shining star of product. The real work of developing an artistic practice is discerning which eight, of the billions of ideas, are worthy of attention. As with any creative practice, no-one starts on amazing, few even start on good. Most of us start at the beginning, and the beginning is often like doing a deep clean of your garage, basement or storage locker. I’m sure we all have a process for that (no doubt, procrastination is high on the list!)
My process, when cleaning or creating, is to pull EVERYTHING out into the middle of the floor. Then I swiftly go through item by item, making categories to be returned to: Throw, Donate, Keep, Unsure. Then I go deeper through the Keeps, Donate a few more items, and pack up a few more Unsure to be considered the next time I do this.
Thankfully making art (at least to me) is far more rewarding and enjoyable to do than cleaning out my storage locker. I do, however, think it’s a useful analogy because it’s about the same amount of work. As well, I’m always hopeful that I’ll be able to properly sort things by the end of the process and have the wonderful ‘product’ of an organized storage locker. Hope springs eternal, right?
If you are interested in learning a good process, there needs to be a willingness to engage in activities that may or may not end with a clear concise product. Instead you may end up with seven billion worthy items in the middle of your metaphoric basement floor.
Next, let’s talk about product.
Often when we engage with an end product in mind, we rely heavily on structural support, tried and tested methods. A good example of this is improv. Most people believe that improv is open, free and they are just making it all up on the spot, but chances are they are relying heavily on the categories they have previously agreed on before walking on stage with each other. There are several rules in improv and they are brilliant! This is where structure serves a product. There is still process involved but the process is not the focus, the end product is primary.
Now, let’s talk about how process and product work in arts education.
A process focused session will be messy and lively, probably noisy and deeply rewarding when students come up with new connections to the world around them. Yet it may end with numerous ideas for new products and countless connections without a single polished product.
In contrast, a product focused session will conclude with a structured product that will be wildly rewarding for students because they will be involved in the learning and execution of someone else’s process. Learning someone else’s process can have enormous benefits. I had a teacher once instruct me: if you want to be a great writer, rewrite the greats, word for word, comma by comma. He wasn’t suggesting we plagiarize but instead become intimately alive to the details of a great product. Another instructor suggested to memorize the works of a Master so you always have a bit of mastery inside of you.
I suspect everyone leans one way or another between product or process orientation. You may decide you are comfortable with product but want to work process, or conversely, are deeply comfortable with process and wish to learn a more product orientated way of working. Both methods are exciting ways to engage with the Arts, but they don’t play well when they are given equal attention. So, try a method and discover for yourself the benefits of each.
