Making it "click": collaborative perceptions of creative practice in art education /

Making it "Click": Collaborative Perceptions ofCreative Practice in Art Education examined the teaching practice of 6 art educators who conducted their work through the Niagara Falls Art Gallery's (NFAG) in-schools and Children's Museum programmes. These community resources service the elementary levels of participatory Public, Catholic and French schools in the Niagara Peninsula. The goal of this research was to find ways in which these teachers could explore their creative potential as art educators. The "click," a term introduced by participants indicating the coming together of all positive factors towards creativity, became the central theme behind this study. Research revealed that the effective creative process was not merely a singular phase, but rather a series of 4 processes: 1 , gathering knowledge; 2, intuitive and experiential; 3, the informal presentation of information in which creativity as a process was explored; and 4, formal presentation that took the analysis of information to a deeper, holistic level. To examine the ways in which experience and knowledge could be shared and brought together through a collaborative process, this study employed data collection that used literature research, interviews, focus group discussions, and personal journal entries. Follow-up discussions that assessed the effectiveness of action research, took place VA months after the initial meetings. It is hoped that this study might assist in creative educational practices, for myself as a member of the NFAG teaching team, for colleagues in the art programmes, art educators, and other teachers in the broader disciplines of education.

'Art is the New Steel': Marketing Creative Urbanism in Twenty-First Century Hamilton, Ontario

As a major manufacturing hub in southern Ontario, Hamilton enjoyed considerable economic stability during the twentieth century. However, like most industrial-based cities, Hamilton’s role as a North American manufacturing producer has faded since the 1970’s. This has resulted in dramatic socio-economic impacts, most of which are centered on the inner city. There have been many attempts to revive the core. This includes Hamilton’s most recent urban renewal plans, based upon the principles of Richard Florida’s creative city hypothesis and Ontario’s Places to Grow Act (2005). Common throughout all of Hamilton’s urban renewal initiatives has been the role of the local press. In this thesis I conduct a discourse analysis of media based knowledge production. I show that the local press reproduces creative city discourses as local truths to substantiate and validate a revanchist political agenda. By choosing to celebrate the creative class culture, the local press fails to question its repercussions