The value of everyday creativity

Over the past nine months, the Centre for Cultural Value has been looking at what existing research can tell us about the value of everyday creativity. Specifically, we have been exploring the value of the many and diverse activities facilitated by amateur or voluntary groups in shared community spaces, as well as self-initiated activity at home. 

Our review was shaped in consultation with cultural practitioners, policymakers, academics and funders. It highlighted the sector’s interest in knowing more about the role of everyday creativity in community building, its relationship to health and wellbeing and how best to capture, evidence and articulate its impacts. From this, we developed a new research digest outlining what we already know about everyday creativity and where there are gaps in our knowledge.

Through evaluating 96 peer-reviewed studies, we found everyday creativity occurs throughout society, across diverse communities and by all manner of individuals. It encompasses everything from recording our lives on social media to more organised group activities such as singing in a community choir or joining a book club. 

Strongest motivation is enjoyment

What the research also highlighted is that participants do not always make clear distinctions between activities in the way that many arts professionals do. The value for participants is more intrinsic and is related to how cultural engagement makes them feel, as opposed to the specific output or product. It is unsurprising, therefore, that studies cite participants’ strongest motivation as enjoyment. Crucially, they find a significant correlation between positive emotional states and everyday creativity. 

Among our other findings, we also discovered that everyday creativity can and does inspire forms of cultural democracy at community, local and even regional levels. The evidence suggests that a joined-up, localised and personalised approach from policymakers, together with communities and individuals, can make a difference.

However, what was also apparent is there is still much to be understood about how to best support everyday creativity, and it was notable that only 13 studies solely focussed on everyday creativity in the home.        

As the creative lives of individuals and communities increasingly become a focus for local authorities and national arm’s-length bodies alike, we invited Jo Hunter, co-founder of 64 Million Artists, to respond to the findings and highlight the work that 64 Million Artists are doing to better understand everyday creativity.

Process over results    

It's not surprising to find that definitions don’t feel important to people taking part in everyday creativity. It’s always surprised me that as a sector, the arts often seem obsessed with putting things into a box, when the whole point of art and creativity is to be taking things out of boxes. Everyday creativity is about being in the flow, and as the research suggests, it's not so much about the thing you’re making, but the process you’re going through in doing it.

That’s why the impact on wellbeing seems significant. There isn’t a pressure on something being ‘right’ or ‘good’ in the same way. Instead, the focus is on enjoying the moment itself. In our most recent data from The January Challenge, 85% of people said it had a positive impact on their wellbeing and cited the importance of taking part in this type of everyday creativity on their emotional regulation. They gained a sense of connection, self-expression and flow, drive, intellectual stimulation and, of course, fun.

Diverse, rich and inclusive

The exciting part of this data is how we can think about the collective power of everyday creativity. When we view culture through this lens, it is diverse, rich and inclusive because it is genuinely led by individuals and communities from the ground up. 

If we allow people to self-define their creativity (be it singing in the shower, upcycling their trainers, dancing with their local faith group), it becomes something else entirely. It is not something created for people, but by them. It is not manufactured. It is not designed to tick anyone else's boxes. 

It emerges from what people love and who they are. It automatically makes culture more democratic and owned by the many, not the few. This is why it is shown that people have a greater sense of ownership of it.

The importance of informality

So, if everyone in the country had that sense of ownership, and if everyday creativity was given greater value, what might that mean for how culture was valued across the UK more broadly?

The gaps this digest exposes, into research around everyday creativity in the home for example, are vital for us to understand. But we also need to consider carefully whose job it is to make recommendations around it. 

Yes, it might be great for professional arts organisations to think about how they catalyse it or celebrate it. Yes, it would be great to see more research on everyday creativity so that its importance can be amplified and shared. 

But it would be tragic if the formal arts sector or Arts Councils tried to ‘own’ everyday creativity. Its beauty is in its informality, its own networks, its ability to galvanise people.

Wider relevance

The Centre for Cultural Value’s new digest is useful not just to the cultural sector, it also has relevance for policymakers in health, education and business. Data that shows joined up policy making at local level can really make a difference is encouraging. 

After all, creativity is important to everyone, not just the cultural sector, and I am excited to see how further research can help recognise that.

Dr John Wright is Postdoctoral Research Associate at Centre for Cultural Value. 
Jo Hunter is Co-Founder and CEO of 64 Million Artists.
@valuingculture | @thesonghunter

To read the full findings of our new Research Digest about everyday creativity, please visit our website. 

We would love to hear your comments or questions about the research digest. Please get in touch with us at: ccv@leeds.ac.uk

This article, sponsored and contributed by the Centre for Cultural Value, is part of a series supporting an evidence-based approach to examining the impacts of arts, culture and heritage on people and society.