Exploring creativity through freelance journalism: testing out the systems model

Creativity is frequently credited as the source of humanity’s greatest achievements, yet the meaning of this term remains widely unexamined. Popular use connects creativity to the mysterious and the divine; however current research indicates that creativity is a rational process that can be explained as the result of conscious hard work and the interaction of systems and structures. Using practitioner based enquiry, I aimed to test out current research by undertaking my own creative project. In particular, I examined the operation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity. The research took the form of four profiles on creative practitioners from the areas of music, art, science and journalism, and allowed me to explore my own creative practice, to compare my experience to that of other cultural producers, and to combine this knowledge with existing research to investigate the nature of creativity as a whole.