Examining creativity and cultural production: screen based media and the current research into creativity

This paper presents an overview of the current research into creativity, contrasts this with some common sense assumptions about creativity, and explores what the implications are for media practice in the light of what that research is telling us (McIntyre, 2012). In doing this the paper concentrates on some of the issues that apply to an understanding of the ways the products of screen based media, in particular television and film, come into being. It specifically focuses on so called confluence approaches to creativity and cultural production, including the systems model of creativity developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1997, 1999) and combines this with the comprehensive approach to cultural production put forward by Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990, 1993 ,1996). The argument being presented is that it is the combined action of multiple interacting factors that enables creativity to emerge in film and television.