A Space to Play, A Space to Compose: A Model for Creative Collaborations and Composition Practices
Introduction
Presents an overview of the goals of this webtext. More
History
Tells the history of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity. More
Spaces
Shows how the space is being used by faculty and students. More
Flexibility
Discusses the importance of furniture and technology. More
Students
Offers video interviews of people who use the Noel Studio. More
Conclusion
Summarizes the main arguments made in this webtext. More
Introduction
A group of students walk into the Noel Studio. They sign in at the reception desk and find a cluster of blue rocking chairs near a wall-to-wall dry-erase board. The students begin discussing their project, a collaborative promotional video. While talking, their consultant joins them at their cluster, sitting at a table covered with dry-erase markers, magnetic tiles, and even LEGOs.
This scenario occurs on a daily basis in the Noel Studio at EKU. As described through the introductory video, the space was the university’s innovative approach to designing a future-looking multiliteracy center, one that integrates services and spaces for written, oral, and multimodal composition along with information literacy. A common thread throughout all pedagogical activity within the space is creativity: a process of developing original ideas that have value, as defined by Ken Robinson (Azzam, 1999).
The Noel Studio serves as the university’s physical and intellectual creativity hub, a valuable component of complementary initiatives that foster effective and innovative composition practices among students. As such, the Noel Studio’s physical space does not resemble a traditional academic space. The colors on the walls, manipulatives (objects that promote kinesthetic learning) in the Invention Space, and combination of high- and low-tech resources throughout the space engage students in a nonlinear and multimodal composition process. The Noel Studio promotes a pedagogy that brings the composition process off the page, making it visual and visible to students. Inspired by the creative spirit through which the Noel Studio was envisioned, this chapter reveals student composition practices while examining potential benefits of spaces that facilitate and encourage playful expression. We also track the creative process of students, including how, where, and why they compose, and how creativity facilitates a productive experience for them.
As an approach to discussing creativity, we look to the role of play within the space and how it might facilitate an invention process that involves multiple modes of communication. In the Noel Studio, the process is necessarily multimodal; that is, students create ideas using remixed combinations of words; images; text; sound; and, at times, texture as part of their experience within the space, inspired by Verbais’ (2008) claim that “play can help students be creative and expand their thoughts” (p. 138). Through this playful creative process, students are encouraged to take risks in the composing process, as this process can result in more compelling texts and meaningful experiences within the space.
Multimodality in the Noel Studio
In his discussion of multiliteracies and the future of writing center spaces, Trimbur (2000) described literacy as a multimodal activity in which “oral, written, and visual communication intertwine and interact” (p. 29). Following a similar trajectory, the spaces of the Noel Studio—with areas for using video software and engaging in small-group clusters around touch-screen monitors—encourage student composers to experiment with multiple modes of communication in different combinations, even through the invention process. Moreover, students experience, compose, and obtain feedback on multimodal projects in spaces that reflect their composing goals. Pedagogical activity within the space draws upon Trimbur’s notion of multiliteracies in the writing center as students navigate texts with (and without) trained consultants and interact with objects, artifacts, and technologies. This safe environment encourages play as a way of thinking about the composing process through a variety of modes and media. Rouzie (2000) explains that “although play may appear to exist outside the realm of rhetoric, where it is limited to ‘creative’ or ‘expressive’ writing... certain forms of play are highly rhetorical and that an emergent form of literacy must include fluency with the play element in the writing of both traditional and electronic discourse” (p. 629). In some cases, the Noel Studio space provides the first opportunity for students to read, write, and play with multimodal projects in spaces that facilitate multimodal invention.
Newcomb (2012) argues that creativity builds new relationships and creates new contexts for students as they compose texts. In the Noel Studio, creativity is an important pedagogical component where students compose texts through a variety of high- and low-tech artifacts. As such, the space reflects the duality or plurality of an engaging, productive, and culturally relevant pedagogy that involves students working in ways that show an understanding of current technologies, learning styles, and reciprocal processes. As students shape the space to fit their composing processes, they are also shaping the contexts in which they create.
The name “studio” in itself suggests creative activity, recalling art studios where artists create visual texts with the use of a variety of supplies, including ceramics, paint, or raw materials. Doorley and Witthoft (2012) explained that “Studios work because . . . You can spread out your work and get messy, you can immediately reengage work in progress after a pause, your tools are nearby, and evidence of your work is everywhere” (p. 20). In the Noel Studio, students engage artifacts that encourage them to compose projects publicly—at times using manipulatives and other hands-on learning artifacts—where other visitors can see, and learn from, their projects. The Noel Studio space becomes a gallery for experimenting with a variety of texts, resembling what you might see in an art gallery. Creativity helps to make composing social, engaging, and playful. We encourage students to experience the space by allowing them to shape it around their activities as they compose texts.
Through this chapter, we explore how and why students engage creative process in their invention and composing practices in the Noel Studio. To set a foundation, we wish to acknowledge the following threads as central to the design and pedagogical practices of the space:
- students compose by engaging multiple learning styles, among them: visual (or spatial), aural (or music and sound), verbal (or linguistic), physical (or kinesthetic), and social (or interpersonal);
- “human knowledge is initially developed not as ‘general and abstract,’ but as embedded in social, cultural, and material contexts. Further, human knowledge is initially developed as part and parcel of collaborative interactions with others of diverse skills, backgrounds, and perspectives joined together in a particular epistemic community, that is, a community of learners engaged in common practices centered around a specific (historically and socially constituted) domain of knowledge” (New London Group, 1996, p. 68); and
- students engage texts through a pedagogy of multiliteracies, as outlined by the New London Group, and make meaning through multiple modes of communication, including audio, spatial, gestural, visual, and linguistic design (New London Group, p. 83)