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Supporting the creative industries: The rationale for an exchange of thinking between the art and business schools

This journal article was selected for a Special Issue of the International Journal of Education Through Art focusing on the relationship between the creative industries and art education. Published in November/December 2013 the article traces the implications for pedagogy in the fields of Art and Design, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise by drawing on a distinctive body of literature e.g. Brown (2005) in art, Anderson & Jack (2008) in entrepreneurship. The multiple perspectives in the literature offer an opportunity to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each sector, opening up the dialogue between the disciplines.

Through 20 + years knowledge of the film and computer games industry, Harris conceptualises the convergence between cultural forms such as film and games with business practice as a single project endeavour. This reconceptualization of previously separate fields of practice provokes the question of what kind of pedagogical models are required to underpin the current trajectory of development between creativity and entrepreneurship. Harris’ experience complements Kearney’s background in entrepreneurship and enterprise education in a business school context. They argue that whilst there are emerging examples of collaboration across Art and Business Schools (UWS’ industry focused UG courses http://www.uws.ac.uk/schools/school-of-creative-and-cultural-industries/, Loughborough’s product design incubator http://www.lboro.ac.uk/thestudio/), the implications of this development for higher education and in particular, the impact upon pedagogy, have been overlooked. The article draws on Entrepreneurship’s Theory of Effectuation (Sarasvathy 2001), placing the entrepreneur as an imaginative actor at the centre of a process, to understand how behaviours are formed within an ‘learner centred’ v ‘teacher centred’ paradigm (Gibb 1996).

The paper emerges out of the authors’ experience of delivering aspects of the AHRC funded Design in Action Knowledge Exchange Hub (2012-16), which models inter-disciplinary working and promotes the use of design in business. It paves the intellectual ground for an authentic and practical inter-disciplinary pedagogy.