Happy New Year to our East Midlands Writing PAD Community!
Thank you to our Writing PAD friend Lisa Clughen from Nottingham Trent University for introducing her guest-edited April 2017 issue of Creative Academic Magazine: Exploring the Role of the Body in the Process of Creation/ Re-Creation
There is no shortage of scholars advocating the mind/body unity and the importance of the body in all sorts of contexts and for all sorts of purposes. As Shaun Gallagher (1) argues, human embodiment is a fundamental element of all aspects of human experience. It follows, then, that our embodiment impacts in many ways on our academic and other practices:
‘I hope that I have furthered the realization that nothing about human experience remains untouched by human embodiment: from the basic perceptual and emotional processes that are already at work in infancy, to a sophisticated interaction with other people; from the acquisition and creative use of language, to higher cognitive faculties involving judgment and metaphor; from the exercise of free will in intentional action, to the creation of cultural artifacts that provide for further human affordances.’ 1:p247
Embodiment is rarely talked about explicitly in Higher Education practice. Perhaps it is just taken for granted? In this issue of Creative Academic Magazine we will explore the theme through a range of perspectives, paying particular attention to the relationships between embodiment and teaching, learning and creative processes. Of specific interest is the way our creativity emerges in and through our actions and interactions with our environment. The idea of embodiment extends our exploration of the idea of creative ecologies (see CAM5).
This issue of Creative Magazine is a contribution to World Creativity and Innovation Week. There will also be an on-line conversation on the #creativeHE platform on the same theme during WCIW April 15-21 2017.
Citation
(1) Gallagher, S. (2005) How the body shapes the mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Lisa Clughen
You can find out more about Creative Academic Magazine here.
Lisa’s guest-edited issue relates to her event, The Centrality of the Body in Learning and Teaching, held in Nottingham last July: you can read my blog post about the event here.
We will be back soon, continuing to celebrate creative teaching throughout 2017, with more workshops, events and publications,
Julia
