Facilitating the creative citizen

These include the Creative Commons for innovative ways to share copyright content. The ProAm movement has developed to contribute valuable (but not commercially traded) inputs especially into “third sector” and voluntary work around medical, scientific, educational and political services.

In each case, the creative talent of the consumer - i.e. more or less everyone in contemporary commercial democracies - is available to add value to interactive enterprises, both commercial and community-of-interest based. Who’s leading all this activity? Teenagers, of course: Californian ones in particular.

Uses of creative content - and of critics and educators

I think we’ve already come a long way from the broadcast era. It is worthwhile for anyone interested in popular creativity or education to keep an eye on YouTube, Flickr and the rest.

To get an idea of the type of creativity on offer, check out a range of some of the most popular recent uploads: “Hey clip” (bedroom dance), “Bus Uncle” (invective in public) “First Try” (geriatric musings) “Marco Tempest” (street magic) and “lonelygirl15” (the “fake” phenomenon), all on YouTube Video.

And in case you think politics takes a back seat in this context, note that there are nearly 22,000 videos with “Bush” in their tagline, over 11,000 with “Iraq” - even 300 for “John Howard”.

A search on any topical issue will yield clips taken from TV (news or comedy shows), self-made contributions, spoofs, comments and re-versions.

The imaginative element is both original and reactive, and while there are literally millions of ideas and creative works, the social-networking element of sites like these means that creativity is also iterative and collective.

The movie site jumpcut.com has taken this radical idea even further - here you can not only upload your movies but other users can edit them, so that authorship of the end product (if there is such a thing) is shared, and that is part of the experience. Not only are people’s creative efforts shared, critiqued and updated, but they’re also harvested for other purposes.

A significant proportion of what’s posted on social networking sites is for audition or promotional purposes. Advertising agencies not only launch viral advertising campaigns, but they also trawl the sites for the latest ideas, images and talents. Professional filmmakers and artists make use of them for launching their own work. SBS has recently opened a site called Freeload for “independent creative expression” with the incentive that the best work from “the finest creative minds in Australia” will be broadcast on SBS itself.

Even when the Internet is easily accessible and a website has been developed for you to “stick your stuff” (as our QUT research website sticky.net.au puts it), it does not follow that creative activity at an industrial scale then occurs. In fact, without someone (or a team) to drive and animate the online storytelling or creative community, sites can go quiet very quickly. Someone with the (broadcasting) showmanship of the impresario, the (educational) calling of the teacher and the (Internet) skills of the technician, is needed to inspire, organise and facilitate the creative citizen.

During the broadcast era critics, educators and artists alike fell for the idea that audiencing and cultural consumption were passive behaviour rather than action and engagement. We lost faith in the audience, even when we were part of it. It is becoming increasingly obvious that those days are over.

However it does not follow that everyone will jump up and “do it themselves” on the model of Californian frat-room show-offs and teen-girl bedroom bands. The world has not suddenly converted to global “Californication.” Raymond Williams (and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers) can rest easy on that point. What is exciting about the present moment is that there is a convergence among broadcasting, education, interactive technologies, iterative forms and consumer-led creativity.

Some astute readers of the digital era need no second bidding, but plenty remain - including most people in Australia - who are not active participants, even though access, opportunity and capabilities are at least partially in place.

So here is a definite opportunity for creative educators and experts. Taking seriously both the traditional notion of emancipation through creative expression and the newer forms of digital media, can educators (formal and informal) act as a force for and enabler of convergence between the hive-like creativity of the Californicators and the public service aspirations of civic community-building?

Can the Internet integrate with broadcasting for innovation as well as entertainment? If so, then the resulting content, created out of a convergence of all four of broadcasting, broadband, education and creative citizens, will be a major driver of both our cultural and our economic future.