Paper 48
IFFTI 2019
Paper 48
Jacqueline Shorrocks
& Anthony Kent
Nottingham Trent University
Towards a creative ID in fashion business education
This paper challenges the conventions of fashion business education and its ability to develop creative graduates. The place of creativity is not well established, but its need is: fashion business students need to have the opportunity to develop the ability and skills needed for creativity.
Teaching for creativity on fashion business courses focuses on knowledge acquisition and the development of visual communication skills. Although useful, these attributes reflect a limited view of creativity, and do not develop the creative thinking for idea generation and problem solving needed by fashion business graduates. Fashion business educators have an important role in students’ creative development. However, their individual experiences of creativity determine their personal identity of creativity and how they teach for creativity. Similarly, students have their own creative identities which may vary from those of their peers and teachers.
There is a lack of awareness of the multiple identities of creativity within the fashion business education community. Together, the university education systems, the personal creative identities of teachers and students, and the lack of knowledge and discourse about creativity, produces limited and accidental teaching for creativity.
This paper argues for recognition of these multiple IDs of creativity, and teaching that enables the development of the personal ID of creativity of each fashion business student, through the development of a community ID of teaching for creativity. How a new community of creative educators can be built is based on McWilliam’s theory of creative capacity building. This paper extends and challenges her theories by calling for a new model of creative fashion business education that challenges preconceptions about what and how fashion business students are taught. The paper concludes with a new creative ID for the community of fashion educators and students, created through teacher education and management support.