Collective and individual identities in an era of co-creation: a workshop

Abstract

This chapter describes a workshop developed as part of an effort by a European group of pedagogues, who developed insights and tools for supporting creatives to form a more powerful digital narrative of their often-fragmented career stories. Thus, the group explored and developed digital storytelling tools, media and online tools, autobiographical practices, design thinking, and embodied practices for identity formation. As part of the latter, this chapter is about a workshop that considers individual and collective identity formation for creating more powerful and holistic digital career stories that balance our individual nature with a more collective understanding of ourselves as human beings. A separate chapter about the conceptual framework underpinning this workshop can be viewed in this toolkit. Artists have a long historic tradition of forming collectives and co-creative processes. However, in a world that has emphasised individual endeavours and individualism as the highest concept associated with freedom, they have not always received positive value judgements. Thus, current neoliberal tendencies to elevate the individually identifiable creators established a perceived meritocratic society of individual power and choice. But the multiple current crises in governance, society, environment and economy suggest a dead-end of this trajectory. Perhaps, as a result, current discourses of more collective, cooperative and collaborative endeavours are on the rise in the art sector as in others. Thus, the concepts around Culture 3.0 are worthy of being highlighted, as in the absence of this phenomenon of Culture 3.0, authors and creative professionals have often needed to resort to other terms, such as “community arts”, “socially engaged arts”, “participatory arts”, “non-traditional arts”. But these terms are often associated with value judgments in themselves.