Re-imagining the Creative University for the 21st Century

Book excerpt: The creative university is a new concept that has a number of competing conceptions emphasizing digital teaching, learning and research infrastructures, the paradigm of intellectual property, creative social development and academic entrepreneurship. Not only does the concept include the fostering and critique of creative content industries and new forms of distance and online education but more fundamentally it refers to a reassessment of neoliberal strategies to build the knowledge economy. The economic aspect of creativity refers to the production of new ideas, aesthetic forms, scholarship, original works of art and cultural products, as well as scientific inventions and technological innovations. It embraces open source communication as well as commercial intellectual property. All of this positions education at the center of the economy/ creativity nexus. But are education systems, institutions, assumptions and habits positioned and able so as to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges? This book uses different contexts to explore these vital issues.