The Role of Creative Play as a Catalyst for Adult Learning, Spirituality and a Ludic (playful) Mind-set

The Role of Creative Play as a Catalyst for Adult Learning, Spirituality and a Ludic (playful) Mind-set

Helen Wilderspin

In my experience, as an Anglican Priest in a parish and a student in a theological college setting, I have discovered that the church and theological institutions do not always offer a creative way for adults to learn or engage with the sacred. Although there is growing evidence that creativity and play can have positive benefits for adult learning there is less research in the area of the effect of creative play on adult spirituality and theological education.

My doctoral research investigated the impact of creative play on adult learning, creativity, spirituality and liturgical worship at an Anglican Theological College. A crystallisation qualitative methodology (as described by Ellingson, 2009, 2014; Richardson, 2000) enabled me to have a trans-disciplinary perspective and hold in tension a bricolage of relationships, data collection methods and artefacts to engage and ‘play’ with my research.

In this session, I will provide a brief summary of my findings. I will discuss how my interventions helped create a team culture of creativity through shared learning experiences designed to stimulate imaginations, using a variety of locations for creative play activities and an action reflection process. Through shaping these conditions, I encouraged ludic (playful) qualities such as curiosity, embodied creative expression, and relationality, in myself as a priest and with other participants. My research also revealed the importance of not only a ludic mindset but also an embodied creativity; therefore, based on the work of Kaufman and Beghetto (2009) and their 4-c model of creativity, I suggest a fifth aspect, performance-c be added, to bring a more embodied, collective and culturally inclusive dimension to this model.

References

Ellingson, L. L. (2009). Engaging crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction. Sage Publications.

Ellingson, L. L. (2014). “The truth must dazzle gradually”: Enriching relationship research using a crystallization framework. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 31(4), 442–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407514523553

Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013688

Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd edition). Sage.