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ThesisCC BY-NC V4.0, Open Access
Thesis
Instruments of change: shifting the scene-agency ratio in songwriting practice
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Master of Creative Arts, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2025
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00957
Abstract
The making and proliferation of songs is not the result of individual people working in isolation, but the result of a complex interplay between creative practitioner and the cultural, social, spatial and temporal contexts in which they make. In literature relating to the social psychology of creativity and systems model of creativity there is significant theorisation of environment individual interaction and its effects on creative capability. In particular, organisational creativity research has explored how leaders can design deliberate enviro-social interventions to improve the creative capabilities, wellbeing, and output of organisation members. This project applies those principles of environment-individual interaction to the creative practice of songwriting and investigates the question: can a songwriter affect their experience of creativity and creative productivity by reframing background elements of their creative setting as tools in their practice? This exegesis re-contextualises organisational strategies and interventions from social, environmental, and organizational creativity through Burke’s conceptualisation of language as symbolic action (Burke, 1945) to investigate how and when changes in perception of the creative environment may be beneficial in the practitioner’s experience of making creative artefacts. I created a collection of new popular songs as a practice-led case study to investigate the efficacy of personal environmental interventions in my own creative practice. I documented this process through phenomenological autoethnography supported by reflective journaling and reflexive thematic analysis to investigate creative scene-agent ratio shift — the reframing of background elements in my enviro-social setting as manipulatable tools in my songwriting practice. I then investigated how this might be useful to other songwriters and creative practitioners in supporting their creativity and creative productivity.
Details
- Title
- Instruments of change: shifting the scene-agency ratio in songwriting practice
- Authors
- Taylor Berrett - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Law and Society
- Contributors
- Briony Luttrell (Principal Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative IndustriesAndy Ward (Co-Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Healthy Ageing Research Cluster
- Awarding institution
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Degree awarded
- Master of Creative Arts
- Publisher
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- DOI
- 10.25907/00957
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991155139802621
- Output Type
- Thesis
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