Creative Communities: Shaping Process through Performance and Play

"Creative Communities: Shaping Process through Performance and Play" argues that play can disrupt entrenched assumptions within communities of practice and foster innovation, and it proposes a "context provider's framework" under which creative hubs and universities design spaces that support creative process. Drawing on Wenger's model of communities of practice and Norman's classification of constraints, the authors contend that established conventions, such as the generic styles reproduced by game engines and oversaturated genres in videogame development, tend to limit creative output. Their contribution links videogames and the performing arts through shared principles of play and performance.

The argument is supported by two qualitative case studies. Development Cultures (2014) was a six-month series of reflective seminars and two game jams whose participation grew from 23 to 46. Performance and Play (2015) was a week-long workshop bringing together actors, choreographers, and artistic directors with artists, designers, sound designers, and academics. Findings indicate that designed constraints, such as a compressed five-hour jam with custom controllers and advance theme releases, encouraged experimentation and collaboration, with one resulting prototype later released commercially on Xbox One and Steam. Participants most frequently expressed hopes of breaking down boundaries between communities, while random group formation produced mixed outcomes and play surfaced tensions such as the one-to-one audience model of games versus the one-to-many model of performance.

The authors conclude with a four-stage framework of building trust, disrupting, reflecting, and generating creativity from within the community. Their central claim is that a context provider can design conditions for community innovation, though a community of practice cannot itself be designed. The scope is centered on game development and performing arts practice in a university and creative-hub setting over 2014 and 2015, with the reference list pointing to broader literature on creativity, play, and game jams.