GrowinG Future innovators - ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative ...

are those stories where you make a huge
difference to a young person’s life. There’s
story after story after story where you get
feedback but they’re stories that you can’t
really put into your data as such.”
Ongoing innovation studies should assist
this sector in harnessing more of a shared
language for innovation and suggest ways
to employ this framework in the evaluation
of programming. The idea of arts-based
innovation can be so implicit within practices
or institutional culture that, as Kate Ryan
from the Queensland Art Gallery says,
“we don’t get caught up in those sorts of
conversations too much.” This is not to imply
that innovation isn’t operational or expertly
recognized within the sector but to say
that without a functional or more precise
language, the dynamics and accomplishments
of arts-based innovation can remain hidden
or submerged, especially to those outside
the sector. Anna Cutler from Tate Modern,
comments on the implications of this
obfuscation and acknowledges that:
in cultural institutions, people tend to do
quiet things behind closed doors... But I
don’t think we can just do that. I think we
have to be a more explicit about what we’re
doing. Otherwise, nobody will see.
Part of this difficulty, she continues, is to
do with issues of materiality and scale. It
is not only that “learning and creativity
are often invisible” but the fact that “small
innovations happen all the time and we never
pull them out and show them, so they just
go back into the cycle.” The task at hand is
to continue to evidence clearer links and a
stronger case for how contemporary arts, the
institutions that promote it, and the learning
programs based on it, are actively engaged in
growing innovation.
Growing future Innovators: a scoping study 65