Creating Creativity for Future-Proofing Digital Engagement, an Evidence Based Approach

Abstract

Creativity may be the single most important skill in our increasingly ‘online’ society. Pre-Covid, it had already been established that creativity is key to the acquisition of ‘future-proofing’ digital skills. Through 2020 and 2021, ‘lockdowns’ forced by the Covid pandemic brought wider attention to the value of creativity in the context of digital upskilling – but what exactly is ‘creativity’ in this context, and, how can it be enabled with measurable effectiveness? These questions are the subject of this chapter, which makes three main contributions to the understanding of how digital skills are acquired and developed. Firstly, in presenting findings from a small-scale longitudinal study that was conducted May 2020–May 2021 during Covid lockdowns, it provides evidence that creativity can be deployed to enable ‘future-proofing’ (i.e. sustainable and resilient) digital skills acquisition. Secondly, in a theory and policy context in which it is known in general terms that creativity is important but specificity regarding how is lacking, it provides emergent findings that improve understanding of the role of creativity in digital skills acquisition and retention. Thirdly, it presents a new theoretical position on the role of creativity in developing resilience in the digital sphere, with associated policy implications.

1 Introduction

Creativity may be the single most important skill in our increasingly ‘online’ society. Pre-Covid, it had already been established that creativity is key to the acquisition of ‘future-proofing’ digital skills (Barnard, 2017, 2019a). Through 2020 and 2021, ‘lockdowns’ forced by the Covid pandemic brought wider attention to the value of creativity in the context of digital upskilling.

Digital inclusion research and policy has largely centred on provision of online access, equipment and/or technical training, with the misguided idea that these on their own can ‘solve’ the problem of digital exclusion (Carmi & Yates, 2020; Allman & Blank, 2021). Access in isolation can leave non-users baffled and little closer to meaningful digital engagement (Allman & Blank, 2021); technical skills alone may put partial users in harm’s way (Livingstone et al., 2021). A fundamental problem in the digital realm is the sheer pace of technological change. Manufacturers’ software updates alter digital engagement on a regular, even daily basis. Morphing issues such as ‘fake news’ mean that how we define ‘digital literacies’ is continually changing (Carmi & Yates, 2020). A “seemingly comprehensive set of new technological skills could soon be obsolete, [we] must prepare for technologies that have yet to be invented” (Barnard, 2019a, p. 1). That is, even with access and basic technical skills in place, ‘digital’ is a moving target. Yet, suddenly, in 2020, due to Covid ‘lockdowns’, extensive digital engagement was effectively mandated in societies across the world.

In the UK, the first lockdown began on 23rd March 2020 (IfG, 2021). Travel was restricted and for many, working from home was made compulsory. In order to conduct a simple bank transaction or join a work ‘Zoom’ meeting, within days, millions had to digitally upskill. COVID lockdowns made the ability to ‘get online’ essential for citizens’ full participation in society and highlighted the fact that there is more to imparting effective, lasting digital skills acquisition than supplying a set of instructions.

“[B]asic digital skills are not enough to create savvy citizens for the digital era,” notes a July 2020 House of Lords report (Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies, p. 109), which continues that, instead, enabling “the skills and competencies to participate creatively” should be of higher priority. “The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened [the digital divide] and exacerbated the resulting inequalities”, says a July 2020 Cumberland Lodge Digital Inclusion report which goes on to say that, as we rebuild, “Creativity and innovation will be required alongside digitalisation” (Elahi, 2020, p. 62). Observing that COVID-19 has given creativity new centrality, the Durham Creativity Commission notes that:

… digital technology is a means to an end. It is not inherently creative, but at the disposal of a creatively liberated mind, its potential becomes boundless. We need better and more creative digital literacy (Cohu, 2021, p. 4).

Creativity is important, then, for effective and lasting digital skills acquisition – but, what exactly is ‘creativity’ in this context, and, how can it be enabled with measurable effectiveness? These questions are the subject of this chapter, which makes three main contributions to the understanding of how digital skills are acquired and developed. Firstly, the research reported here provides evidence that creativity can be deployed to enable sustainable and resilient, or ‘future-proofing’ digital skills acquisition. It demonstrates that an existing method of deploying creativity to enable ‘future-proofing’ digital skills acquisition that has been developed and extensively empirically tested in the field of Creative Writing (Barnard, 2019a, pp. 85–89) can be effective in a new context. That context, specifically, concerns select staff at small NGOs/charities who work with digitally excluded citizens. As MP Sharon Hodgson highlighted during a Westminster Hall debate, “Students who are taught creative writing are taught creative thinking” (quoting Barnard, HCDeb, 2014). Creativity is a transferrable skill (Barnard, 2019b, p. 206). The effectiveness of the existing method in this new context was tested via a small-scale longitudinal study during COVID-19 lockdowns (May 2020–May 2021) utilising in-depth interviews and participant-observation and participant evaluation sheets that enabled comparison with four previous studies and one subsequent study. These were conducted as part of a ten year programme of research into the role of creativity in digital upskilling (represented by publications and outputs including Barnard, 2016, 2017, 2019a, c). This first contribution leads to the second contribution. In a theory and policy context in which it is known in general terms that creativity is important but specificity regarding how is lacking, this chapter provides emergent findings to help improve the clarity, accuracy, and usefulness of our narrative on the nature and role of creativity in digital skills acquisition, embedding a practical understanding of how creativity functions in the context of digital skills acquisition and retention. This in turn leads to the third contribution, namely, a new theoretical position on the role of creativity in developing resilience in the digital sphere, with associated policy implications.

Far from being inherently creative, digital technologies can stifle creativity. This chapter demonstrates that the creative process offers a powerful tool for developing future-proofing digital skills by enabling people to develop methods based on their own experience and capabilities that can liberate the potential of digital technologies.

2 Digital Skills, Context

Before the Covid pandemic, levels of digital exclusion were already of serious concern. In 2019, ‘an estimated 11.7 million (22%) people in the UK [were] without the skills needed for everyday life’, according to one of the UK’s main measures of digital inclusion, the Lloyds Bank Consumer Digital Index (Lloyds, 2020). At this time, lifeline services such as the UK’s Universal Credit were already ‘digital by default’ and “at least 82% of online advertised job openings in the UK requir[ed] a good level of digital competencies from applicants” (Djumalieva & Cooke, 2020). That is, in 2019, already, digital was not a choice. Yet what constitutes a ‘good level of digital competencies’ was then and remains in a state of flux.

Due to Covid lockdowns, digital engagement reached a level that had been projected for 2025 “indicat[ing] that the UK has made five years progress in just one year”, noted one report in May 2021 (Lloyds, 2021, p. 46). However, much of that change was forced by a pandemic, and cannot be described as ‘progress’ for all. For example, a November 2021 report notes that 56% of educators surveyed said “teachers and learners do not have the skills needed to make digital learning a success” and 66% reported “devices being shared with multiple family members’ as the most widespread challenge” (OUP, 2021, np). The speed with which many citizens were forced online exacerbated the digital divide and brought a key question to the fore: is that change sustainable? The same Lloyds May 2021 report notes that “21% of people with Very High engagement have stepped down to the High segment” (Lloyds, 2021, p. 13), emphasising, “digital capability is not a permanent state” (Lloyds, 2021, p. 10). The OUP report suggests that we should be talking not of digital ‘upskilling’ but, rather, digital ‘always-skilling’ (OUP, 2021, np). “If we are to have a digital economy and society that everyone can participate in, a culture of life-long learning and confidence building is key” (Lloyds, 2021, p. 46).

It is important to ask, then, how such life-long learning and confidence building are to take place and who is to provide them. A ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach does not work (Damodaran & Burrows, 2017), this has been demonstrated; a ‘user-centred’ approach does work (Damodaran & Olphert, 2015). Given citizens’ diverse needs, identifying user-centred solutions that can be applied remotely and widely represents a significant challenge, a challenge that the research study presented here addresses, via an innovative approach.

A significant gap in digital skills research methods has been noted. “Since the 1990s, the role of digital technology in everyday life has changed dramatically, but the way we understand and study digital skills have not kept pace” (Allman & Blank, 2021, p. 2), yet, the ‘human experience’ of digital upskilling has been largely neglected (Allman & Blank, 2021, p. 11). The study presented here not only positions human experience of deploying creativity to enable digital upskilling centrally, it also benefits from a decade-long programme of empirical research that does so (represented by publications and outputs including Barnard, 2016, 2017, 2019a, c). Further, the research here was conducted during the first Covid lockdown when fear was endemic. That is, the means of enabling creative flexibility used to support ‘future-proofing’ digital upskilling was tested during a period when fear had the potential to inhibit learning, and the means of enabling such creative flexibility was found to be effective. Before providing detail of the methodology utilised, this chapter considers ‘creativity’.

3 Creativity, Context

The report Boundless Creativity notes that it is important to gain understanding of creativity in the context of digital engagement as we build back after the Covid pandemic (DCMS and AHRC, 2021, p. 6). Yet, like ‘digital’, ‘creativity’ is a moving target.

Creativity is certainly viewed as valuable. Pre-pandemic, the creative industries contributed £115.9 billion per year and grew at more than five times the rate of the overall economy (DCMS and AHRC, 2021, pp. 4–5). The creative and cultural industries “constitute the most distinct area of economic growth of the new Millennium” (Granger, 2020, p. 3). Creativity can improve citizen’s health and wellbeing and is, consequently, key to society’s work rebuilding in response to Covid (DCMS and AHRC, 2021). However, “[m]uch of the definitional basis of creativity and the way society ascribes value to it—or valorises—draw on economic and productionist terms of reference” (Granger, 2020, p. 6). It can seem that providing a concise and absolute definition of ‘creativity’ is valuable in and of itself; neat definitions can give a sense of control. Yet, creativity is not a pill that can be swallowed.

The idea of ‘creativity’ tends to bring complex human responses. Koestler notes that the creative act “involves several levels of consciousness” (Koestler, 2014, p. 658). Hayles argues that we do not like to acknowledge the driving role of the sub- and/or unconscious in creative decision-making because to do so downplays ‘human agency’ (2012, p. 95). Meanwhile, every day, with our ‘mashup minds’ working at the “productive interface of brain, body, and social and material world”, as Andy Clark frames it, “‘messy’ but powerful solutions are reliably found” (Clark, 2008, p. 219). The short story writer Flannery O’Connor famously said, “asking me to talk about story-writing is like asking a fish to lecture on swimming”. If a creative practitioner is highly effective without understanding how their creativity works, it may seem dangerous to attempt to know that creativity – perhaps dissecting it will destroy it.

However, it is possible for an individual to arrive at a position where their creativity remains unknowable in a complete sense whilst simultaneously enough is known about how to operationalise their creativity for it to be possible to knowingly establish the preconditions for that creativity (for discussion, see Barnard, 2019a, pp. 70–79). An individual’s perception of their own creativity is important. Informed by prior research (Barnard, 2016, 2017, 2019a, b, c), during the study reported here, a key aim was to help participants feel that they could self-define, and so make it possible to intentionally activate and purposefully deploy, their creativity.

There is “an imperative for policy and academia to prioritise new ways of thinking about what value means” in the context of creativity (Granger, 2020, p. 6). This chapter embraces that challenge. It contends that adoption of a user-centred (as opposed to productionist) approach to creativity such as the one presented here can transform digital engagement now and in the future.

4 Methods

The small-scale longitudinal Covid lockdown study conducted May 2020–May 2021 provides the data that is the main focus of this chapter. As indicated, this study addressed the following research problems:

• Can a method of teaching creativity that enables digital upskilling with measurable effectiveness that was developed in Higher Education in Creative Writing be delivered remotely beyond the home discipline and outside Higher Education?

• Can this be done via a single assignment, the multimodal practice model of creativity (MPMC) (Barnard, 2019, pp. 85–89)?

• If this can be done, what adaptations of the assignment are needed to optimise effectiveness?

• Can delivery of the assignment be used as a case study to help improve the clarity, accuracy and usefulness of our narrative on the nature and role of creativity in digital skills acquisition and retention?

The methods used were drawn from the methodology utilised to develop the MPMC assignment (for detail of that methodology, see Barnard, 2019a, pp. 130–133). These methods, having been utilised for a ten-year programme of research, were selected as optimally expeditious because they enabled comparative assessment of qualitative and quantitative data. For the May 2020–May 2021 Covid lockdown study, quantitative data has been included for context, but it is the qualitative data that is the main focus. The mixed methods approach used comprised:

• in-situ trials of the multimodal practice model of creativity (MPMC) as a pedagogical assignment;

• participant observation;

• participant evaluation sheets;

• in-depth interviews.

Participants of the Covid lockdown study comprised five members of staff at charities/NGOs that work with a range of digitally excluded citizens including NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) young people, older people, unemployed citizens and citizens with English as a second language. At the start of the May 2020 lockdown, participants had different levels of digital skills. Staff roles represented by the participants include client support, volunteer support, fundraising and events organisation. As noted, the first COVID lockdown began on 23rd March 2020. For the study, the five participants were provided with digital upskilling training, specifically, MPMC delivered as a pedagogical assignment to each participant individually during a dedicated MPMC session. Prior to each MPMC session, participants were sent the assignment in full (Barnard, 2019a, pp. 85–89), so they could read it in advance if they wanted to.

The assignment was completed via video calls of approximately one hour each with the participants between 5th and 14th May 2020. The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. A topic guide was used to ensure consistency of subject matter covered. All transcripts were sent to the participants in order to confirm that they accurately reflected their views and amendments were inserted where requested. As close to one week after each participant’s completion of the assignment as possible, in-depth evaluation interviews of between 34 and 49 minutes were conducted, also via video call. Participants completed two evaluation sheets, the first evaluating participants’ levels of digital literacy at the study’s start point, the second evaluating the effectiveness of the MPMC assignment. Importantly, the second evaluation sheet was the same evaluation sheet used for four previous studies and one subsequent Covid lockdown study conducted as part of a ten year programme of research in order to (as indicated) enable comparative assessment of the data. The four previous studies and one subsequent study (27 participants) – hereinafter called collectively ‘the supporting studies’ – were conducted within a UK Higher Education Institution (HEI) (supporting studies 1–4; face-to-face delivery) and an Estonian HEI (supporting study 5; remote delivery) with students at Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels represented; for supporting studies 1, 2 and 4, MPMC was delivered as an assignment as part of year-long courses in Creative Writing (Postgraduate), Publishing (Undergraduate, third year) and Journalism (Undergraduate, second year); supporting study 3 was one two hour class dedicated to MPMC within an existing postgraduate Arts Festival Management course; supporting study 5 was a new six week course, Theories of Creativity, delivered remotely to diverse PhD students at an Estonian university, with the MPMC assignment delivered in Week 1 and developed Weeks 2–6. For all participants, MPMC was an ‘opt in’ assignment. The studies are in addition to regular classroom delivery.

5 Observing and Supporting Development of Digital Resilience

5.1 Practicalities

Everyone has different experiences of and needs for digital technologies. Hence, development of creative flexibility and facilitating personalisation of approach are guiding principles of the method of helping develop ‘future-proofing’ digital upskilling considered here. The MPMC “is not intended to be a hard and fast set of rules. It is to be used and altered and developed over time” (Barnard, 2019a, p. 79); that is, the model (summarised below) is designed to be personalised by each user and adapted by that user as digital technologies and each user’s corresponding needs develop and change. For the study’s digital engagement sessions, participants were asked to keep a copy of the model in front of them either digitally or as a hard copy. Also – in the same way that it was explained in HEI classroom contexts for the four previous studies and one subsequent – the model was explained to each participant during the session, with space for questions.

The multimodal practice model of creativity (MPMC) can be summarised as comprising ‘writerly resources’ (including ‘remediation of practice’), ‘writerly personas’, ‘expert intuition’, ‘inner auteur’ and ‘creative projects’. This model applies internal multimodality to external multimodal problems.

Specialist Creative Writing terminology used in the original assignment was retained for the Covid lockdown study for two reasons, to enable: comparison with the supporting studies; to enable consideration of whether that terminology could helpfully be altered to make the assignment accessible more widely and, if so, how. Two terms in particular, ‘remediation of practice’ (a ‘writerly resource’) and ‘inner auteur’, proved tricky for participants to grasp initially. Yet, once the participants understood them, it was these two concepts that proved to be especially useful (for discussion, see below). It was emphasised that it was fine for the participants to use alternative terms (‘remediation of practice’ could be thought of as ‘upcycling’ or ‘skills transfer’, for example. That participants should identify terminology or phrases that made the concepts meaningful for them was the priority. Most terms transferred quite easily to participants’ individual contexts. ‘Writing’ was interpreted as embracing production of content that was published online or submitted digitally to the workplace, for example, as tweets, WhatsApp messages, emails and/or work reports. ‘Creative projects’ were interpreted as online projects that were of particular importance to the participant (for example, a new Covid email newsletter, a presentation involving Powerpoint for a work team meeting via video call). ‘Writerly personas’ were interpreted as the different parts of oneself that come to the fore for different parts of the creative act (for example, a more experimental aspect of oneself for a first draft, a more pragmatic aspect of oneself for a final edit). ‘Writerly resources’ might include, for example, a cup of coffee (to help energise at the start of a first draft), a pen and paper (to compose a structure), a particular computer software (while editing) and/or a deadline (to motivate completion), as well as remediation of practice (see on). Participants were invited to select a current or upcoming online ‘creative project’ that had a technological element that was new to them and consequently felt daunting so that the selected project could be used as a case study to help build and test their personalised model of creativity. Then, the remaining portions of the MPMC sessions were devoted to supporting the participants in developing their own personalised models of creativity.

Each participant asked several times whether it was genuinely the case that they could alter the model, checking if there was a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of doing the assignment; for each participant, an important moment – a moment when confidence visibly increased – was when they accepted that they were free to alter the model to fit their experience and began to do so. Participants reflected on these increases of confidence, with Participant A noting the connection between enjoying the assignment and confidence increasing, for example. Participant B said they considered their digital skills to have gone from a score of 4 before the assignment up to an 8 after the assignment due to an increase in ‘confidence and how I can approach different things’. Another moment when confidence visibly increased tended to come when participants identified a particular metaphor that encompassed several aspects of their evolving model of creativity and had strong associations with past success in endeavours that were new to them (of which, more later).

At the end of the delivery via video call of the MPMC assignment, participants were asked to complete an evaluation sheet that uses QAA Creative Writing benchmarks (2016) and provides space for comment (Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1

Participants’ development of Creative Writing skills, self-assessment

6 Discussion

As noted, this small scale longitudinal Covid lockdown study had, among its aims, helping to improve participants’ digital skills and helping to improve creativity. Quantitative data indicates that both these aims were achieved. As Fig. 9.2 shows, all participants judged that, shortly after completion of the MPMC assignment, their digital skills had improved. For four participants, the increase was between 0.5 and 1.5; for one participant the increase in digital skills was (as noted) double, from 4 to 8. Importantly, all participants confirmed one year after completing the MPMC assignment that their personalised MPMC was still useful to them in the context of ongoing digital upskilling. As Fig. 9.3 shows, all participants found that the MPMC assignment helped develop their ‘capacity to be creative’, as was the case for participants in all supporting studies 2018–2021 (see Fig. 9.4). The Covid lockdown study participants completed their evaluation sheets shortly after the May 2020 assignment; follow-up communications May 2021 confirmed that the MPMC continued to aid participants’ self-defined ‘capacity to be creative’. Clearly, these are positive findings in the context of this study. However, these were not the only aims of this research.

Fig. 9.2

Participants’ digital skills, self-assessment

Fig. 9.3

Participants’ capacity to be creative, self-assessment – Covid lockdown study only

Fig. 9.4

Participants’ capacity to be creative, self-assessment – Covid lockdown study and supporting studies

A driving aim of the Covid lockdown study was to help improve the clarity, accuracy and usefulness of our narrative on the nature and role of creativity in digital skills acquisition. Key findings in this regard centre on participants’ personalisation of terminology in order to delineate and articulate their creative process. As noted, two terms in particular proved both in need of additional explanation and particularly helpful to participants, specifically: ‘remediation of practice’ and ‘inner auteur’. During the MPMC sessions, it was explained that ‘writerly resources’ can and should include the participant’s own prior experience of tackling something that was new to them – that is, of ‘remediating’ their own practice:

To negotiate the demands that come (thick and fast) in a twenty-first century characterised by a high turnover of new media technologies, a writer can “remediate” his or her own practice: that is, instead of rejecting experiences of “old” media as redundant, writers can productively mobilise prior creative experiences and transfer skills gained previously into new digital multimedia and networked environments. As new challenges and opportunities arise, a writer who remediates his or her own practice “looks to existing skills and prior experience and adapts or applies them in new contexts as part of a process of, in effect, collaborating with him or herself”. (Barnard, 2019a, p. 29).

The ‘inner auteur’ that features at the centre of the model represents the role played by the unconscious in providing ‘“messy” but powerful solutions’:

A flash of lightning cannot operate in a vacuum. It needs the right conditions before it can hit a tree and – apparently miraculously – split it. Similarly, a solution that may appear to arrive out of the blue has had the conditions for its arrival set up already. The “inner auteur” is able to identify that a flash of expert intuition has arrived, conditions are right and it should be acted on. It is not merely an additional writerly persona. A writer may be aware of different writerly personas and step into them consciously. Rather, the inner auteur (a kind of internal auterist film director or ghostly diagnosing GP or puppetmaster) represents our co-ordinating unconscious capacity. (Barnard, 2019a, p. 81).

A simple reminder that even a pencil was once new technology was helpful in explaining ‘remediation of practice’. It freed participants to think back to first times of using or doing something else that was new to them that could seem separate from digital technology – such as riding a bike, or learning ballet – and consider how they tackled the nerves then, to see if any strategies could be ‘remediated’ in a new, digital context. That is, in wrestling with the terms, the participants were already starting to wrestle with how to locate and assess their creativity. None of the Covid lockdown study participants had previous experience of formal study of Creative Writing. Yet, the consensus was that, even though it took work to understand some of the terminology, that work was helpful. The fact that the terminology came from a field that felt remote helped bring a fresh perspective that helped them recognise that they had an identifiable creative process to work with (this in itself was new information for most participants, with one surprised to be ‘creating creativity’ and another saying, ‘There it is, my creative process – and I didn’t even know I had one!’).

Participant A’s increased confidence during the MPMC assignment tied closely to the moment at which art school training that could be remediated was recalled; ‘excitement’ recurred as a synonym for creativity on Participant A’s personalised MPMC, which was a highly colourful mind map with, at the centre, a drawing of a dragonfly as the ‘Lure’ of ‘excitement’. The metaphor of fishing equipment was extended visually across the page. The drawing of the ‘Lure’ ended in a fishing ‘hook’ that attached to ‘external resources’ including, for example, ‘contracted expectations’ and ‘sticky notes, different colours and shapes’, to indicate that they helped facilitate Participant A’s creativity. For Participant B, accepting that a ‘babble self’ played a valuable part proved pivotal. On the MPMC assignment evaluation sheet, against ‘CAPACITY TO BE CREATIVE’, Participant B noted that the ‘thinking changed to “having a go” “what have you got to lose”’; against ‘ROBUST ARTISTIC PRACTICES’, Participant B’s comment was “Really useful, it was good to think about naming my writerly personas, and how it’s ok to have what I have called my babble self, followed by Focused self, etc”. As preferred terms grew clearer, so too did participants’ confidence in their grasp of key elements of their creativity as it relates to and supports improved digital engagement.

Digital technologies can seem to cast spells and have magical qualities, they can undermine users’ feelings of agency (Barnard, 2017, p. 277). It is known that empowerment is a key enabler of digital skills acquisition (see for example DCMS, 2020; Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies, 2020). A sense of empowerment may be attached to an external supporting individual or institution (the ‘IT person’ at work, or a charitable organisation offering digital upskilling sessions, for example). If feelings of empowerment are internalised, they are more likely to be resilient and lasting. Finding the right metaphor proved to be a key enabler in this regard.

Participant C was cautious about the MPMC assignment terminology, with particular wariness of the idea of different writerly personas, until they identified the persona of ‘Adventurer’, when the process of personalising the model of creativity sped up exponentially. The term ‘Inner auteur’ was replaced with ‘COMPASS’ (in capital letters); discussion during the assignment made clear that the fact that a compass continues to move and ‘quiver’ even when it has found the right direction was especially important (a compass remains dynamic). Once Participant C identified the compass-wielding ‘Adventurer’, other personas quickly emerged – including, for example, as a further extension of the adventurer/compass metaphor, ‘Pirate – rule breaker’ – until the final model featured 12 external personas and nine internal personas.

For Participant D, the process of personalising the model of creativity gained momentum when Lego was identified as a core metaphor. Remediation of childhood play with Lego enabled the identification of related personas (‘Collector’, ‘Architect’ and ‘Engineer’), and it helped in the physical construction of a coherent picture of Participant D’s creative process. The layout of Participant D’s personalised model on the page was strikingly architectural. The two creative projects became pillars flanking blocks representing ‘Expert intuition’ and ‘Facilitator’ (Participant D’s version of ‘Inner auteur’), blocks that were in turn supported by four pillars: ‘Personas’, ‘Modes’, ‘Inner-resources’ and ‘External resources’.

The core metaphors of ‘COMPASS’ and ‘Lego’ had the power for Participants C and D respectively to conjure the entire creative process and help make it feel manageable. For Participant E, an equivalent function was served by the metaphor of a ‘combine harvester’, whereby apparently disparate elements – external and internal resources; writerly personas – are drawn together productively. Thus, the metaphor of a ‘combine harvester’ provided for Participant E an image that can be conjured instantaneously whereby diverse elements of a new digital challenge are faced and addressed and a method of finding a solution provided, all via one compact phrase: ‘the combine harvester approach’. A year after first completing the MPMC assignment, Participant E was still using the model to help, both in practical ways (to produce and disseminate a monthly email newsletter, for example) and for ‘more creative things’ (such as community Zoom meetings organised to provide support through a time of crisis):

I’ve continued to use the Model of Creativity when I’ve put things together, I’ve found it to be really helpful. It’s that combine harvester approach, throw it all in, work out what’s important and how you present it using Zoom, using screen share and the chat box. The assignment we did has helped me do a better job, and quicker and less stressful and more enjoyable.

For Participant D a year later:

Lego has definitely recurred. How do you break down the elements of an offline event and reassemble them as an online event? It’s about identifying the component parts and critically assessing those component parts. … Tech can be limiting. It’s the architect persona I use because it’s about redesigning a space for the flow and emotional response that’s wanted rather than getting stuck with the idea of where a door and window should go and being limited by that.

Importantly, while the image of Lego, a compass and/or a combine harvester could potentially be useful for other people as well, there is no guarantee that those particular metaphors will work for others. It is of note that for each participant of the Covid lockdown study, the core metaphor was different – and, that is true across all studies (Fig. 9.4). This is not surprising, as each metaphor, inevitably, emerged from different past experiences and was applied in different ways in different contexts to a wide range of current digital problems. Giving the time needed by each participant to find the metaphor that was meaningful for them was an essential part of the process.

Just as each participant provided their own core metaphors to help articulate and delineate their creativity, they provided their own definition of digital literacy prior to the MPMC session and their own assessment of resulting changes to their digital skills levels.

The digital literacy feedback sheets indicated that most participants engaged with a range of social media platforms, said they ‘like’ social media and used it ‘daily’, with the exception of Participant E, who said they ‘dislike’ social media and used it ‘weekly’. Taking Fig. 9.2 and the digital literacy evaluation sheets together, it is of note that on Fig. 9.2, participants all positioned themselves at between 6 and 8 in terms of their digital skills level before Covid lockdown despite personal definitions of digital literacy that suggested wider disparities. For example, Participant B rated their digital skills as 7 before Covid and gave this definition of ‘digital literacy’: ‘Being able to use tablets, phones, laptops, desktops confidently. Understanding the different platforms and how to use them, how they interact and different methods of communicating with people’. By contrast, Participant D, who scored themselves just one point above participant B before Covid (at 8), gave this personal definition of ‘digital literacy’: ‘being able to achieve what you need/want to do using appropriate digital tools and services. Having an understanding of how the services work and are funded and what data and information you are providing and how that may be used. Being able to critically assess digital tools, services and devices and choose the most appropriate for the task you want to accomplish. Being confident to try and use new tools and services by applying learning from other contexts. I think there are multiple digital literacies that work in combination with access and citizenship to provide an overall digital capability.’ Thus, Participant B’s personal definition of digital literacy was much more practical (foregrounding a basic understanding of how to use devices/platforms plus the ability to do so with confidence), whereas Participant D’s personal definition of digital literacy embraces issues ranging from trust (who funds services used) to privacy (companies’ use of data) and clarifies that there are multiple digital literacies, distinguishing between basic access and issues of citizenship. It is a contention of this chapter that imposing a judgement of participants’ levels of digital skills would have been disempowering; self-assessment kept participants’ focus on gaining digital skills in manageable increments.

7 Concluding Comments

To briefly re-cap, then: the research reported here provides evidence that creativity can be deployed to enable sustainable and resilient, or ‘future-proofing’ digital skills acquisition. It demonstrates that an empirically tested method of teaching creativity that enables digital upskilling with measurable effectiveness via a single assignment (Barnard, 2019a, pp. 85–89) could be delivered remotely to select staff at small NGOs/charities who work with digitally excluded citizens. Participants’ self-defined capacity to be creative and digital skills were shown to have improved following the assignment, with lasting benefits. Thus, this chapter has shown that a model of creativity assignment that was developed for face-to-face delivery in Higher Education in the home discipline of Creative Writing can be used outside the home discipline and beyond Higher Education. It can also be delivered effectively with citizens in remote mode, and help them negotiate the challenge of developing a creative flexibility that supports and enables ‘future-proofing’ (i.e. sustainable and resilient) digital skills acquisition.

However, these were not the only or key aims of this research. A driving aim of the Covid lockdown study was to help improve the clarity, accuracy and usefulness of our narrative on the nature and role of creativity in digital skills acquisition, embedding a practical understanding of how creativity functions in the context of digital skills acquisition and retention. Importantly, metaphors – specifically, metaphors selected by users – can play a highly valuable role. Ideas of ‘digital resilience’ have centred on enabling citizens to avoid and/or mitigate ‘risk’ and ‘harm’ (UKCIS, 2019). Safety online is important, of course. However, words such as ‘risk’ and ‘harm’ are likely to be accompanied by fear, which tends to limit experimentation and playfulness. All participants of the Covid lockdown study included experimentation (or, playfulness) as a valuable part of their creative process.

Many methods of digital upskilling tend to make participants feel inadequate, highlighting what they can not do. The approach presented here gives participants agency. Giving people confidence in what they bring makes a profound difference.

An important implication for policy is that, in the context of supporting ‘roll out’ of digital skills acquisition, the user orientation to creativity should be given centrality. When the participants could take control of the discourse or insight into the task, they experienced transformation.

Opportunities for digital skills acquisition should be accompanied by a proper consideration of the optimum time for acquisition (to allow identification by individual users of the language that is most empowering for them). There are numerous online digital courses which users can do solo. However, human interactions can help ensure that moments when confidence in developing a personalised method of digital upskilling increase – and the words that accompany or trigger those moments – are noticed and built on. Existing terminology that has been shown to help citizens negotiate technological challenges can be provided as a starting point (as well as examples above, see as sample practitioners’ accounts of productive application of Barnard’s model of creativity and ‘remediation of practice’ Holdstock (2021) and Rangel (2022) respectively). To be accurate and useful, facilitators’ language should include invitation to participants to provide their own customised terminology and core metaphors. Rather than imposed judgements, self-assessment of levels of digital skills should be embedded.

In conclusion, then, this research has met its objectives. It has:

• outlined a single, adaptable model of creativity that has been shown to support ‘future-proofing’ (i.e. sustainable and resilient) digital skills acquisition for use with diverse citizen, face-to-face or remotely;

• provided quantitative and qualitative assessment of the effectiveness of that model in supporting ‘future-proofing’ digital skills acquisition;

• contributed discussion drawn from empirical data to help improve the clarity, accuracy and usefulness of our narrative on the nature and role of creativity in digital skills acquisition, providing new insights into the role of metaphor and customisation of terminology in deploying creativity that can enable ‘future-proofing’ digital skills acquisition;

• presented a new theoretical position on the role of creativity in developing resilience in the digital sphere that is supported by a ten year programme of research (represented by Barnard, 2019a), whereby the multi-dimensional nature of online interactions and the ongoing digital upskilling that is necessitated for citizens by fast-paced technological change can be accommodated.

This chapter shows that an individual’s creativity can be both unknowable and knowable enough for citizens to be able to deploy it effectively in the service of ‘future-proofing’ digital skills acquisition.

One currently under-researched area is how to enable ongoing uplift of digitally competent workers’ digital skills to prevent their digital skills diminishing over time for reasons including work cultures whereby employees are expected to learn ‘on the job’ (see for example, Learning and Work Institute, 2021, p. 8). The study reported here makes a contribution in that area. However, these emergent findings illustrate that there is still a great deal more to do in exploring and developing our narrative on the nature and role of creativity in digital skills acquisition.

The report Boundless Creativity notes the need to ‘demonstrate the value of creativity beyond the economic’ (2021, p. 18). If, via approaches such as the one presented here, citizens can feel confident, even before they have arrived at new technological challenges, that they will be able to deploy creativity to help them address new challenges on the basis of experience of success, then creativity becomes an invaluable, constant resource.