Educational Social Enterprise and the Wicked Problem of Creativity and Literacy

Abstract

This article examines the potential contribution of social enterprise to the “wicked” problem of creativity and literacy in a performative schooling environment, drawing on an ethnographic study of Ciento, a social enterprise organization that works with under-resourced young people, families, and communities in Melbourne, Australia. In light of the growing body of research on the ways in which schools navigate creativity and performativity, this article contributes new knowledge on non-school organizations that is largely missing from this conversation, as well as new insights on the operations of education-focused social enterprises in Australia. It considers the social, political, and historical factors that have shaped this unique space of educational “wickedity” and the ways in which organizational rationales and practices, as well as the experiences and views of staff and participants, indicate a complex, promising, and innovative approach to educational problem-solving.

Introduction

This study examines the potential contribution of social enterprise to the “wicked” problem of creativity and literacy in a performative schooling environment, drawing on an ethnographic study of Ciento, a social enterprise organization that works with under-resourced young people, families, and communities in Melbourne, Australia. This follows recent debates over the tensions between two education policy and curriculum areas—creativity and performativity. The former relates to the piecemeal commitment to “creativity” in state and national curricula and policy across Western education systems. In Australia, this has often been seen as a mere rhetorical commitment and largely aligned with economic imperatives and ambiguous gestures to new technology (Burnard & White, 2008; Henriksen et al., 2018), or even as a neoliberal discursive formation oriented toward problem solving and design (Gormley, 2020). Performativity relates to the global environment of high-stakes standardized literacy and numeracy testing, and the institutional, social, professional, and personal problems this environment engenders for schools, teachers, students, families, and communities (Appel, 2020; Ball, 2003; Lewis & Hardy, 2015; Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004).

To better understand the juncture of creativity and performativity, various scholars have examined the tensions, problems, practices, and experiences that it involves, using both empirical and policy-focused methods (Appel, 2020; Burnard & White, 2008; Nicholl & McLellan, 2008; Troman et al., 2007). Recent research documents the continued negative influence of performativity on creativity among Australian teachers and students (Appel, 2020). Some researchers suggest that “rebalancing” the pedagogy is necessary to navigate the demands of creativity and performativity regimes, and that the intersection of performativity and creativity is characterized by contradiction, ambiguity, and uncertainty (Burnard & White, 2008). Understanding how and why creativity is emphasized in specific educational contexts over others is a significant challenge for educators and researchers alike, especially in an environment that favors standardization. Indeed, unlike the normalization of literacy as part of standardized testing regimes, measurement is a significant and recognized challenge for creativity (Metwaly et al., 2017). Harris’ (2016, pp. 28, 29) research with Australian educators found that creativity was seen as restricted by individual teachers rather than curriculum, and that schools in lower socioeconomic areas can be less inclined to emphasize the importance of creativity as an important global and economic skill.

Significantly, some scholars argue that “almost wholly negative” critical studies of performativity policies and the “almost wholly positive” studies of creativity cannot capture the complexities of the negotiations between performativity and creativity (Troman et al., 2007). Ethnography has proved to be an effective method to capture such negotiations (Beach & Dovemark, 2009; Troman et al., 2007), although there is less research on community organizations, such as social enterprises who work on small scales with young people, families, schools, and communities in particular geographical areas to provide additional educational opportunities. Such organizations operate in the educational problem space engendered by these policy formations in specific attempts to improve literacy and promote creativity, and therefore their work, experiences, attitudes, and practices are worthy of consideration in the field of performativity and creativity studies. This article conceptualizes the juncture of creativity and performativity as a “wicked” problem that involves non-school actors, where “wickedity” is both a theoretical device and a call to action, and uses ethnographic research to provide an empirical contribution to this conversation.

The term “wicked problem” has been adopted in debates about education policy, planning, and practice (Armstrong, 2018; Barrett, 2012; Jordan et al., 2014). The term emphasizes the extraordinary difficulty of solving the evolving and often contradictory requirements of educational systems, as well as other social, cultural, and environmental challenges. The “wicked” nature of educational problems is linked to a variety of factors, including the complexities of standardized practice and delivery (Leverenz, 2014), the difficulty of navigating literacy learning (Jordan et al., 2014), as well as determining and measuring “what matters” in education (Zhao et al., 2019). The complexity of solving educational problems associated with literacy (Jordan et al., 2014) and creativity (Jackson, 2008) is arguably eclipsed by their “wicked” intersection, where education systems face a range of competing demands, both measurable and non-measurable, that also consolidate forms of disadvantage and inspire non-school interventions, such as those discussed in this article.

In studies on literacy, some scholars argue that we can better understand and address “wicked” problems by having more conversations with diverse stakeholders, from educators to parents, as well as engaging in collective and distributed sense-making (Jordan et al., 2014). This assertion seems to align with ground-level research and direct engagement with actors involved in the provision of education both within and outside formal schooling, such as education-focused social enterprises. Social enterprises stand as both promising (Ranabahu, 2020; Zivkovic, 2018) and controversial (Ball, 2012; Ball & Olmedo, 2011) responses to “wicked” problems, and additional research on these organizations is needed (McQuilten et al., 2020). While acknowledging the ongoing and complex terrain in which educational problems and standards are produced and reproduced, and understanding “wickedness” as a matter of degree rather than in binary relationship with “tameness” (Head & Alford, 2015), this article engages with a non-school organization that navigates the space of creativity and literacy in a performative schooling environment as well as the discourses of social enterprise that structure its field of practice.

Social enterprises are, according to Social Traders Australia ¹ : “an innovative breed of businesses that exist to create a fairer and more sustainable world” (Social Traders, 2021, n.p.), with some serving to engage young people in non-mainstream education, employment, and the arts. While arts-based social enterprise research is emerging (Sabet, 2019; McRobbie, 2018; McQuilten et al., 2020; Pearse & Peterlin, 2019), there is scarce research on literacy-focused social enterprises in Australia and abroad. While the implications of non-profit and for-profit organizations’ participation in education are indeed addressed as part of a general critique of neoliberal privatization (Hogan & Thompson, 2020; O’Neill, 2017) or the politics of policy influence (Tompkins-Stange, 2020), there is little evidence of engagement with specific social enterprises who respond to creativity and literacy challenges. Such engagement may be necessary to avoid a wholesale dismissal of non-state philanthropic and organizational work under the banner of anti-neoliberalization or anti-capitalism. While it is important to acknowledge that there is no one “right” way to solve wicked problems such as educational disadvantage, and that not all problems can be solved by social entrepreneurship (Paulsen & McDonald, 2010), the need for additional research on the experiences, attitudes, opportunities, and challenges of those working in the field of social enterprise in Australia is evident (McQuilten et al., 2020). Ethnographic research is also valuable to highlight the diverse social practices associated with literacy (Barton, 2012).

Methodology and Research Context

My research with Ciento draws on ethnographic methods which have been used in past research on literacy (Barton, 2012; J. Preston, 2007), creativity (Hjorth et al., 2019), and social enterprise (Mauksch et al., 2017). As J. Preston (2007, pp. 59, 60) notes, ethnography as used in literacy studies does not typically lead to conclusive results, but rather provocations and opportunities to re-think our understandings. To better understand the socially-embedded nature of creativity, various scholars have also conducted ethnographic studies on creative practices (Hickey-Moody, 2013; Hjorth et al., 2019), with topics ranging from the dynamics of arts-centered and community-based projects as modes of neoliberal governance (Sabet, 2019; Hickey-Moody, 2013; Khan, 2016;) to the ways in which people and organizations pursue creativity (Moeran, 2016), all of which intersect with the focus of this article.

One of the methods that informs the ethnographic case study is participant observation, involving active participation in the phenomenon being studied (DeWalt & DeWalt, 2011; Gans, 2010). When I first contacted Ciento to propose my research, we agreed that it would be most practical for me to become a volunteer in order to participate and observe. In addition to one-off participation in selected workshops and events such as school holiday programs and project launches, I was a regular volunteer tutor in the Pageturners after-school workshops every Monday afternoon. While I was able to gain useful insight from staff, volunteers, and one parent during in-depth interviews, almost all the young people I worked with were younger than the agreed age threshold for interviews under my university ethics agreement.

All Pageturners workshops were run by a program facilitator and generally two to four volunteers, depending on availability. Over 6 months, I worked with groups of young people, mostly of primary/elementary school age, who attended the workshops with or without their parents. Generally, around 10 to 12 young people attended, along with roughly 4 parents (during my visits they were all mothers, with one exception). Each week, the program facilitator, Oliver, would set general parameters for activities in the theme of storywriting, although participants were not necessarily putting words to paper, but rather engaged in a broad range of multimodal and place-based storytelling activities. We (the volunteers) worked with small groups of young people, generally seated around long rectangular wooden tables. The young people were free to participate in the activity offered, although if they were not interested we would find other ways to engage them in an activity they enjoyed.

Aspects of organizational work, as well as people within an organization, can be inaccessible to observation, whether through participant observation or the analysis of publicly-available discourses (Neyland, 2008, p. 112). The workshops at Ciento were invaluable for understanding its working environment and programming, and post-workshop debriefs between the program facilitator and volunteers were useful in terms of locating my observations and experiences within the broader rationales and aims of the organization. However, much of the broader organizational work is done in front of a computer. Thus, in-depth and semi-structured interviews (Cruickshank, 2012; Forsey, 2012) were a practical method in gaining additional insight into participants’ views and experiences at the center. All participants signed an informed consent form and elected to have the interview take place at the center in a private room or workshop space, with the exception of an interview with a volunteer which took place at her home. Thematic analysis of the data (Bailey, 2017; Brewer, 2000) helped me examine the various personal, social, political, and historical factors that shape the organizational environment, practices, and mission, and to better understand how social enterprise might contribute to literacy and creativity outside the school.

Setting the Scene: The Volunteer Induction

On a sunny winter morning, Tim, the CEO, took a group of students, authors, artists, youth workers, lecturers, and retirees through the magical world of Ciento. The story begins with an overview of the construction process—from neighborhood negotiations to bureaucratic struggles. They wanted to construct a building 100 stories high, Tim tells us, but the council “wouldn’t approve it, even though they seem pretty happy with high rises lately”—a cute yet sobering reminder of gentrification in the post-industrial suburb of Footscray, Melbourne (McConville & Oke, 2018). The fact that their floorplan illustrated that their secret room (hidden behind a bookshelf) would share a wall with the vault of the bank next door did nothing to speed up construction, and as our tour guide adds—the center itself may or may not be part of an elaborate bank robbery plan that has already resulted in lost children—wink wink. It is clear that there will be little breaks from this discourse of enchantment and possibility, a consistency that was mirrored in the workshops.

As the tour goes outside to examine the shopfront and surrounding shopping district, a diverse range of onlookers peer on, as though the presence of our assembly has drawn their attention to the quirky joint for the first time. However, the center is quite difficult to miss—its funky blue colors and bubbly fonts look more like the furnishings of a micro-enterprise on the streets of more affluent and gentrified Fitzroy or St. Kilda. The branding of the center has been designed by leading brand engagement agency Truly Deeply, whose resume includes everything from niche patisseries to luxury cars. You will find Ciento’s quirky shopfront about 150 m south from Little Saigon Market in Footscray, perhaps Melbourne’s most iconic Vietnamese shopping center. If you walk another 150 m south from the center, you will find Ras Dashen, a popular Ethiopian restaurant named after a mountain in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Ciento sits in the central shopping district in Footscray, a commercial and transport hub of the western suburbs of Melbourne. The area hosts numerous Vietnamese and African businesses and restaurants, reflecting its post-colonial migration history. Footscray is located in the municipality of Maribyrnong, the second most ethnically diverse in Victoria (Maribyrnong City Council, 2016), experiencing high levels of non-British migration in the second half of the 20th century.

The volunteer induction continues onto more serious topics including the reasons why certain “marginalized” young people, families, and communities might end up in their workshops—from cultural and linguistic diversity and socioeconomic disadvantage to the impact of family violence and drug use. Arguably, the term “marginalized” usefully reduces the emphasis on individual deficiencies that are promoted by discourses of risk (Te Riele, 2006), potentially challenging connotations of deviancy that youth arts interventions may promote, toward more nuanced conceptions of marginalized publics whose agency and citizenship deserves serious consideration (Hickey-Moody, 2013). As I would find out over the next few months and throughout our conversations, the staff at Ciento put an emphasis on the structural disadvantages in the mainstream education system, and demonstrated a sincere willingness to collaborate with the marginalized individual or community toward mutually agreed upon solutions.

Literacy, Creativity, and Non-School Interventions

Do not bring reality into the book world (our book discussions) or vice versa. (Level 87 Book Club Rules, framed and hung on wall)

All negativity will NOT be tolerated. (Level 44 Write Club Ninja Code, framed and hung on wall)

Do not read this message. (Sign made by Pageturners participant, stuck on cupboard with blu tack)

Scattered around the walls of the workshop space of Ciento are framed excerpts from stories that young people have written, sometimes accompanied by their first name and age. There are also framed lists of rules that relate to particular workshops and activities, with humor generally woven into them. The room features four long wooden tables surrounded by red chairs. On the right wall, there is a door that leads into a room where staff are sitting behind their computers, working on programs or chasing business opportunities. On the exposed glass side in the workshop space, the participants, program facilitators, and volunteers jot notes, draw pictures, and brainstorm ideas with sharpies. In a small nook on the right side of the room, there is a large galaxy map made by two professional visual artists and designers, which serves as a foundation for space-related workshop activities. On the left wall of the room, there are bookshelves with various books that participants can read during the workshops, or even take home on loan. Next to this, there is a row of three computers that are used for story-writing, editing, and other activities by participants and volunteers.

Pageturners, an after-school reading and writing program for elementary/primary school-aged young people, takes place in this eclectic room. It is here that I spent the majority of my time at Ciento, as a participant observer and volunteer. During this time, I was able to observe how Pageturners offers children and young people with meaningful opportunities to read and write, as well as edit, illustrate, and design. These skills, which complement several areas of the Australian Curriculum, are developed through dynamic and relational engagements with the place and the people in it, including program facilitators, volunteers, parents, and peers. Such encounters demonstrate the notion of reading as a social practice that is intimately entangled with the organization of spaces, people, and institutions (Allington & Swann, 2009; Bloome, 1985; Green, 1990).

Reading was one of the key activities of Pageturners. It was not uncommon to see a young person arrive, fatigued from a busy day at school, collapse into a corner of the room, and enter one of the many worlds available on the center’s bookshelf. By taking advantage of the available book loaning system, which almost mirrored the ethos and dynamics of a community-based public library, these worlds could then become part of their homelife and complement the reading pedagogies and literacy development processes of the formal classroom. However, significantly, reading was not restricted to books, as the walls of the center itself blossomed like pages of an ongoing, collaborative story where young people were both authors and characters in their own right. Supporting these opportunities is the overall organizational narrative, which is an important ingredient in the development of literacy at Ciento and the promotion of creativity, and key to understanding the organizational narrative is a trapdoor in the far left corner of the carpeted room.

The trapdoor is locked and bolted, covered with plastic weeds, and surrounded by hazard tape. Foam bubbles are seeping from its edges. The trapdoor is a launch pad for a variety of activities, although often the program facilitator and volunteers have to stop participants from getting too close. The trapdoor is very important as the organization is based on the premise that there are ninety-nine hidden floors below it. Diverse activities are organized around this premise, which reflect notions of the unreal, bizarre, and other-wordly that are key to the organizational culture. Schools in the Western Suburbs regularly bring their classes to the center to imagine, design, and create characters that fill the world below the trapdoor, which stimulates children’s writing and supports Australian Curriculum outcomes. Yet the power and mystique of the trapdoor goes much further. When I spoke to Nathan, a volunteer, about a new publishing project he was running at Ciento, he described its central character, a fictional editor that engages with young people in real life without ever meeting them, as a bit like the “personification of the trapdoor.” Next to the trapdoor is a notice board where staff and participants leave information about what has been happening on the various floors. As Tim, the CEO, notes:

For a lot of them it just messes with their head a little bit. . .it’s just. . .unsettling and disconcerting and provocative. . .even if they’ve come here going. . .I don’t wanna be a part of this, they can’t help but imagine. So you know, the ideas are bubbling against their will, and it’s a much easier job for us to sort of help them get that down on paper or whatever it needs to be. (Tim, personal communication, July 27, 2015)

This approach reflects the concept of storification, which refers to pedagogies and learning activities that take place in a fictional and non-fictional narrative to promote active engagement (Akkerman et al., 2009; Aura et al., 2021). The trapdoor also reflects the historical links between Ciento and 826 Valencia, the acclaimed writing center in San Francisco, which was founded by literary author Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Clements Calegari in 2002. The 826 Valencia inspired seven further centers in the United States, with others in Ireland, London, Italy, and two in Australia. Two of the founders of Ciento, Tim (now CEO) and Molly, completed an internship at the center after attending Dave Eggers’ presentation at the Melbourne Writers Festival. “Molly and I were very inspired by Eggers,” Tim says. “We had had an idea up to this point of combining forces to do a creative project “ (Tim, personal communication, July 27, 2015). The pirate supplies shop at 826 Valencia includes drawers of hidden treasures, trapdoors filled with surprises, as well as a vat of lard. The pirate supplies store, which partially funds the organization’s tutoring programs, sells everything from clothing and eye patches to books published by McSweeney’s Publishing and anthologies of writing by 826 Valencia students. A crucial point, however, is that 826 Valencia is not pitched to participants and visitors as a “pirate-themed” tutoring center, but rather as an authentic pirate supplies store—as a shop that sells stuff to pirates. ² The idea of an eccentric shopfront or overarching theme, as well as a similar appeal to authenticity, has also been adapted by the other chapters. ³ The mobility of the initial concept perhaps reflects how an environment marked by increasingly globalized education policy accommodates methods of non-school intervention that borrow from other national contexts.

After participants have been initiated to Ciento’s trapdoor, they will often check the notice board for updates without being encouraged, and thus become active participants in an unfinished organizational story where they are both readers and writers. Understanding “writing” as a “wicked problem”, some scholars have explored writing as a design practice, which means emphasizing divergent thinking and the promotion of creativity, and encouraging students to choose an appropriate mode of communication (Leverenz, 2014). Indeed, writing was a flexible term at the center (especially in the Pageturners program), as narratives and ideas were penned, typed (on computers and typewriters), drawn, spoken, sung, depending on the day’s activities, available resources, staff, and the inclinations of the young people. Characters were embodied by words and images marked on colorful paper and notepads, and even by fabric characters constructed in puppet-making workshops. Stories took the form of short written narratives, comics, or simply a series of spoken declarative statements that were never formally recorded. Often, the energizing magic of the trapdoor, or other mythological objects around Ciento, could inspire new ideas and activities that extended across multiple sessions.

Young people even learnt to practice writing through multimodal arrangements during a workshop evaluation day where students provided feedback through words and drawings. After noticing that one participant, Clive, was not being as vocal as others with his feedback, I asked him what he was drawing. “A person peeing,” he answered. Overhearing us, his mum walked over. She raised a hand to her face as she said: “people excreting. That’s his thing. And violence.” Such relational encounters between young people and adults were not uncommon. Reading and writing in the Ciento unfolded in ways that reflected the social aspects of literacy as well as the diverse ways that young people used these encounters to negotiate and assert their identities. During one workshop, after the program facilitator turned on some music to support the children’s creativity, a young student bellowed out: “I’m not inspired!”—yet stories were still written and comics drawn. The formal diversity and collaborative nature of reading and writing, as well as the serendipitous atmosphere, was further evident when unexpected activities were innovated in the workshops, such as performance-centered storytelling that utilized the plentiful props that always seemed to energize both young people and facilitators. Indeed, research has shown that writing interest and productivity can be promoted through creative drama, not only shaping the experiences of students, but also teachers and educators (Bayraktar & Okvuran, 2012; Erdogan, 2013; Steele, 2016).

For example, volunteer Nathan also ran an activity which asked hard-hat-wearing participants to walk around, observe, and write down all the “safety issues” at Ciento. It was Nathan’s job to justify the identified issues so that the organization avoided getting “shut down.” Engrossed in the drama, I watched as the inspectors interrogated the safety of a stethoscope. The engaged and invigorated inspectors were eager to re-start the following week. An improvised activity thus became a continuing, self-propelled learning experience and an exercise in storytelling, supported by the flexibility of the space, objects, and the dramatic challenge. Following the addition of a time machine (a large computer server in a cupboard) that was restricted to one-second time travel, workshop activities were developed based around temporality, aliens, and alternate universes. After they alerted my cohort of volunteers to an unused production space, I offered my audio production skills and a music-based storytelling concept, and Ciento supported me in developing and running the project over 2 weeks. Yet such opportunities for the creative and spontaneous use of space were not only open to staff and volunteers. For example, parents collecting their children used the bizarre and otherworldly aspects of the space and narrative to undertake more mundane parenting tasks (e.g., You should use the time machine to “grow up”!). These workshops were not simply examples of rudimentary skill development, but rather encounters with the social dynamics of literacy—encounters that defined literacy in new ways.

However, it was evident that skill development was a distinct benefit and focus of many of the workshops I attended. Moreover, literacy, as defined by the school system, partially explains the organization’s existence and forms part of its ambition to support schools. In Australia’s contemporary school market environment, educational disadvantage and literacy deficits are assessed in relation to Australia’s National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). NAPLAN is a yearly standardized testing regime of students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 that aims to establish a “measure through which parents, teachers, schools, education authorities, governments, and the broader community can determine whether or not young Australians are developing the literacy and numeracy skills that provide the critical foundation for other learning and for their productive and rewarding participation in the community” (ACARA, n.d.-a., ACARA, n.d.-b., para.2). Through mapping the 2016 Grade 5 reading results for NAPLAN and geographic information systems, recent research has demonstrated substantial differences in outcomes depending on socioeconomic level, urban/remote locations, and population density, noting that major cities “have witnessed increasing concentrations of schools ranked below average in disadvantaged suburbs” (Smith et al., 2019, p. 146). Among the problems with the NAPLAN program are the narrow focus on standardized testing—specifically numeracy and literacy, and the impact this can have on school practices, teacher professionalism (Appel, 2020), and cultures of teaching to the test (Thompson & Cook, 2014). As CEO Tim noted:

I think it’s a huge problem, because I think it oversimplifies what expression is and communication and literacy. It oversimplifies, it leads to an oversimplification of the instructional method and process. It’s not setting children, young people up to be skilled and confident to their unknown future lives (Tim, personal communication, October 11, 2016).

At Ciento, schools are offered reduced-price or free workshops if they fall below 1,000 ⁴ on ACARA’s ⁵ Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA), a measure that was developed to offer fair comparisons of NAPLAN scores. The rating designates a school’s level of educational disadvantage, measured by geographical location, the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Islander students, as well as parents’ occupation and education. Yet the NAPLAN infrastructure is potentially further problematic because it generates a nationalized portrait of a schooling system that is largely state-based and also reduces socio-educational inequality to a narrow set of numerical values (Lingard et al., 2014), a point that is not lost on organizations who aim to help support under-resourced communities. It has been argued that such processes of categorizing students and schools can lead to overly simplified ⁶ and decontextualized claims about them (Riddle, 2018), and indeed—Ciento acknowledges that ICSEA is not an exhaustive way to understand socio-educational disadvantage. The nexus of standardization and measurement systems does, however, play an important role in structuring the field of intervention for community-based organizations that aim to improve literacy results.

In addition to reading and writing, drawing and illustration were also skills that young people developed each week, which clearly reinforced areas of the Australian Curriculum including English and Visual Arts, as well as general capabilities such as literacy and critical and creative thinking (ACARA, n.d.-a., ACARA, n.d.-c). The many occasions where participants’ storytelling was stimulated through drawing and illustration further demonstrated the efficacy of design thinking in the teaching of writing (Leverenz, 2014). The involvement of talented and even professional artists and illustrators as volunteers provided useful modeling opportunities, where young people would gain enthusiasm for visual forms of communication and storytelling. As the young people participated in more sessions and activities, they gained more confidence to put their own ideas into practice. It was, however, important that facilitators and volunteers provided effective support, and as a volunteer I never felt especially confident. However, vulnerability was a key ingredient in one of the organization’s aims: to promote confidence to take creative risks.

On a personal level, this vulnerability was particularly prominent during a school holiday workshop when I was to demonstrate the drawing activity while the program facilitator, Oliver, narrated a story. I told Oliver I was not confident in my drawing ability but he reassured me that the worse I was the better it would be. Seeing an adult confidently and sincerely draw terrible pictures would give the young people more confidence to have a go. I was introduced as the officially recognized, award-winning best drawer in Footscray. Standing in front of around 15 primary/elementary school-aged young people, I found myself drawing even worse pictures than I was capable of—sheer garbage on a page. Toward the end of the session, at least one participant approached Oliver and said “he’s not that good, I could do better.” This further underscored the efficacy of the pedagogy of social modeling (Hoicka et al., 2018; Soh, 2017; Yi et al., 2015). Moreover, it was evident that promoting opportunities to develop these skills not only complemented those highlighted in the Australian Curriculum, but they promoted the confidence among participants of diverse ages and backgrounds to take creative risks in general.

Navigating Creative Risks: Grace and Ellen

Themes such as risk-taking, agency, idea-generation, and problem-solving have been found to be common themes in systematic literature reviews of creativity pedagogies (Cremin & Chappell, 2021). The recent emphasis on creativity can also be traced in part to the rise of “knowledge economy” discourses across global educational policy areas over the past few decades which have revitalized the status of creativity in various institutional environments (Gormley, 2020; Peters et al., 2009). The related creative industries discourses have some historical roots in Australian cultural policy (Oakley, 2013) and new creativity-focused urban transformation theories and practices, ⁷ which have collectively forged new links between the arts, neoliberal entrepreneurialism, social inclusion agendas, as well as a revitalized push for creativity in education. As such, public policy among OECD nations emphasizes the need for agile, flexible, creative, and self-motivated workers. The ability to live, learn and work creatively is now increasingly the attitudinal mindset required of young people in a global economy that demands flexibility and innovation in the face of unforeseeable problems and ongoing industrial transformations (Buckingham & Jones, 2001; Sennett, 1998). The Australian Curriculum mandates that students should be challenged to: Think logically, reason, be open-minded, seek alternatives, tolerate ambiguity, inquire into possibilities, be innovative risk-takers, and use their imagination (ACARA, n.d.-c). As Tim noted in our discussion regarding restrictive literacy practices and standardized testing:

We have no idea what skills they’re going to need in the future. We have no idea what ways people are going to be communicating. We have no idea what jobs they’re going to be doing. Rather than set them up with critical thinking skills and the ability to adapt and apply strategies to new challenges, we’re setting them up with a very narrow set of knowledge. (Tim, personal communication, October 11, 2016)

This reminded me of the volunteer induction, when standardized literacy outcomes were the furthest thing from my mind, as I watched Tim address our group and articulate the philosophy of the organization. Tim told us about the literacy challenges facing many of the schools in the area, but he also had another point to get across—a point that was further emphasized by the diversity of colors, textures, and objects that filled the space. Tim made a single mark on the electronic whiteboard—the same surface used to run through activities with young people during the workshops. The point he was making, which feels distinct from the discourse of standardized testing, is that taking creative risks can be challenging for young people and adults alike, and that making a mark can take away the daunting power of an empty page. He also told us that Ciento is not trying to make the next generation of writers; they are trying to make the next generation of leaders that are confident in themselves as creative individuals. While the young participants are invited into a variety of artistic roles in workshop contexts, a huge emphasis is on taking the “creative risk” in the first place. At Ciento, mistakes are good.

Two people who seem to have benefited from this philosophy and environment are Grace and Ellen. Grace, a 10-year-old who attends a local primary school, is a regular participant in the Pageturners program. Grace comes with her mother Ellen, who often participates in the workshops. I had the opportunity to speak to Ellen in a semi-structured interview setting. Ellen is a strong supporter of Ciento and has offered to take students from Grace’s class, as well as other grades, to Ciento herself, although her offer is rarely taken up. She was first introduced to the organization by another parent after Grace started attending West Primary School two years ago. The two families both attended for a few sessions, but eventually only Ellen’s kept going. At times, the lack of interest on the part of Grace’s peers made her question whether she should be going, although she persevered, and is now a regular at the Pageturners sessions. Ellen, who describes her daughter as a “perfectionist,” believes that Ciento has been a positive influence:

With Grace. . .I think she’s slowly picking up. . .she’s now accepting who she is, and not worry about being judged, and worry about she’s not so good. Occasionally, she still have that issue, in doing other things, but in writing and she risks a lot now, and she could write something silly, or she think it’s silly, but I think it does her a positive (Ellen, personal communication, November 30, 2015).

Grace’s regular involvement and productivity at Ciento has made Ellen aware of its value; she sees her daughter’s writing not only as a positive articulation of risk, but also as a sign of self-realization. However, the challenges she faces along the way can also provoke reflexivity about why Grace does not already have the capacities, dispositions, and behaviors that the environment cultivates. In this sense, the space at Ciento can be read as broadly pedagogical. By assisting the child, the workshop can (intentionally or unintentionally) demonstrate or suggest things to the parent, not only about their own children, but about themselves as parents. From a social constructionist point of view, such changes in self-knowledge are neither “good” nor “bad,” but rather they provide points of comparison, bring possibilities to light, as well as motivate new courses of action. However, they can be affectively challenging and even inspire self-blame in certain moments. For example, Ellen tells me that her daughter says things like “I can’t write anything,” “I can’t think of anything,” and “I can’t write.” When I asked whether she thought the lack of ideas, or perception of this, was due to confidence issues, Ellen noted:

I think so, yeah. And also, maybe it’s to do with our upbringing, at home we my husband is very, very busy person, and often just absent, and so we don’t talk a lot in terms of current issues, we don’t, because at home I aim at speaking our own dialect, and our own language, and we do have works to cover in terms of the extra study in the language, so part, after that they want their free time, you know. So, it’s not an environment where there’s a number of adults and we sit around and chit-chat and talk so that they are more inquisitive in the way they think, and the problem that they’re facing, the issues, are not complex, it’s very simple, home-setting. Yes, and maybe I don’t have the environment to nurture her (Ellen, personal communication, November 30, 2015).

Ellen’s comments reflect Bourdieu’s (2011) hypothesis that the home is an important domain for the development of cultural competencies, as well as educational and social advantages. This can occur through a number of avenues, including parents’ interest in the arts (Kaufman & Gabler, 2004). Yet other research has shown that disadvantaged students may experience cultural capital acquisition outside the family, including through non-school educational programs (Greene et al., 2014). In addition to the after-school workshops, Grace is one of the youngest participants in an annual program offered by Ciento called “Nine Tales,” where young people develop and publish an anthology of fiction written by their peers, which features a contribution from a well-known author. As such, the program develops writing, editing, and collaborative work skills, but it is also a social experience that confers young people with the cultural capital of the literary field. Indeed, the proximity of various creative professionals to the workshops in general arguably provides an additional source of cultural knowledge, status, and power. The publication is also sold in bookstores—an example of a link between social programming and income generating products. ⁸ A staff member also reported that another participant, a 13-year-old girl, was potentially getting published in a blind-reviewed publication.

Various studies across diverse demographics have shown that social modeling is an important factor that promotes behaviors associated with creativity (Hoicka et al., 2018; Soh, 2017; Yi et al., 2015). Indeed, as Ellen attended more workshops with Grace, she observed what the facilitators and volunteers were doing—how they were engaging the young people by being patient and attentive, by acting silly and taking risks, and by using the space to stimulate their writing and drawing, and steadily she started getting the hang of it herself (a gradual process that I could relate to). Ever since, if she has time and it does not interrupt the workshop, she comes and helps out. Ellen is not sure why other families she knows are not interested in Ciento, but thinks it might be due to the fact that Ciento’s work does not entail immediate and easily measurable outcomes to the extent that the parents want, and that they don’t value a process that requires time, nurturing, patience, effort, and individual attention, with results that might appear ambiguous. As Ellen noted:

It might take a long time, you know so, it could be the reason that. . .you can’t have the number as you expected, because some families they try, and find that oh, at the end of the certain section, I want to measure, I want to write the achievement, the, you know what I’m talking about? And find that they, they much waiting, the time and effort they put in, the outcome they get, they won’t admit the result. So I think that’s part of the reason why we don’t have as many, one of the reason (Ellen, personal communication, November 30, 2015).

Ellen also divulges that she is perceived as unusual, coming from a Chinese-Vietnamese background and being interested in alternative forms of education: “I constantly try, adapt new way of thinking, new ways of doing things, new ways of bringing up kids.” While the concept of creativity is often ambiguous, it is difficult not to notice that many of the qualities that are frequently associated with creativity are reflected in Ellen’s parenting style and approach to life, including novelty and experimentation. She is clearly an asset to the organization. Considering some of her other comments, it seems that the philosophical disjuncture she perceives between herself and other parents may reflect the cultural aspects of creativity-focused education. Working in such a culturally diverse setting, this is an important element of Ciento’s work: negotiating the nexus between diverse cultural attitudes and creative learning. As Tim noted:

We want to provide that space that’s different to school, not the classroom, and again is fun. Some of the challenges there are cultural attitudes towards creative learning, just understanding what it is we’re trying to provide, as well. And, you know, parents feeling, you know, less inclined to partake in the activities, happy to see their kids doing them, but you’ll see the parents sitting around and a lot of them are just sitting there, observing or chatting or whatever, and not sort of getting engaged in the activities, which is cool. We wanna sort of try and encourage a bit more active engagement, which is partly about a modeling process of you know taking creative risks themselves. . . we also are very wary of being didactic with that, and trying to understand as much as possible how the parents are feeling here and what they want out of this process, which is what our community engagement events are also about (Tim, personal communication, July 27, 2015).

As such, through this pedagogy of social modeling, young people and families come into contact with the figure of the creative risk-taker, a self that is increasingly demanded by a neoliberal economy where Grace and her peers are increasingly required to be innovative, adaptive, and flexible life-long learners. As illustrated, these points of contact can affect changes in the capacities, dispositions and behaviors of young people and their families, sometimes toward less culturally familiar horizons. As part of its work as a social enterprise, the organization hosts community engagement sessions that make clear their own commitments to developing behaviors and capacities in specific areas, while also maintaining a commitment to involving the community in shaping the direction of the organization and its work. This will be discussed further in the subsequent section.

Social Enterprise and Working With Community

Ciento’s commitment to involving the community in organizational work toward social and educational outcomes partially reflects its character as a social enterprise. Its social goals are pursued through a combination of free or low-cost on-site workshops and in-school projects for their constituencies, which are supported by various partnerships, volunteer labor, income-generating programs and products. As you walk into the center, directly on your left you will notice a list of partners who have supported the organization in its few short years. Heavily represented are philanthropic bodies, ⁹ including the Ian Potter Foundation, Kids in Philanthropy, the Westpac Foundation and the St. George Foundation, the latter being two major banks. Alongside these are partners in the writing and publishing community, such as Penguin Books and The Wheeler Centre, the latter being where the Ciento staff were housed when doing an earlier project called Wings. Below, there is a list of individuals who have supported the organization.

Unusually absent for a non-profit organization using arts-based pedagogies are government funding bodies. This reflects Ciento’s business model which often avoids ongoing government funding in pursuit of a self-sustaining social enterprise that derives its income from internal trading as well as “partnerships” with other organizations, families, and communities. This decision is seen as a responsible and pro-active response to a precarious arts funding climate which avoids having to disappoint its participants if funding applications are not successful. As Tim notes:

There is a shift happening in the philanthropic world and I think arts organisations have a responsibility to actively seek you know how those types of things can best serve them or look at what model might be best for them that isn’t around yet and try to be a leader within that space as opposed to just saying here is the grant we’ve already gone for so we’re gonna have to go for that one or whatever one looks the closest which I feel that’s what we actively do sort of we have a responsibility to the organisation and the people we work with to do that. (Tim, personal communication, July 27, 2015)

Ciento’s organizational model and the partnerships it has formed in a changing policy and philanthropic landscape usefully illustrate the opportunities, challenges and controversies surrounding non-school educational interventions. Some scholars suggest that the promotion of enterprise as a solution to “wicked” education policy problems constitutes a new kind of moral authority, where enterprise is both message and medium (Ball, 2012; Ball & Olmedo, 2011). Such developments are consistent with neoliberal policy reforms, including the push for public services to be enterprising, rounds of privatization and contracting out, the growth of micro-finance and charity banking, as well as the emergence of enterprise education (Ball, 2012). This coincides with a policy environment where schools are increasingly encouraged to “do more to develop enterprising virtues including initiative, energy, independence, boldness, self-reliance, responsibility, self-management, flexibility, risk-taking and so on” (Down, 2009, p. 57). Social entrepreneurship has been described as “indistinguishable from neo-liberalism” (Cook et al., 2003, p. 59), as well as, less damningly, “the only real avenue to economic development, within the results and structures of neoliberalism” (Horn, 2013, p. 116).

The growth of social enterprise discourse in Australia was partially linked to changes in national employment services, where social enterprises were increasingly promoted as solutions (Cook et al., 2003). Ciento took up a social enterprise model after going through The Crunch, a social enterprise skill development program offered by Social Traders, where they were provided with mentors from Westpac and the Melbourne Business School. Social Traders is an independent, not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, whose core funding comes from the Victorian Government and a private foundation. The Crunch Program requested that Ciento put together a feasibility study of a business plan, and then pitch the plan for an investment from the Social Traders’ investment fund. Ciento also engages participants in the production of income-generating products through their programs, such as creative writing anthologies, and provide paid professional development for teachers. Toward the building of a sustainable social enterprise, Ciento has been supported by various philanthropic and corporate grants as well as at least one multi-year funding and business mentorship arrangement.

While the aforementioned historical and political processes are important for assessing the context in which organizations work, it is restrictive to focus exclusively on what the social enterprise discourse implies in general (i.e., translation into enterprising subjects). Firstly, despite popular assumptions, the negotiation of the “social” and “economic” among social enterprises is often less straightforward in practice (Mazzei, 2017). For example, at the volunteer induction, Ciento endorsed volunteers to choose if they would like to opt out of participating in income-generating activities events, while also “plugging” an income-generating product during the induction, demonstrating the complex way that social and financial goals are pursued in different situations—volunteers are involved in active ethical negotiations as providers of labor as well as potential consumers. The organization also offers programming opportunities to private schools for a fee, although here the “pitch” is very different—it is more based on using creative programming to improve, for example, enrolment numbers, a point that resonates in a performative educational environment where “value addedness” is crucial to parents’ selection in the school market (Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004).

Such examples are not necessarily standard across educational social enterprises, but rather illustrate why research can benefit from exploring the problem spaces where social entrepreneurship happens, as well as “local” histories, practices, and identity formation, including examples of how and why organizations work with communities. For example, as staff member Hannah notes regarding their community consultations:

So we actually sit in them as participants, and not as facilitators, that was quite important, and that we made the event open enough that people and in the same way that we encourage creative risk here in children and young people, that we encourage the participants in that event to take risks with their ideas and what they were looking for. . .so taking risks with you know, like voicing an opinion, or issues, or needs, that they see, but then also taking a risk is proposing solutions (Hannah, personal communication, October 30, 2015).

As such, the community engagement processes can potentially problematize and reconstruct what the creative self looks like and how it is pursued, even if it is mandated by political processes and economic uncertainty. Furthermore, as some scholars note (Jordan et al., 2014), having conversations with diverse stakeholders as well as engaging in collective and distributed sense-making is a fruitful path toward better understanding the “wicked” problem of literacy. Likewise, the enterprising self that is centered in discourses of social enterprise is not necessarily its outcome. Indeed, programs and workshops can articulate and embody the priorities and desires of diverse individuals and groups, depending on the context. Such initiatives, whether in the workshop or the community consultation, can bridge the gap between community-based educators and families and open up opportunities for multiple literacies. Indeed, what seems an important part of Ciento’s ethos regarding stakeholders is remaining sensitive to what they would like to see in the program, including what parents would like to see in their children’s writing. This ethos is paired with the provision of a secure environment built around the creative risk, which as we have seen, may take surprising directions.

Conclusion

Research on creativity and performativity has been somewhat restricted by the “almost wholly negative” critical studies of performativity policies and the “almost wholly positive” studies of creativity, which cannot capture the complexities of the negotiations between performativity and creativity in specific contexts. Indeed, it is partially because of these complexities and contradictions that the nexus of creativity and literacy constitutes a “wicked” problem, beckoning conversations with diverse stakeholders (Jordan et al., 2014). As such, emerging ethnographies and case studies on creativity and performativity are a welcome contribution to education studies. However, additional research is also needed on what experiences, opportunities, and challenges exist when non-school organizations negotiate this juncture. This article provides a modest contribution to this conversation in light of recent debates on creativity and performativity.

Further studies may benefit from expansive understandings and conceptualizations of creativity and literacy, their intersections, their structuring forces and their mediating factors in specific learning contexts. While literacy is commonly associated with standardized reading and writing competencies required by contemporary schooling, it can also be understood as general competencies that reflect the demands of a particular historical period and social field. Perhaps the term creative literacy could help emphasize the ways in which creativity is a “social achievement” (Gergen, 2001, p. 14), not unlike cultural literacy, which is understood as referring to differentially valued/validated skills and resources (Bourdieu, 2011). Indeed, Ciento promotes the development of certain validated competencies associated with creativity (such as risk-taking), but also opens up opportunities for other competencies to be validated as creativity. Such opportunities are offered to young people, families, and communities alike and potentially challenge structural inequalities.

We will likely see a continued increase in the participation of social enterprises in educational problem solving, as well as philanthropic investments, both of which present opportunities and challenges. It is clear that the globalized education policy environment has welcomed the involvement of edu-businesses (Ball, 2012), although the kind of quasi-standardization of community-based interventions on smaller scales, evident in the mobility of the 826 model to multiple other national contexts, is also curious and worthy of further investigation. It is arguable that the involvement of non-government and for-profit organizations in the provision of education outcomes, including at the juncture of creativity and literacy, reduces the likelihood of state intervention in educational inequality. In other words, if non-state actors participate in the provision of education to under-resourced communities, then state institutions are more likely to continue processes of privatization.

Significantly, however, such scepticism needs to be balanced with the recognition of the historical contribution of schools to inequality, which undercuts any specific relationship between schools and democratic values, even though this relationship (in my view) is certainly worth striving for. Moreover, we also need to recognize that non-state actors have long been integral to improving the opportunities of under-resourced communities outside the walls of schools. They, like social enterprise practices and discourses, are worthy of critical engagement, but they are also worthy of an affirmative consideration that acknowledges their contribution to literacy and creativity, as well as the very definition of both.