Dancing with stones: critical creativity as methodology for human flourishing

Abstract

Heavy feet of stone

Seeking transformation

Dancing rocks and flows

Critical creativity is a paradigmatic synthesis linking critical social science with creative and ancient traditions. Our haiku summarises the essence of this three part paper. Heavy feet of stone describes the rationale for our creation of critical creativity. Seeking transformation sets out the background and methodology for our inductive, methodological development. Dancing rocks and flows unfolds a new methodological framework for action-oriented, transformational practice development and research that is concerned with human flourishing for those who engage in such work, as well as those for whom the work is intended. Through interplay of story, metaphor, poetry and critical dialogue, we present our methodological development approach for critical creativity and the evolving methodological framework. Within the framework, we focus on conditions and principles that enable our worldview of critical creativity to be used in action research and practice development.