The Impact of creativity in science: an investigation into intrinsic value of exposing science to creatitivity through active engagement with the arts

The research aims to investigate the impact of creativity in science from the perspective of collaborative practice between artists and scientists.The growing genre of Art/Science is developing into a widely accepted practice under the premise of wide ranging societal benefits.Through case-study investigations this enquiry aims to scrutinise these collaborations at their core:evaluating how they function and providing evidence to substantiate or dispute these wider assertions.Is Art/Science collaborative practice simply an engagement tool,or does it have validity in developing more effective scientists by exploiting their creative potential?Such important,wide reaching inferences demand investigation at an intrinsic level;only by delving into the heart of these interactive practices can their value be assessed.Such intricate scrutiny is currently lacking;pursuing this route of enquiry would represent a significant step in understanding how creativity impacts upon science and whether or not the trend towards collaborative practice in pursuance of societal benefit can be justified.
This research takes my previous MSc project as a starting point:there I considered the genre of Art/Science and studied 6 case-studies to examine how Art/Science collaborations might impact on communicating science. It suggested that an association with art and creativity has a positive influence on many aspects of scientists' work, with subsequent potential to impact upon economic innovation and growth,policy making,public engagement,education and cultural activities.
The MSc project scrutinised retrospective case studies,indicating that collaborative practice has the potential to unleash under utilised skills,talents,characteristics and perspectives. Various recurrent themes emerged worthy of further study. Some involved practical skills; the ability to master, appreciate or apply expertise through collaborative creativity (Webster, 2005). Also Ideological skills: removing traditional constraints allowing increased risk-taking,freedom of thought and renewed inspiration and perspective (Eldred, 2016).Intangible benefits such as problem solving (Vallée-Tourangeau, 2016) language (O'Shea and Sneltvedt, 2006), reflection and empathy (Nyffeler, 2009) contributed to successful collaboration. By identifying and elucidating these immediate micro effects of exposure to creativity the validity of the impact of Art/Science collaborations on wider macro issues may become apparent. The justification for the cultural value of a sustained Art/Science zeitgeist may lie in scrutinising the interaction at its very core.
There is a paucity of academic work within the literature relating directly to research into the value of Art/Science. The study proposed here represents an opportunity to initiate a more robust approach to evaluating the intrinsic worth of creativity within science. Existing work is largely descriptive, as in Cox's visualisation projects (Cox, 2008). Some utilises science itself to investigate differences between artist and scientist, (Andreasen et al., 2012) or others loosely describe scientists' experiences of creativity (Eldred, 2016). The most comprehensive collation of academic papers appear in the journal 'Leonardo' (2016). A variety of books tackle the topic from different angles: CP Snow's The Two Cultures debate (Snow, 1995), Arthur Miller's (2014) history of the collaborative art movement, Sian Ede's (2000 and 2005) exploration of science as an artist's resource, David Edwards (2009) ideas of a "catalyst to innovation", and publications focusing on illustrative visualisations of cross-disciplinary work: (Kemp, 2000, Volvovski et al., 2012, Wilson, 2012).