Presentation Schedule
Transforming Creative Leadership, Collaboration, and Education: Liminality, Deep Attention, and Improvisation (100538)
Session Chair: Chie Noyori-Corbett
Wednesday, 5 November 2025 11:55
Session: Session 1
Room: Room E (4F)
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
Creativity faces a profound crisis and metamorphosis, driven by the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which automates ideation and production while questioning the exceptionalism of human creativity. Combined with the longstanding pressures of neoliberalism, prioritising efficiency, profit, and scalability, creative industries have faced declining resilience and innovation. The shortcomings of big-budget Hollywood productions and AAA gaming studios—marked by formulaic storytelling, excessive commercialisation, and risk-averse decision-making—are emblematic of these challenges. This paper advocates for renewed approaches to creative collaboration and leadership by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s topology of the rhizome, proposing non-hierarchical, interconnected, and adaptive creative assemblages. Drawing on two case studies of creative professional practices—Assemble Studio, a UK-based architectural collective and Turner Prize recipient, and Sandfall Interactive, the French studio behind the critically acclaimed Japanese role-playing video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – I identify three generative and interconnected principles for creative flourishing and resilience in the face of economic rationalism: liminality – trans-disciplines that bridge public and private, permanence and temporality; deep attention – engaging with materials, histories, and communities; and improvisation within constraints—financial, spatial, or temporal—that open up emergent creative capacities. Finally, I discuss the broader implications of these principles for daring creative organisations and education, arranged to optimise experimentation, transdisciplinary collaborations, rooted in meaningful engagements with the world, and adapting to the contemporary demands of the 21st century.
Authors:
Jack Tsao, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Jack Tsao is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at The University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong
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