Creative Collaboration and Collaborative Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review.

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cultural Psychology
• Musicology

Background:

• Individualist creativity models are challenged by social psychology and cultural psychology perspectives.
• Creative collaboration is increasingly viewed as a distributed process involving various elements beyond direct human interaction.
• Music performance, improvisation, and composition serve as ideal contexts for studying creative collaboration.

Approach:

• A systematic literature review was conducted to examine research on creative collaboration and collaborative creativity in music.
• The review identified current research trends, methodologies, and settings within music-related creative collaboration studies.
• The focus was on understanding what has been investigated concerning these concepts in music.

Key Points:

• Studies predominantly occurred in higher education, professional development, and professional practice settings.
• Collaborative creative learning emerged as a significant area of interest.
• Research spanned various musical genres (jazz, popular, classical, contemporary, world) and processes (composing, improvising, performing).

Conclusions:

• Higher education and professional development studies prioritized identifying supportive learning practices over analyzing collaborative approaches or outcomes.
• Participant demographics were often male-dominated with small sample sizes.
• Methodologies were primarily qualitative, relying on case studies, observation, interviews, and reflective diaries.
• Future research should explore gendered approaches, diverse methodologies (quantitative, arts-based), and varied musical settings.