Throughout the last decades, creativity has undoubtedly become one of the most frequently used buzzwords in education and educational research. The widespread idea that traditional school education “kills creativity” has sparked countless attempts to show how creativity could (re)gain its rightful place within educational practices, both as a quality of these practices – making them more open to novelty – and as a learning objective for the learners – enabling them to take more creative part in the world. Unsurprisingly, this idea has also been taken up eagerly in arts and music education, where creativity plays an important role in advocacy narratives: since art is often defined by its creative dimension, artistic practices are frequently presented as examples for creative learning, often showing innovative learning environments in which learning unfolds through participation, interaction and meaning-making. 

In music education research, this has resulted in a strong focus on improvisation as the most important practice of musical creativity, often framed as a necessary component of music-educational practice. However, research on creativity in (arts and music) education is not without its critics. A recurring concern is that creativity is frequently embraced uncritically as an inherently valuable educational aim, while remaining blind to its alignment with broader neoliberal discourses of innovation and acceleration. This raises fundamental questions about the value, meaning and purpose of creativity in education. After all, what is the value of creativity anyway? And if creativity is an essential aspect of, e.g., the art of music, does this then necessarily entail that all music-educational practices must be creative themselves? These questions are particularly relevant in learning environments that are informal, non-formal or extracurricular, where educational aims are negotiated rather than prescribed. 

In my PhD research, I address these questions within the specific field of choral pedagogy, focusing on the pedagogical dynamics of amateur choir singing practices, and more specifically on Flemish youth choirs. On the one hand, this interest stems from my own background as a Flemish music educator and youth choir conductor, and from resistance to the widespread assumption that amateur choirs mainly engage in the collective reproduction of existing repertoire and therefore leave little room for creativity, particularly from the perspective of individual participants. On the other hand, I aim to explore how a renewed engagement with creativity in choir practices might contribute to their attractiveness for young people and to the long-term sustainability of amateur choir singing. 

According to data from Koor&Stem (2026), the Flemish umbrella organisation for amateur choirs, the majority of choirs in their member base consist of adult singers, while the number of children’s and youth choirs is comparatively low. While this development is shaped by multiple demographic, cultural and socio-economic factors, this research explores whether pedagogical conceptions of creativity play a role in how youth choir practices respond to contemporary expectations of personal, social and artistic fulfilment. 

The study draws on theoretical perspectives that conceptualize creativity as plural, situated and practice-based (Burnard, 2012), on little-c creativity as everyday creative engagement, accessible to all participants (Craft, 2001), as well as on notions of distributed creativity (Glăveanu, 2014), which emphasize how creativity emerges through interactions between people, practices and contexts. Together, these perspectives allow creativity to be analyzed as a relational and context-sensitive phenomenon, shaped within specific artistic and educational environments. 

At the current stage of the PhD, the research is about to enter a first pilot study, the initial results of which are intended for presentation at ECER. This pilot study consists of short ethnographic case studies of four Flemish youth choirs. The study departs from a first literature review on creativity in choral pedagogy (in preparation), which has led to the outline of a preliminary categorization, distinguishing and describing different choral-pedagogical creativities (Burnard, 2012). Empirical data are collected through observations of rehearsals, concerts and other choir-related activities, as well as through focus group interviews with different participants, including singers, conductors and board members. The focus groups serve to relate the researcher’s observations to participants’ own views and experiences. The observation and analysis framework is supplemented with elements from Kemmis’ theory of practice architectures (2009), to allow empirical findings to refine and challenge the current categorization. This theory conceptualizes practices through the interrelation of cultural-discursive “sayings”, material-economic “doings” and socio-political “relatings”, and therefore seems highly suitable for deepening our understanding of what makes certain choir practices (more or less) creative. It also enables analysis of how learning environments are shaped by cultural norms, materialistic conditions and social relations within music educational settings.

The pilot study is designed with three main aims. First, it functions as an exploratory exercise in approaching a practice, that I know well from the inside, as a field of research. Second, the study is designed to help me finetune the research’s theoretical and methodological frameworks (e.g., the categorization of choral-pedagogical creativities), through deliberate dialogue with the practices at which it is aimed. In doing so, the study aims to contribute empirically grounded insights to research on arts education and creative learning environments. Third, and more broadly, the study is intended to lay the groundwork for a later phase of practitioner research, in which I will actively intervene in and collaborate with youth choirs to (re)develop the creativity of their practices. This future phase aims to explore how choral creativity might be fostered in ways that are pedagogically meaningful, socially embedded and resistant to dominant neoliberal accounts of creativity, thereby contributing to the sustainable, transgenerational future of amateur choir singing.

Burnard, P. (2012). Musical creativities in practice. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583942.001.0001 Craft, A. (2001). Little C Creativity. In A. Craft, B. Jeffrey, & M. Leibling (Eds.), Creativity in Education (pp. 45-61). New York, NY: Continuum International. Glaveanu, V. P. (2014). Distributed creativity: Thinking outside the box of the creative individual. Springer Publishing Company. SpringerBriefs in Psychology Vol. 2014 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05434-6 Kemmis, S. (2009). Action research as a practice-based practice. Educational Action Research, 17(3), 463-474. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790903093284