Developing an annotated guide for collaborative planning of choral concerts based on Sawyer's Eight Stages of the Creative Process

Abstract

This dissertation provides a guide with prompts to help people access the benefits of creativity research in the collaborative process of programming choral concerts. To highlight the distinctive characteristics of choral music in ways that engage the audience, programmers can utilize the Eight Stages of the Creative Process as found in R. Keith Sawyer’s book Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. These stages, as applied to choral programming, are 1) finding a problem statement for the concert, 2) acquiring the knowledge of the choral domain, 3) gathering information related to the specific concert, 4) taking time off from programming tasks for incubation, 5) generating ideas related to the problem statement of that particular concert, 6) combining those ideas in unexpected ways, 7) selecting the best ideas according to the criteria for that particular choir concert design, and 8) externalizing those ideas. The dissertation details current practices of choral programmers who already use the principles behind Sawyer’s Eight Stages. The guide includes specific prompts that are tied to each of Sawyer’s Eight Stages of the Creative Process for use by individuals or team leaders in a collaborative planning process. Annotations (Chapter 4) provide context for understanding and using the prompts to aid creative choral programming.