The Creative Potential of Evolving Constraints in Peer-to-Peer Reciprocal Coaching – A Three-way Investigation

Creative constraints, the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on choices of content, form or process in creative projects, have been shown to produce inspiration and innovation. This project will gauge the role and utility of ‘evolving’ creative constraints (constraints that are adapted or replaced in response to work in progress) in achieving effective development in three creative project types: the writing of a song, the composition of an academic videoessay, the making of a dance and film piece. These three types will function as case studies to assess the creative potential of evolving constraints per se. Based on attested feedback techniques from dance and art practice, and on game-like procedures in experimental collaborative filmmaking, we will trial a form of interdisciplinary peer-to-peer reciprocal coaching designed to generate evolving (sets of) constraints that can guide a project to unexpected creative places. The three makers — a songwriter, a video essayist and a dance artist-filmmaker — will coach and goad each other to greater originality and achievement through the provision of challenging constraints which the makers will have to ‘satisfy’. Analysis of this experience will inform the articulation of a set of protocols for the setting of generative creative constraints in reciprocal peer-to-peer creative coaching with particular reference to practice research contexts, though it is expected that the coaching method will have applications in many other contexts.