School of Creatology
Helping our Creatives SHiNE as the Stars they are
by mastering their creativity
with
Creatology, the Subject of Creativity.
What is the School of Creatology?
The School of Creatology is a new, online and F2F
co-creative school
specialising in Creatology.
Creatology is the Subject of Creativity.
Creatology explores the elements that make up creativity,
from what it does and how it does it, to our creative capabilites and creative practices as individual creatives and co-creators.
Creatology helps us shine brighter by mastering our creativity through:
- learning about the nature and power of creativity itself, and
- empowering our creative natures and power
- by being creative
- in a co-creative culture.
This unique and new subject is offered to Creatives aged 16-100.
Creatology has been created by Jane Macdonald, a Creatologist (researcher and educator of creativity), and Founder of SoC.
Creatology is offered only here, so jump on board for this brand new, creative quest!
Purpose
To empower our global, creative social movement to fulfill its purpose-lead creative work, by expanding its creative capacity.
Read more here.
Vision
To create a global, pioneering, co-creative school graduating Creatologists, Masters of Creativity.
Read more here.
Mission
To increase Creatives’ creative capacities and knowledge about creativity, while being creative in a co-creative culture.
Read more here.
Philosophy
Creatives should be encouraged and positioned so they can do what they do best… generate wellbeing and change.
Read more here.
Social + Eco Impact Theory
Our creativity has the capacity to generate transformative social and ecological change.
Read more here.
Why learn about Creativity?
Creativity is intentionally designed to generate new life and new growth.
Our creativity is intentionally designed to generate new life and growth too.
Creativity is our:
- #1 state of being
- #1 teacher
- #1 problem-solver
- #1 beauty-maker
- #1 value-adder
- #1 expressioner
- #1 innovator
- #1 inquirer
- #1 collaborator
- #1 regenerator
- #1 wellbeing-maker
- #1 change-maker
- #1 transformer
- #1 manifester
- #1 (r)evolutionary
and for many Creatives, our
- #1 way of life.
imagining our future
transforming conditions
being self-sufficient and feeling confident
always knowing how to create
designing and fulfilling projects
being resourceful
shining brightly
living a creative life
growing our gifts, interests and passions
increasing our energy
belonging in a co-creative culture
knowing our true selves
expressing ourselves authentically
collaborating and co-creating
taking steps, taking risks
adding value
Who is SoC here for?
The School of Creatology is designed to help
Creatives who aspire to SHiNE,
to follow and master
their own light and creative way
through their:
- gifts
- talents
- ideals
- curiosities
- ideas
- points of view
- callings
- visions
- questions
- genius
- interests, and
- passions.
SoC is dedicated to Creatives because:
1. Creatives, our prophets of justice in making, have significant potential to create positive change, but we need encouragement and a knowledge and skills boost to fulfill our creativity’s unmatched ability to change conditions.
2. Creatives tend to share a vision of a better world, or a better way, that has a heart of joy, value-adding, collaborating, regeneration, and problem-solving, but we need more opportunities to bring our visions to life together because existing pathways are lonely and our visions are desperately needed.
3. Creatives’ preference for creativity is our super power, but most creatives’ power isn’t on fire as it needs to be. We need a way to learn about each of the elements that make up creativity and master them, so we can light up from the inside out and use that energy to energise our creative work and be embodied in it.
4. Creatives long to collaborate and co-create, but we need the practice, away from contest, judgement, and taking, so we can give in groups in the big, wide world in a way that will maintain our creative spark and shine, and that of others.
For example, the School of Creatology is here for:
- Creatives pursuing success in the creative industry and portfolio / project careers
- Artists seeking self-expression and self-realistion through creative mastery
- Students wishing to enhance their creativity while adding Creatology to their subjects
- Educators specialising in the arts, or teaching in creative and alternative schools, or in leadership roles
- Entrepreneurs or project managers developing innovative and change-making businesses, organisations, and companies
- Innovators and inventors with inspiration and ideas for contemporary solutions to contemporary or predicted problems
- Educators, parents, and community groups intending to form creative primary and secondary schools
- Activists focussed on creating social and ecological change whether through campaigns, education, enterprise, arts installations, research, etc
- Parents seeking help to guide their creative child(ren) into their creative potential
- Spiritualists wanting to be in union with their creative energy / life force
- Community builders inspired to found or develop co-creative cultures.
Why is SoC here for Creatives?
A huge 25% of Aussies have a preference for creativity*
so 6,750,000 of us seek to express
the nature and power of
our most innovative, problem-solving, wellbeing-enhancing, value-adding, regenerative, collaborative, transformative, soul-fully satisfying, and
sought-after tool humankind has.
Yet, we have all been educated in
- schools that don’t teach the subject of creativity itself
and most of us have been educated in
- schools that rarely teach via creativity’s process
- schools that rarely teach the creative process or creativity explicitly
- schools that foster academic cultures over creative cultures, and
- school systems that are now found to reduce (even “kill”) our creativity.
* SGS Economics and Planning. “Valuing Australia’s Creative Industries”. Creative Industries Innovation Centre, 2013
As long as Creatives are under-educated, our creative capacities
and our children’s creative capacities, and
their children’s creative capacities
… our ability to increase wellbeing by transforming conditions…
will remain under-developed,
which is extremely bad given the state of our personal and global social and ecological conditions.
Expressed Creativity
Read more here.
Suppressed Creativity
Read more here.
What is Creatology?
Creatology is
the Subject of the Nature and Power of Creativity.
Creatology focuses upon
the nature and power of creativity itself, and
the nature and power of creativity within us… our own creativity,
increasing our:
- creative power,
- creative natures, such as our creative capabilities and creative practices, and
- creativity knowledge, such as what it is, what it does, how it does it,
so we can bring our inspired ideas
for new life and new growth into being…
together.
Creativity as a subject in its own right.
Just as the subject of Biology is the subject of life and living organisms, and Philosophy is the subject of living principles, Creatology is the subject of the nature and power of creativity.
Creativity as a subject in its own right isn’t studied in schools, certainly not here in Australia, but creativity as thinking including design thinking and innovation processes are able to be studied as units in universities. However, most of us don’t undertake these studies.
Limiting our understanding of creativity as thinking or as a process limits our ability to fully develop all of our creative capacities, creative practices, and creative knowledge, therefore limiting what, how, and how well we create. It also excludes the spirit and soul factors… the higher self… the force behind our creativity.
Difference between Art and Creativity.
The subject of Art explores and increases our knowledge and skills of human expression through the making of art forms.
The subject of Creatology explores and increases our knowledge and skills of creativity, including expression,
as the force (the power and nature) behind the making of art forms, as well as omniforms (any forms), and trans-form-ation (changing of forms).
What is the Creatology Award?
The Creatology Award is a certificate
awarded to Creatives for
- demonstrating mastery of creativity knowledge, and
- demonstrating mastery of their creative capacities.
To qualify for the Creatology Award, Creatives need to:
- submit the Satisfaction of Life Scale prior to beginning,
- complete the Creatology Curriculum,
- demonstrate integration of creative practices in a project,
and upon completion:
- submit an updated Satisfaction of Life Scale, and
- present the project and a self-reflection at a Presentation Night (online for online participants).
What is in Creatology?
The Creatology Curriculum explores creativity’s elements in 3 streams:
Stream 1. The State of Being Creative
Uncovering creativity’s nature and power and its nature and power within us, including what it is, what it does, how it does it, and what it gives.
Stream 2. The Way of Creativity
Experiencing how we live and learn through creativity as we follow our own lights, develop our processes alongside our creative capabilites and practices, and see our creative outcomes reach new heights… walking our creative way.
Stream 3. The Co-Creative Culture
Discovering the elements of a co-creative culture, the roles creativity and co-creative practices play, how groups go beyond where they have been before, and a group’s power to create change.
Stream 1
State of Being Creative
This first stream focuses upon the nature and power of creativity and its nature and power in us.
Summary
State of Being has 3 sections.
Each section is explored to discover the nature and power of creativity and our own creative natures and power.
Theme:
The Heart of Creativity, diving deep into the roles love and light play while we are being creative, and in the outcomes of our creativity.
Sections:
With the love we have in mind, we explore:
- Purpose of Creativity (what it is and what it does)
- Functions of Creativity (how it does it), and
- Gifts of Creativity (what it gives us when we use it).
Stream 2
The Way of Creativity
This middle stream focuses upon creativity’s journey as we develop and build upon our capabilites.
Summary
The Way of Creativity has 3 sections.
Each section is explored to develop our creative capabilities.
Theme:
Creativity as a Living and Learning Journey.
We uncover ways creativity is a natural teacher and how we are able to learn and develop by it
while recognising our use of its elements as a way to live our lives, such as in our projects, businesses, communities, homes, relationships.
Sections:
With our living journeys in mind, we explore:
- Originality of Creativity (the question of origin-ality of creativity itself and within us and our works)
- Mastery of Creativity (our creative process, capabilities, practices, and thinking), and
- Paradoxes of Creativity (what we find conflicting while being creative).
Stream 3
The Co-Creative Culture
This last stream focuses upon co-creative cultures while SoC gives us practice in being part of one.
Summary
Co-Creative Culture has 3 sections.
Each section is explored in relation to being in a collective… such as what it is to co-create, how we co-create, and what could be co-created.
Theme:
The Liberty of Creativity… creativity as a source, experience, and manifestation of freedom, and freedom as a manifestation of creativity.
Sections:
With liberty in mind, we explore:
- Co of Creativity (gifts of diversity in unity)
- Transformation of Creativity (a group forming change), and
- Transcendency of Creativity (a group going above and beyond).
How is Creatology experienced?
The Creative Education Method
By being creative while learning about creativity, we increase:
- our knowledge about the nature and power of creativity,
- our knowledge about our own creative natures and power, and
- our creative natures and power themselves.
This method of learning is called Creative Education.
It is an arts-based approach that leads with a question and inquiry (where all human creativity begins),
and is experiential, hands-on, project-based… based in do-ing, in be-ing.
We:
- bring up and out what we already know about creativity,
- build upon that knowledge through discussion and creative experiences, and
- develop our creative capacities by practicing what we are learning in our creative projects.
What kind of projects are Creatives developing?
Our projects might be ones we have already begun and want to build upon, or an idea that we may or may not have begun looking in to, or an idea may not have come yet but we feel a creative ‘itch’.
Projects could include a new change, a solution, a lifestyle, a livelihood, a difference…
any idea or ideas we want to, need to, feel called to, create.
A business, a movement, a point of view, an exhibition, a peice of clothing or jewellery, a house, a film, balance, music, an event, a community, a piece of writing, an art work, a philosophy, a program, self-sufficiency, a front door to a home, a YouTube channel, a resculptured body, an app, a regenerated eco-system, a studio, an alternative way of trading, a policy, a piece of furniture, an animal run for the outdoors, a school, alternative power sources, an ecos, a picnic area, a decorated wall, a book, peace, a village, a food forest, a new sport, technology, a gift, a story, a resource of somekind… ideas are endless!
What is SoC's culture like?
SoC is a Co-Creative Culture.
This is because:
1. We need to grow with others to more fully expand our creativity,
2. We need more practice living and working in co-creative cultures for our future to be more successful, and
3. We need ecos’s to be creative-sympathetic as Creatives tend to hold our unique and valuable natures and skills back from others when we sense there may be a negative consequence for it.
SoC’s co-creative culture is, therefore, built upon three foundations:
- giving rather than taking,
- diversity rather than uniformity,
- discernment rather than judgement, and
- coopetition rather than competition.
Community of global Creatives
Feeling like home, challenging self-expression, creating connections and friendships, networking, finding creatives nearby, messaging, communing.
Sharing our creativity safely
Using SoC’s social profiles, linking to external profiles and projects and businesses, posting creative experiences and epiphanies, seeing others, being seen.
Discussing and collaborating
Taking creativity knowledge and practice to new heights by chatting and brainstorming about processes, problems, ideas, tools, solutions, projects, and wins.
Following our inner Star
Such as our passions, ideas, talents, interests, callings, dreams, genuises, and their individuality, creating from and with them while bringing them to life.
Designing + developing projects
Developing new or current or long-lingering projects, promoting and supporting, collaborating on our project and others’ projects, and finding new projects.
Project progress logs
Setting intentions for and sharing visions of projects, tracking and monitoring project progress with an in-built project log, receiving feedback, tools, and support.
Star Creators sharing experiences
‘Creatopia’, a podcast with panels of 3 Creatives from diverse sectors, live and filmed, about creativity from their experience, and building connections with them.
Integration Sessions
Receiving practical help in fortnightly Integration Sessions, sharing experiences of integrating creativity’s elements into our practice and developing them.
Enterprise Eggs
Receiving help in fortnightly Enterprise Egg sessions, for developing creative ideas into an enterprise; strategic planning, marketing, monetisation etc.
SoC in an app
Accessing the school 24/7 on phones or tablets on the Mighty Networks app, or using the school’s Mighty Network URL on desktops or laptops.
Library of resources, tools, classes
Supporting our growing creativity with deeper-dive articles, research reports, tools and videos, and all classes, Enterprise Eggs, Integration Sessions, and Creatopia.
Whole-school meetings
Participating optionally in monthly whole-school democratic meetings, raising and reviewing issues and problems in SoC, and creating ideas and solutions.
Where is SoC?
SoC is an online school for ages 18+, and
F2F in your space for 16-18, or 18+ by request.
Online, we are hosted in the Mighty Networks platform.
The app can be downloaded to our phones and tablets, or we can sign in on a desktop and laptop.
MNs offers a range of facilities for our co-creative school including:
- social profiles and links to our external profiles and projects
- seeing who is in our area
- feeds of posts
- private messaging
- topics and chat threads
- project progress-logs
- project collaboration spaces
- whole-school meeting room
- live classroom
- interview studio
- media library, and
- space to celebrate graduation at the Creatology Award presentations.
We have a Community Agreement to agree to and abide by.
How do Creative join SoC?
Socials
- Learn a little about creativity’s elements
- Participate in co-creative experiences
- Uncover insights into your creative nature and power
- Find out how other creatives live and work, and
- Realise the value of creativity.
Monthly Newsletters
- Dive deeper into the month’s creativity elements
- Get a snap-shot of our social media to save scrolling
- Receive invitations to upcoming classes and events.
Creatology online
ages 18+
AUS $540 (2025 AUS $960)
- Live (AEST), recordings available
- The full Creatology Curriculum over 3 days
- Create your ‘By the Book’ Book of your own creative guidance
- Create your social profile with links to other profiles, your websites, & projects.
OPTIONAL AND INCLUDED:
SoC’s online, co-creative community:
- Using your social profile with links to your other profiles
- Sharing your projects for feedback and generate ideas
- Participating in chat groups
- Collaborating with others on your projects and theirs
- Joining with others to co-create projects
- Particpating in co-creative experiences
- Using project progress-logs to stay on track
- Getting support in Integration Sessions, Enterprise Eggs
- Learning more from media in the Library
- Learning more with regular, additional classes
- Participating in Creatopia podcasts,
- Participating in whole school meetings, and
- Staying for a week to years!
Creatology face-to-face
- The full Creatology Curriculum over 3 days
- Create your ‘By the Book’ Book of your own creative guidance
- Ages 18+ are invited to join SoC’s online, co-creative community for free, and to stay as long as you like.
Organisations & Groups
ages 16+ AUS $960 pp
- At your workplace, studio, or venue by arrangement.
Secondary-school Students
ages 16-18 AUS $360 pp
- At your school or venue by arrangement.
Home & World-schooling Students
ages 16-18 AUS $360 pp
- Via zoom or venue by arrangement.
Newsletter and a Freebie
Sign up here for the monthly Newsletter alone, if the poster isn’t your thing.
PoP-Up Topics
There are so many topics within Creativity to explore, we don’t make all of them a priority in Creatology.
So, they are explored in PoP-Up Topics instead.
PoP-Ups is a b(v)log-style free library available both here and within the school, of articles, videos, interviews, short classes, challenges, and discussions on these out-of-the Creatology box’s topics.
Acknowledgements
“I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.
At its source, you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create.
Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it.
Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be a creator.
Then, take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden, and its greatness.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1903)
The School of Creatology acknowledges the Wurundjeri of the Kulin nation, the Traditional Owners of the mountain Country this school is created on, and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters, and communities. SoC pays respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present.
The School of Creatology pays respect to our Creatives across the world and their great works that bring beauty, knowledge, and solutions to all of us and our earth. Nothing created by SoC is made with AI. Everything… eg, words, structures, titles, thoughts, sounds, paragraphs, images, are originally created by SoC and paid Creators. Nothing is taken.