‘CreActivity’ is contextual, shaped by Indigenous cultural social political and spiritual concepts and ideas.
The Western idea of “creativity”, says Raymond Williams, derives from the Latin “creare” to make or produce, and means innovative and original in the general sense. It is an integral part of the Christian belief system – the divine Creation of the world – creation, creature. Uniikup Productions Ltd. processes and practices emerge from, recognise and apply an Indigenous Australian notion – ‘creActivity’. Indigenous ‘creActivity’ is embedded in wisdom, law, Place, culture, custom, spirituality, social and community development, and is not an activity occurring in isolation. These elements are all related parts of practice simultaneously, as captured in the Turrbal word “gahrr”, which Aboriginal Linguist Jeanie Bell says means breath or spirit, the closest word to creativity.
‘CreActivity’ also takes into account the importance of Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of ‘the act’ explained by Michael Gardner as: … the “eventness” of the everyday social world” and “the phenomenological nature of the “act” as the essential “value-centre” for human existence. This in turn, involves an understanding of the alterity between self and other, insofar as we can only construct a unified image of self and engage in morally and aesthetically productive tasks through our reciprocal relation to each other.
Creativity, says Ambelin and Blaze Kwaymullina, in an Aboriginal sense is an act of being in the world where since the whole is in all its parts, there is no distance in creation.
In creActivity there is a cross disciplinary acquisition of the sort of knowledge available to a community which acknowledges the environment to be a vital component of the total expression of culture.
(References: Williams R., 1983, Key Words, 82-84; Bell, J. 2005; Bakhtin M., 1993, Toward a Philosophy of The Act; Gardner, M., 2000, Of Woodsheds, Politics and Cultural Theory, 1-2; Kwaymullina A and B., 2010, Learning to read the signs: law in an Indigenous reality, Journal of Australian Studies, 196, King-Boyes, M., 1977, Patterns of Aboriginal Culture:Then and Now, 88.)