How does it feel to be creative? Such a question, when approached from a phenomenological perspective, reveals new understandings about the embodied experience of creativity, and how it feels as it is being lived. This investigation begins with a provocative contrast of two environments where creativity is thought to manifest itself: school art classrooms, where creativity is often legislated from an authority figure, and New Orleans Second Line parades, where creativity is organically and kinetically expressed. A thorough review of the literature on creativity focuses on education, arts education, creative economies, psychology, and critical theorists, collectively revealing a cognitive bias and striking lack of consideration for community, freedom, and the lived experience of being creative. Further discussions in the literature also neglect sites of creativity, and the impact that place (such as a school classroom) can have upon creativity. The phenomenological perspectives of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Bachelard, and Trigg support a methodological lens to grasp embodied knowledge, perceptions of placedness on creativity, and the interdependent frictions between freedom, authenticity, movement and belonging. The research method includes investigations in New Orleans in archives, examination of visual and material culture, participation in cultural practice, and formal and informal interviews. Further, the phenomena of …

This qualitative inquiry explored how art educators might broaden their views of place through critical encounters with art, local visual culture, and working with older artists. I combined place-based (PB) education and intergenerational (IG) learning as the focus of an art education curriculum writing initiative with in-service art educators within a museum setting to produce PBIG art education. This study engaged art educators in cooperative action research using a multi-modal approach, including identifying and interviewing local artists to construct new understandings about local place and art to share with students and community. I used critical reflection in our cooperative action research by troubling paradoxes in local visual culture, which formed views of place including Indigenous cultures. Using Deleuze's Logic of Sense (LOS) theories of sense and event, enabled concept development through embracing the paradoxes of this research as sense producing. LOS theory of duration complements IG learning by clarifying the contributions of place and time to memory and experience. Duration suggests that place locates the virtual past, which is actualized through memories--one of the shared experiences of IG learning. Rethinking IG relationships as a sharing of experience and memory while positioning place as a commonality, dismantles ageist notions by offering …