Creative-relational inquiry: Institutional threat, fortitude, and flying like a brick

Frichot writes, “To speak of ‘creative ecologies’ is to participate in the making of liveable environments, as distinct from the pursuit of short-term profits”. This is a paper of how we try to participate in the making liveable of creative-relational inquiry.

This article responds to what to us feels a threat to such inviting, subversive conceptualisings of creative-relational inquiry. Creative-relational inquiry has what is called a ‘centre’, the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry, at the University of Edinburgh. We are two of the centre’s co-directors. (We would prefer a ‘moment’, perhaps, rather than a centre: ‘A Moment for Creative-Relational Inquiry’. Or a ‘Force for Creative-Relational Inquiry’. A ‘centre’ speaks of control and hierarchy. Its acronym is CCRI; or – more spacious, more inviting, more eme[u]rgent, Sea~cry (Murray, 2020). Sea~cry is an institution – albeit in the ‘undercommons’ (Moten & Harney, 2013) – within an institution. Opened in October 2017, Sea~cry had its five-year university review in 2022. The experience and (successful) outcome of that review process has left us troubled. We are concerned for how creative-relational inquiry can remain lively and dynamic, no longer able to inhabit the undercommons but needing to live under the stark glare of the institution’s concept of achievable, measurable ‘objectives’.

Our concern prompts us to write. We respond to sirens. We respond to sirens by turning again to writing, to writing together, with other, by turning again to the “downlow lowdown maroon community” (Moten & Harney, 2013, p. 26) of creative-relational inquiry.