HOLDING TENSIONS: On Being a Creative and an Academic

BY CAMEA DAVIS

The Dualities of Being Me 

I have always been a scholar and a poet. I won my first award for poetry in the 4th grade. Since then, I have many memories of how that has impacted my life.

I remember my algebra teacher in high school scolding me for writing poetry in the margin of my math notes. It made perfect sense to me. I wrote poems about mathematical concepts to draw connections and define terms. She reprimanded me. 

Freshman year of college, I left the private art school where I was enrolled because I felt my scholarly appetite was not being fed. I remember writing poems to explain my emerging epistemological stances during my doctoral program. Yet, when I went to my community open mic where I was born and raised as a young poet, the language of academe felt ill placed peeking through my stanzas. I remember wondering what was happening to my voice as a poet. 

My voice and my writing were changing as I was changing. 

My Presence as a Multi-hyphenate

Now as a critical, qualitative researcher by profession—focused on the intersection of civics and youth creative arts, social justice teacher education, and arts-based research methods—I frequently hold the tension of how to be both a creative and an academic. 

On the one hand, writing as a primary requirement of my profession as a researcher is a dream come true. 

On the other hand, writing to constantly convince and qualify my ideas is treacherous, coming from youth spoken word traditions where expression itself is the goal. 

On the surface it seems, academic spaces (universities, academic conferences, research convenings) expect a version of me that asks me to quiet my creativity and speak in their language. Still it seems creative spaces expect me to suspend my hard fought critical lens and all the reference materials that academe has made commonplace in my thinking. For too long, I would minimize one identity for another and limit my ability to bring my unique set of skills and perspectives earned by my lived experiences to enhance the work I do in collaboration with others. It appears these worlds are at odds but the binary is a myth. 

Instead, I am an intersectional being full of contradictions and complexities. I have learned to hold the tensions of being both a creative and an academic while attempting to be authentic to all of who I am in myriad spaces. 

It is hard work. 

Daily. 

Possibilities in Tensions 

I work to use my creative sensibilities and divergent thinking cultivated by writing and performing in communities with youth artists and activists to my academic research tasks. Equally, I bring the systematic analytic thinking grounded in theoretical lenses developed by studying to become a critical, qualitative researcher to my artistic practices and communities. They serve each other and often offer myself and my colleagues spaces for innovation. 

I’ll give you a few examples:

  • n my work as Director of Knowledge for Creative Generation, our research team is building and employing a research protocol that is community based, participatory, and arts-based to study inquiries with our collaborators. 

  • As Research Director of a teacher residency program housed at a university working with local schools and communities, I am leading my team to imagine our research efforts as more organically tethered to the living environments of our data contributors, instead of considering our work as a lab (sterile environment removed from real life). 

  • In my leadership with the nationally-acclaimed Youth Poet Laureate program, I’m considering how we measure impact through storytelling and poetry as well as quantitative measures such as youth readership of poetry because I’m confident poetry makes seismic shifts in both ways. Stanzas and theory need each other. 

To bring these together, I focus on my individual practice: the merger of my personal and professional identities. As frequently as possible I write poems in my academic articles. I am especially excited to consider how poetry is an analytical tool to DO research and share data publically. See more about this work here and here.

For the Creative Generation 

It is well. 

You are enough. (yes, seriously. You are.) 

Work really hard at your dream, especially when you’ve never seen anyone else accomplish it. 

The way you are making sense of a broken system through creative tools and innovation matters deeply. There is work for you to do that adds incredible value to this not-yet-best society we’re in. Your work will improve upon it. Embrace your divergent interests because your creative approach is what’s missing. We need you in every space. 

For the adults committed to cultivating the Creative Generations’ creative capabilities  

Young creatives must be embraced in a variety of spaces and ways of being. As org leaders, hold that tension. Invite youth into that tension. Invite young creatives into policy, research, leadership and/or any other non-creative spaces youth want to occupy. Cultivate their creative genius while strengthening their non-creative capabilities as well and allow them to innovate the intersections. It is in this blurry yet to exist, likely Afro-futuristic space what we’ll find the magic we need to solve our most pressing issues and live in our most expansive spaces of joy. 

When they see poetry in mathematics, celebrate.