Creative Agency in Crisis: Ten Questions, Ten Answers

When we face a crisis, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We can exercise our creative agency to try to resolve the crisis we face or defer our agency to others for guidance on how we should proceed. The decision of whether to exercise our creative agency during a crisis is more complex and nuanced than it may initially seem. There are various individual, social, and environmental factors that come into play when deciding whether to take creative agentic action, and these factors can take on added emphasis during a crisis. Consequently, it is important that researchers and practitioners understand the nature of creative agency under crisis and the various factors that influence our creative agentic decision-making process. To that end, this chapter poses and addresses ten critical questions to help researchers and practitioners understand the role creative agency plays when experiencing states of crisis.