Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice

This three-year collaborative research investigated how creative communities form and engage on a multicultural and transnational basis in the modern world of globalised and distributed communications.

The project focused on the electronic literature community in Europe as a model of networked creativity and innovation in practice, studying its formation and interactions. It also aimed to advance electronic literature research and practice in Europe.

The ELMCIP project had four clear objectives:

• Understand how creative communities form and interact through distributed media.
• Document and evaluate various models and forces of creative communities in the field of electronic literature.
• Examine how electronic literature communities benefit from current educational models and develop pedagogical tools for teaching.
• Study how electronic literature manifests itself in conventional cultural contexts and evaluate the effects of distributing and exhibiting electronic literature in such contexts.

The project identified the various categories of creative community in terms of the factors that unite the individual members, which include language, region, genre, platform, events and institutions. It also looked at the different publishing models for electronic literature and the history of electronic literature publishing in Europe. The project examined pedagogical models for teaching, researching and institutionalising electronic literature in different disciplines and agencies.