Creativity as a Meaningful, Socio-(Im)Material Practice: The Emergence of Roskilde Festival

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the further advancement of a theoretical understanding of how emergence theory informs the study of creativity as a socio-material practice. Initially, the socio-material standpoint is presented, followed by an introduction to our theorizing on emergence in creative processes. We exemplify and discuss how various creative subject–object relations at Roskilde Festival, a Danish music and arts event, become meaningful in a process of emergence involving various levels of creative contribution, ranging from paying and volunteering participants, through the professional organization, to the headlining artists. We thereby illustrate how ‘Roskilde Festival’ is ritually re-created and saturated with cultural, symbolic meaning – how Roskilde Festival serves as a ‘macro-structure’ motivating and justifying creative behaviour at the lower levels of the emergent phenomenon. The article ends with a general appraisal of the theoretical perspectives presented, discussing the value of increased analytical attention to emergent phenomena in addition to their individual contributions.