Page 158 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

Abstract
This study explores how creative workers as ‘ceremony masters’ facilitate liminality to stimulate creative processes in organizations. Liminality re- fers to a transformation process which brings people out of their comfort zone, and goes accompanied with feelings of ambiguity, community and freedom. Based on a qualitative study at a social innovation hub, we found that creative workers act as ceremony masters to facilitate liminality. Lim- inality among clients is facilitated by activating clients to connect to oth- er actors and to experiment with new technologies and creative methods. This practice of activating clients calls for the ceremony masters to con- stantly morph into different roles. This paper contributes to the literature on liminality by revealing a case of ‘double liminality’, namely that creative workers can act as ceremony masters and facilitate liminality while adopt- ing a liminal position themselves.