Creativity in GenAI-Supported Arts Education

Abstract

This systematic review examines how creativity has been conceptualized and evaluated in 31 empirical studies of GenAI-supported arts education. Using the 5A framework—Actor, Action, Artifact, Audience, and Affordances—it maps where current research places its attention and what remains underexplored. The literature most often evaluates finished artifacts, while audience interpretation and learners’ creative agency receive less sustained attention. Across studies, GenAI more consistently supports participation, rapid iteration, and expressive fluency than originality or conceptual depth. The review argues that creativity should be assessed not only through what learners produce, but also through how they establish intentions, make disciplinary judgments, transform generated material, and explain their decisions.

Original Figures

Flow diagram documenting identification, retrieval, assessment, and inclusion of 31 studies. — This PRISMA flow diagram traces the review from 817 database records to the final set of 31 empirical studies.

Two-panel figure summarizing the study corpus and comparing four attention levels across the five creativity dimensions. — The left panel summarizes the 31 studies by year, educational level, location, domain, and modality. The right panel shows that artifacts received the strongest empirical attention, while audiences were rarely studied directly.