Introduction
The main aim of this pilot study was to explore possibilities of comparing strategies of creative people in the field of improvisation. Improvisation is considered to be one way of creative expression or generative performance. As creativity and the creative class are much discussed in the past few years we tried to focus on one of its aspects. The current study investigated distinctions and similarities of musicians and poetry slam/ freestyle artists. The overall aim is to build well-founded models of these strategies in order to learn more on how to impart this knowledge to students.

Method
In our set-up creative “professionals” and University-level students met for a weekend. The “pros” gave workshops on improvisational techniques. The aim was to carry out a multi-media performance in front of a live audience at the end.
Data was collected using a short questionnaire on topics such as person’s socio-cultural backgrounds, improvisational and performing experiences and further more. The main method was to analyse videotaped interviews using qualitative analysis strategies. Four researchers with different levels of expertise and different scientific backgrounds coded the interviews using MAXQDA.

Findings
We observed quite a lot of similarities between musical and lyrical improvisational strategies and professional artists themselves: They predominantly start learning improvisation by copying or imitational approaches. All of them stress the prominence of professionalism, meaning one has to be good at playing the instrument, knowing musical or literary backgrounds in order to be “successful” at improvising. Experience, expertise and readiness to assume risks are also important in the proband’s opinion.
Lyrical generative performances also use techniques and strategies we know musicians use. These include usage of repertoires (CLARKE 2000), “motor memory”, transformations, imitations, anticipations (PRESSING 2000) and the experience and quest for flow (CZIKSZENTMIHALYI 1997). The latter is often felt using divergent strategies as BIASUTTI and FREZZA (2009) described as well.
Concerning communication both musicians and lyrical artists stressed the importance of community and sympathy. Within this community they are inspired by other artists, they think positively about “leadership” (STERNBERG 1999b) and they “accept all offers” (LEMONS 2005). The audience and its reaction is the not the most important aspect of communication when improvising to them.

Discussion
To start off we were able to show that it was possible to compare improvisational strategies of musicians and lyrical artists. Findings described illustrate that our knowledge of musical generative processes could be helpful to compare and explain other improvisational strategies as well.
Taking into account that this was a pilot study we already got some interesting insights into this field. But to build well-founded models the study now will have to interview other types of musicians, and also dance or drama improvisation, fine arts and media-based improvisational artists could contribute to paint this picture. If we were able to understand their backgrounds and strategies better we would be able to teach this to our students and possibly make them “better” creative individuals.