Practice Led Research: Creative Activity, Academic Debate, and Intellectual Rigour

Abstract

By focussing on PhD supervision as well as creativity, this paper explores how the artefact and exegesis PhD offers an opportunity to bring creative activity together with academic debate and intellectual rigour. In this context, the latter does not justify the former nor interpret it in an academic and theoretical way. Rather, acting together, the artefact and exegesis bridge the Cartesian binary, offer new models of knowledge to the academy, and enrich the artistic practices of the practitioners themselves. The creative practitioner thus brings to the academy new dimensions of what knowledge itself consists of and how this contributes to learning. Because this disputes the regular academic templates, it challenges the academy itself. The methodology I employ in this paper is one of narrativity that I call the ‘subjective academic narrative’, it practices the theory of academic knowledge as personal and draws together the Cartesian binary of the personal and the intellectual

Implementing a new doctor of creative arts program in the Chinese year of the fire monkey

“…The program which developed from a core group of institutional champions (Hills, 1988; Lehman, 2013) is one which the Associate Dean (Research and Research Training) describes as distinctive, that is responsive to the identified context, opportunities and needs of this profession … a really innovative, creative program. His observations reflect the university’s intention to seek a competitive business advantage by building on available resources that could be creatively re-aligned to provide an inaugural DCAR program (Arnold, 2012; Barrett and Bolt, 2007).…”

“…Also in keeping with the broader literature, he recognised that it was not merely a new 'product', it represented a developing of new ways of supervising students and developing knowledge … that is disciplinary appropriate. The program which developed from a core group of institutional champions (Hills, 1988;Lehman, 2013 He concedes that for all of the philosophical justification for the DCAR, at some level it is also a decision informed by the dollars and cents (Barrett and Bolt, 2007;Arnold, 2012). He sees it as a balancing of the twin tensions of financial considerations and the desire to enable students to come into a program that offers them the space to be able to enact their practice as they would, in a way that the PhD doesn't.…”

“…For many centuries universities have been measured by their capacity to enrich the 'commonweal' but as Livingstone (2010) argues, they are now far removed from this construct. This has in turn placed increasing pressure on all forms of research, including practice-led arts doctorates to contribute to a global research agenda informed by government innovation priorities (Arnold, 2012;Barrett and Bolt, 2007;Gattenhof, 2017).…”

New Histories: Creating Video Work to Fill Adoption Absences

“…In this work I am "thinking with video" in creative practice research, and through this, engaging with different kinds of knowledges. 16 Alongside this, I am using autoethnography as method and methodology, weaving story and theory together, looking inward to my own experiences, and outward to culture and society. 17 Autoethnography is an embodied practice; researchers go out into the field, experiencing self and culture in practice.…”

Heurística

“…Defining such an approach represents an ongoing challenge, as artistic processes, compositions and experiences have opened increasingly diverse possibilities for generating meaning. 89 90 91 92 93 This article asks, therefore, if it is possible to establish a framework for practice-led research that can support an individualistic process of discovery, allow the inclusion of heterogenous methods, and simultaneously help to position the enquiry as academic research?…”