A Systematic Review of Arts Practice-Based Research Abstracts from Small and/or Specialist Institutions

Through this qualitative systematic review, the authors ask the following: To what extent is the 300-word abstract fit for purpose in representing art and design practice-based research outputs on small and/or specialist institutional repositories? The abstract is an important part of the metadata when an Arts Practice-Based Output (APBO) is deposited on a repository. APBOs are non-traditional item types resulting from creative/artistic research processes. Examples include exhibitions, artefacts and digital videos. Little is known about how effectively these abstracts communicate research processes and insights across the art and design sector. This study aims to investigate how well the abstract communicates information about the arts practice-based research through a systematic review of APBOs. The eligibility criteria for inclusion in the review were as follows: APBOs must be from the date range January 2019 to January 2024, be an item type where the 300-word abstract is required, the abstract must be part of the publicly available metadata for the item, and outputs must be practice-based and from the art and design field. The date range (2019–2024) was employed because, during this time, APBOs had gained recognition in the wider research environment. APBOs from the reviewers’ institutional repository were not included in this study to avoid bias that could skew the results of the review. The data repositories from small and/or specialist Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom were searched for outputs which appeared to meet the eligibility criteria. These types of institution prioritise and produce more of these output types. A quality tool appropriate for creative/artistic research was applied to the identified dataset of APBOs. The resulting 27 APBOs’ 300-word abstracts were analysed using a thematic approach. Findings suggest that the 300-word abstracts contained information about the quality indicators such as whether the project got funding, the identities of prestigious collaborators and/or dissemination vehicles, and the international recognition of the research. Other identified themes were methodologies, contribution to knowledge, subject matter and item type

Three Lecturers, Three Universities, Three Countries: Can Facilitating Connecting Art Practice Pedagogic Workshop in International Educational Contexts Create Connection and Criticality?

This chapter explores the impact of the Connected Art Practice pedagogic method across three international contexts—Germany, Spain, and the UK—by examining a collaborative Close to Practice research project involving 59 art students and lecturers. The study demonstrates how the method fosters critical thinking, creative collaboration, and a sense of community, enabling participants to connect across diverse disciplines and cultures. The findings highlight how this practice-driven, dialogic approach empowers students to engage with complex concepts and address social issues such as sustainability in the arts

Sketchbooks as aesthetic transducers

An exploration of the role that sketchbooks take within a particular artist’s practice, that explores the metaphor of the sketchbook as an aesthetic transducer. In order to do this the drawn documentation of experience, collected together in the artist’s sketchbooks, is explored as a system of metaphors. We receive experiences via our neurological network as qualia and as such they constitute a fundamental component of consciousness. By regarding sketchbooks that record these experiences as energy converters, this paper argues that they can also be regarded as materialisations of an artist’s consciousness. The paper also highlights how sketchbooks are used to record ideas, memories and perceptions and how they can be used to interconnect them. The sketchbook in effect becoming an interface between the interior and exterior worlds that the artist inhabits. In order to understand how these interconnections operate, sketchbooks are regarded as aesthetic transducers, that support the drawn interrogation of perception and interoception, as the artist develops visual forms for ideas that are never quite logical, never totally intuitive, but always a product of the act of drawing

Hysteresis

The output is a site-specific higher-order Ambisonic music composition, created within the Spæs Spatial Audio Loft multichannel loudspeaker system in Berlin. The work investigates the relationship between fixed speaker array design and spatial perception, investigating compositional decision-making in a site-specific context. Research Process: The research was undertaken through a practice-as-research methodology during a compositional residency at the studio. The work was composed directly within the resident higher-order Ambisonic loudspeaker environment, iterating compositional spatial arrangements within the space through continued critical listening and reflection. The room design and system components, and their associated spatial resolution and diffusion characteristics, were treated as integral compositional parameters. Spatial motion, localisation, density, and spectral distribution were embedded from the earliest stages of material generation, rather than applied as post-production processes. This approach foregrounded the system itself as an active component in shaping musical structure and form. Research Insights: The output contributes new knowledge into site-responsive spatial music composition by demonstrating how fixed multichannel array configurations materially influence spatial strategy and formal development, and hence perceptual outcomes. The research piece displays an artistic response to spatial staging within the specific studio environment, further reinforcing that compositional decisions in higher-order Ambisonics are not format-neutral, but are shaped by the physical and technical properties of specific listening environments. The work extends existing discourse in spatial audio by positioning site-specificity as a central compositional concern within Ambisonic practice. Dissemination: Presented during a residency listening session at Spæs Spatial Audio Loft, Berlin, 22 February 2025

Queer Joy on Social Media: Exploring the Expression and Facilitation of Queer Joy in Online Platforms.

Queer Joy is conceptualised as a form of resistance to oppression by celebrating queerness in the face of adversity. This research aimed to centre queer joy and understand how it is expressed and may be facilitated in online spaces. To do this we conducted a survey with 100 UK participants who indicated they identifed as LGBTQ+ on the online recruitment platform Prolifc. We asked a series of open and closed questions in an online survey to investigate 1) what queer joy looks like on social media 2) how queer joy content is engaged with on social media 3) which platforms are perceived to facilitate queer joy and 4) how queer people protect their privacy online. The results suggested that to facilitate queer joy online, platforms should allow fexible self expression and community engagement, while allowing for granular control over privacy and the audience such content is shown to

Towards multispecies justice: non-anthropocentric ecocritical methods and practices

This article examines contemporary artistic practices that challenge entrenched Western binaries such as nature/culture and human/animal, proposing new frameworks for perceiving and engaging with the more-than-human world in the context of the Anthropocene. Through four case studies—The Embassy of the North Sea, Gustafsson & Haapoja’s Museum of Nonhumanity, Ursula Biemann’s Forest Mind, and Kyriaki Goni’s Data Garden—the article explores how interdisciplinary, research-based art practices reconfigures human-nonhuman relations, critiques extractivist logics and present alternative ways of engaging with ecological crises. Drawing on frameworks from eco-criticism, aesthetic theory, and Indigenous cosmologies, the article introduces the concepts of non-anthropocentric institutionalism and plant-human entanglement as theoretical tools to rethink environmental agency, legal representation, and techno-ecological coexistence. Haraway’s notion of natureculture helps articulate entangled ontologies, while Rancière’s distribution of the sensible and T.J. Demos’s ecocritical aesthetics frame artistic practices as political acts of ontological intervention that challenge what is seen, heard, and valued. These works do not merely represent environmental crises — they intervene in political structures by advocating for the rights of nonhuman entities, envisioning speculative futures, and fostering multi-species justice. Biemann integrates shamanic knowledge and Indigenous epistemologies; Goni speculates on symbiotic data systems between plants and machines. The Embassy of the North Sea pioneers sensory-based advocacy for marine legal personhood, while the Museum of Nonhumanity deconstructs species hierarchies rooted in colonial scientific taxonomies. Through their aesthetic strategies, these practices create spaces for critical reflection and action, particularly concerning ecological justice and the environmental impacts of human activities

Spirograph Reimagined (Spatial Audio Composition)

The output is a higher-order Ambisonic spatial audio composition created to accompany ‘Spirograph Reimagined’, a large-scale audio-visual installation presented as part of Leeds Light Night 2025. The work was designed to operate as an integrated sonic layer and composition responding to the visual motion of the Spirograph animations. Research Process: The research was undertaken through a practice-as-research methodology, developing a spatial composition specifically for Ambisonic multichannel presentation in a public exhibition environment. The composition was created in higher-order Ambisonics direct to the artists’ visuals, considering visual motion in tandem with audio diffusion the primary compositional parameter. The work draws on recorded and synthesised materials to generate moving, animated sound objects, informed by both timbral qualities of sound objects and their spatial behaviour across the site-specific arena space. These materials were spatially articulated to mirror processes of rotation and repetition present within the visual Spirograph forms. Research Insights: The output demonstrates how spatial audio can function as a structural and perceptual counterpart to generative visual systems in public installations. The research contributes new knowledge into integrating higher-order Ambisonic composition within large-scale public art contexts, showing how spatial sound can enhance audience engagement and compliment visual motion. It further supports how spatial audio can reinforce historical or conceptual narratives without relying on literal synchronisation, providing a supporting textural layer to curated visual storytelling. Dissemination: Exhibited during Leeds Light Night 2025, 21-23 October 2025 , and reached a large, non-specialist audience of thousands of public attendees. Dissemination is supported through extensive media coverage

Hidden

The output is a collaborative exhibition by Fox and Prum consisting of a concertina book and a series of landscape photographs. Research Process: This research is the result of an ongoing long-term dialogue between Fox and Prum. It is an embodiment of Prum’s personal journey from Phnom Penh to Battambang during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (1975–1979) - a period of violence, loss, and forced relocation. During this period, Pantha hid over 90 of her family’s photographic negatives in a fabric pocket she removed from a dress and concealed around her waist as she was forcibly moved from place to place. Central to the exhibition is a book, the cover of which is crafted from the same material that once held Prum’s hidden photographs. The pages of the book unfold to mimic a GPS trace of a reenactment undertaken by Fox and Prum of Prum’s journey. During this expedition, Prum wrote of her memories of the Khmer Rouge (featured in the book’s text alongside) and Fox took photographs documenting her recollections (featured in the large format prints). Research Insights: The research presents a deeply personal yet universally resonant exploration of memory, loss, and survival. The research highlights the absence of photography through this period of shifting political complications and the importance of retroactive documentation. Insights into the ways in which history is preserved, concealed, and rediscovered are articulated through the exhibition. This research also shows how exhibition making can work as a prompt for conversation as method, and as a site of representation of oral histories and first-person experiences of historical events. Dissemination: Exhibited at Ankhor Photo Festival, Seim Reap, Cambodia, 8-23 February 2025. Exhibited at The Art House, Wakefield, UK, 28 June – 11 October 2025

Creative Dilemmas: Balancing Open Access and Integrity

This article reflects on two research enabling practitioners’ (REPs) experiences related to making creative research outputs open. The REPs operate within a small specialist institution that is a research organisation (RO) focusing on the creative arts where open research is an embedded part of the RO’s research culture. Many of the RO’s academics are practice-based researchers whose research is disseminated through non-traditional output types such as artefacts, exhibitions, designs and videos. However, there are tensions when making creative outputs open that can lead to ethical dilemmas faced by REPs and researchers, including issues related to informed consent, intellectual property and reuse of the research. These tensions are illustrated by examining three examples of creative outputs where issues have arisen where the inter-relationships of open research, ethics and integrity are explored through vignettes. The findings of this article recommend continued training for researchers about the use of licences for creative works. Another recommendation calls for inclusive and transparent processes that support researchers in gaining justice when the intellectual property from their open access research outputs has been reused in a manner which contradicts the principles of research integrity

#Rebel Selves: Queer Selfies as Practices of Care

This visual essay presents an exploration of the gendered nature of visibleness and possibilities for queer entanglements through self-portraiture, performance, and installation. It culminates with #Rebel Selves, a practice-based research project comprising installations, self-portraits, contemporary dance performances, participatory workshops, and a smart phone app. #Rebel Selves draws on queer and posthumanist theories to develop experimental approaches to producing queer selfies. Research on selfies finds that negative feedback in comments and the currency of likes reinforce and police dominant gender ideals. However, research on queer selfies has highlighted their role in enhancing queer visibility, challenging stereotypes, creating supportive communities, and improving self-esteem. In this respect, selfie taking and sharing can be practices of care. In this essay I argue that #Rebel selfies do not escape the risks attached to being visible in the public sphere. However, they offer opportunities to be present without being subjected to disciplining gazes, and to participate in caring communities