Traces of departure and arrival

This paper traces the consequences of dislocation for studio arts-practice. I recently found myself in Perth, far from my home of 20 years and with directional vertigo, looking east to my old life and west to the Indian Ocean. In order to make sense of this move I used the studio to resolve/recollect/ trace my sense of movement, change, loss and vertigo. The multiple departures and arrivals on this journey are articulated as catalysts to studio production. We rarely speak about the spaces between such departures and arrivals and the effects those spaces have on the lived body. The space between in this instance was a road trip from the East to the West Coast of Australia. Traces of those departures and arrivals – (that always being between destinations) while evading the dichotomy of here or there and metaphors of inside and outside informed the studio processes entered into. The studio can be understood in this context as an instrument of phenomenological subjectivity in the world because our embodiment is premised on the mutually constituted agency of the self/other, or self in/of the world. The resultant bodies of work are described not as objects but as artefacts of arts-practice-led-research; as locaters of embodied knowledge; as traces of the performance of making. Through studio practice, an active material conversation occurs between ideas, the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of the studio, bodies and images

Empowering the next generation of actors through the creation of student-centred self-devised dramatic work

There has been a demise of many Australian theatre companies over the past 20 years, along with a decrease in long-form television series. As a result, there is less work available for graduating actors from conservatoires. In this precarious landscape, acting conservatoires need to appraise how actors are trained and assess how to better empower them as independent artists. One such approach is the development of devised theatre work within a conservatoire actor training structure. This article charts the development of a new devised work and the dynamics involved in theatre co-creation via student-centred collaboration. Our research examines the existing pedagogical practices in the current curriculum of the Bachelor of Arts (Acting) course at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and explores potential changes that may be implemented to the current curriculum. We suggest there is room to enhance the program, encourage resilience in the next generation of actors and contribute new approaches through the creation of devised work. The results of our study aim to encourage and foster agency for student actors, developing necessary skills for creating their own work and empowering their choices as artists

What is ERA really measuring?

How successful is ERA in measuring creative research? The ERA (2015) results would appear to advantage: citations over peer review, traditional research over non-traditional outputs and certain geographical locations over others. If indeed this is true, what are the implications for the future development of NTOs in this country given the recent article by NAVA (Winikoff, 2016), presenting the debate about the state of play of our art schools as one of survival and loss. The case for survival is one that needs to be closely examined where local and geographical factors are at play. Art and design schools across Australia navigate a range of cultural and economic forces. The pedagogical and research agendas of the university environment create pressures that art schools need to adapt to—along with concomitant financial and administrative constraints. External industry structures and commercial aims create another set of compulsions. The art and design school is continually asked to define itself against and adapt to the conditions of these environments, a pressure that often runs against the studio’s spirit of enquiry and value as a pedagogical space. In the context of these complex forces, what is the morphology of the art and design school for the 21st century? This paper examines a survival strategy at ECU, a vibrant contemporary Arts hub with an international and national focus in a period where universities are attempting to define their individual identity while at the same time measuring the immeasurable

Capturing creative practice

This paper will map the initial research surrounding capturing creative practice for the improvement of supervision and learning experiences in higher degree creative arts research in the School of Communications and Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University. Despite differences in what constitutes ‘practice’ across creative disciplines, the difficulties in representing practice-led research processes in an academic context are shared. Through interviews and focus groups, this research explored how the failure to capture the creative process impacts on supervision and learning experiences for creative arts Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates and their supervisors. One of the biggest challenges for supervisors of creative arts HDR candidates is providing students with guidance on how to document the tacit knowledge that informs and underpins their creative process. As supervisors of HDR candidates in the creative arts at ECU, we see the problems that arise when key aspects of the creative process cannot be written down. The first aim of this research was to gather more concrete data on how the failure to document tacit knowledge in creative research processes can impact on supervision and learning experiences. This data was gathered from interviews with a selection of creative arts HDR supervisors and focus groups with HDR candidates at ECU

Messy never-endings: Curating inConversation as interdisciplinary collaborative dialogue

This paper will explore the curation of a collaborative exhibition amongst creative higher degree by research candidates (from the School of Communications and Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts), arts practitioners and researchers from different art forms and discipline backgrounds. It will look at the conversations between artists and researcher collaborators working together to produce a broad range of creative works, culminating in an exhibition titled In Conversation, to be staged at Edith Cowan University’s Spectrum Project Space in October 2014. The context of the inConversation exhibition aims to inform and expand on current debates about the challenges and benefits of inter- and cross-disciplinary collaboration in the arts. While collaboration within discrete artistic disciplines has been quite common, it is now becoming increasingly important for artists to look beyond their silos and invite interactions with researchers in other disciplines and art forms. The curation of this exhibition proposes to explore what complexity may mean in terms of the processes of practice-led research in probing how the push and pull of the collaborative process, by which the outcomes become more than the sum of the parts, plays out in a cross-disciplinary, creative context

This is Not an Article: a reflection on Creative Research Dialogues (This is Not a Seminar)

This is Not a Seminar (TINAS) is a multidisciplinary forum established in 2012 at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia to support practice-led and practice-based Higher Degree by Research students. The Faculty of Education and Arts at ECU includes cohorts of postgraduate research students in, for example, performance, design, writing and visual arts. We established the TINAS programme to assist postgraduate research students in connecting their creative practices to methodological, theoretical and conceptual approaches whilst fostering an atmosphere of rapport across creative disciplines. The pilot programme conducted for six months in 2012 comprised dialogues with experienced creative researchers; critical reading sessions on practice-led theory; and workshops in journaling, ethics and copyright. This article is a reflection on the strengths and limitations of TINAS and future projections. More than an additional teaching and learning service, the programme has become a vital forum for creative dialogue

Contemporary contestations over working time: time for health to weigh in

Non-communicable disease (NCD) incidence and prevalence is of central concern to most nations, along with international agencies such as the UN, OECD, IMF and World Bank. As a result, the search has begun for ‘causes of the cause’ behind health risks and behaviours responsible for the major NCDs. As part of this effort, researchers are turning their attention to charting the temporal nature of societal changes that might be associated with the rapid rise in NCDs. From this, the experience of time and its allocation are increasingly understood to be key individual and societal resources for health (7–9). The interdisciplinary study outlined in this paper will produce a systematic analysis of the behavioural health dimensions, or ‘health time economies’ (quantity and quality of time necessary for the practice of health behaviours), that have accompanied labour market transitions of the last 30 years - the period in which so many NCDs have risen sharply

The question(s), the material(s) and the ethics of creative practice research methodologies

This chapter addresses the complex relationship among the research question, materials and ethics in creative practice research methodologies to argue that a reflexive approach enables the development of a situated and relational ethics. A reflexive approach to the question centralises the researcher as the subject and object of study and thus requires an examination of one’s own positionality. This reflexivity should occur throughout the research stages and not only in writing up the research. The process of gaining ethics approval can be viewed as a way in which to better articulate research to an audience beyond one’s discipline and perhaps more importantly, a way in which to shape the entire research project so that its very subject becomes an object of ethical research. Creative practice researchers might attend to the very matter of the chosen art form, as well as their positionality, and how this might influence the research at all stages

Capturing creative research in the academy

This paper examines a research project focused on ‘capturing’ creative practice through various recording media for research design and data collection for best teaching and learning practice in higher degree creative arts research. Despite differences in what constitutes ‘practice’ across creative disciplines, the many challenges facing practice-led researchers especially in regards to ‘middle-stage’ higher degree by research (HDR) processes are shared. One of the biggest challenges for supervisors of creative arts HDR candidates is developing ways in which embodied knowledge/s and tacit knowing can be harnessed and captured in order to document how the creative process informs and underscores research. As supervisors of HDR candidates in the creative arts at Edith Cowan University, we see the problems that arise when key aspects of the creative process resist writing. Through data collected from ten interviews and focus groups with 15 participants this paper explores the challenges associated with documentation of the processes and outputs associated with the creative arts (studio/performance/exhibition etc.) concluding that not only failing to seize or harness various methods in the creative process impacts on supervision and learning experiences for creative arts HDR candidates and their supervisors but also, unique interdisciplinary skill sharing and dialogue across the silos may not be just another blue sky proposition but a real and lasting opportunity to develop rigour and complexity