Creative practice research advances in screen production

BY SUSAN KERRIGAN for ASPERA — Australian Screen Production Education and Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association (ASPERA) has contributed greatly to the creation and assessment of Creative Practice Research (CPR) in Screen Production disciplines. This work began with the creation of the peak disciplinary body two decades ago, at that time only one person in the gathering held a PhD and was considered to be a legitimate researcher by the academy.

ASPERA as an organisation has come a long way, and being part of the DDCA community helps to further refine the conversations around Creative Practice Research within the creative disciplines and how excellence in these disciplines can be assessed and appreciated. 

The development of university cultures through peak disciplinary bodies is the main way that Creative Practice Research has been socialised and can continue to be better understood by those inside and outside of our creative disciplines.

ASPERA has contributed to this work to better understand the value and contributions of Creative Practice Research in Screen Production through generating publications for CPR like ‘Screen Production Research – Creative Practice as a Mode of Enquiry’ which provides examples of the range of Creative Practice Research forms occurring in screen production. ASPERA also created a place for formal conversations on these topics through the ASPERA Research-Sub Committee, formed in 2014 and led by Professor Craig Batty. The ASPERA Research-Sub Committee continues to be a place where assessment of films, filmmaking and screen plays as CPR occurs. This is achieved through the publication of Sightlines Journal and Conference, as it provides an ongoing forum to continue this discourse around filmmaking research in the academy, that includes interdisciplinary research and industry focused research. 

Journals like Sightlines present one opportunity for CPR assessors and practitioners to start to share ideas around assessment across universities and to assess the quality of creative research and how new knowledge contributions exist within the creative artefact or through a theoretical or methodological contribution, framed by the research question. Achieving parity on high quality CPR Research outputs requires creative practice researchers and assessors to be skilled at articulating the value of research and the assessment of it too. In 2016 there was a project called the ‘Filmmaking Research Network’, funded by the AHRC, it allowed UK and Australian filmmaking academics to host these conversations and to create resources aimed at showcasing examples of Filmmaking Research across both countries. There was a focus on the UK’s REF and Australia’s next ERA round. Sadly, the next ERA round never eventuated, and the resources have been underutilised by Australian screen production researchers.

Some of the points discussed through the FRN include guidelines on framing an impact submission for filmmaking, guidance to develop a research statement as well as filmmaking case studies from the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF).

These FRN resources, now available on the ASPERA website, have held their value and could make a useful contribution to the DDCA’s current discussion around CPR and developing these understandings within university cultures. 

As raised at DDCA’s online forum parity across universities is imperative as ERA has stalled. What follows is a personal reflection, rather than a comment on the good work that ASPERA has done over the years to help build research literacy for CPR Screen Production and Filmmaking. 

Over the last decade each university developed their own internal panels to assess ‘Non-Traditional Research Outputs’, primarily as a feeder into ERA. This work resulted in each university panel creating their own rigorous criteria and assessments of the institution’s NTRO submissions. I have submitted to these panels and been an assessor on these panels.

Much like traditional peer-review processes for written work, I have found wildly different outcomes of the same work, done as cross-institutional research projects, that was favourably received by some panels and outrightly rejected by others.

Perhaps this is not unusual as these panels are built on peer-review practices, which can be flawed and rigorous in equal measure. 

What is curious is that the internal guidelines that make up the NTRO panels and assessments are generally not publicly available on a university website.

How can parity be achieved if we are not sharing our processes with each other?

It’s concerning that much of the good work done on these panels to assess internal submissions is invisible, primarily because ERA has stalled and that means no national assessment of research excellence, including CPR can be conducted. Why is this a problem – well how can we interrogate ‘world standard’ assessments of quality, without a national assessment process? How is it possible for anyone to argue the value and cultural contributions from a locally produced CPR output without a national assessment process? So, in returning to the DDCA’s point – should we develop an archive or a ‘data resource’ where high quality CPR Australian case studies can be seen – for me the answer is ‘yes’! We need this ‘data set’ for ourselves as a touch stone and to showcase the important research outcomes and the new knowledge that can be achieved through Creative Practice Research.  


Susan Kerrigan is Professor of Film and Television at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. She is a Vice-President of ASPERA and was an active member of ASPERA Research sub-committee. She is a creative practice and qualitative researcher in filmmaking. Susan was a Partner Investigator on the Filmmaking Research Network and has edited and written extensively on Creative Practice Research in Screen Production and Filmmaking

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Artists in academia

BY BEATA BATOROWICZ — provocations on traversing research and industry success within creative practice.

The ‘tension’ between industry and

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More from this issue

BY SMILJANA GLISOVIC — On August 9, 2024 the DDCA held a National Forum to generate discussion on the shape of the future of creative practice research in Australia (and beyond). The particular focus of the event was on research evaluation and assessment, chosen because of the current reviews of ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia).
BY MIA LINDGREN — I asked AI to give me a list of words including the prefix ‘non’: non-profit, non-negotiable, non-essential and so on. The non prefix is used to indicate the opposite, absence or exclusion of the root words, meaning it signals a deviation from the standard, typical or expected.
BY JESSICA WILKINSON — In the ERA 2018 exercise I was invited to be an assessor for the Creative Writing field. Of the five universities assigned to me for assessment of submissions within this code, I encountered wildly different approaches to how each university collated the 'top 30%' of representative samples.
BY BEATA BATOROWICZ — provocations on traversing research and industry success within creative practice. The ‘tension’ between industry and academia, in addition to having diverse roles within the broader creative arts research ecology of development and contribution, also describes an interconnectedness: they both feed into each other in building notions of success.
BY CRAIG BATTY — Do we agree on what we are looking for in research assessment in creative disciplines? As a DASSH survey in 2018 revealed, assessors (at least those surveyed) had mixed views about what was important – from theoretical contributions, to industry contributions, to hybrid contributions, and so on – the caveat ‘it depends’ came up strongly.
BY DAVID CROSS — Oh, to be world standard. To have reached the peak of global creative practice. To have left behind the parochialism of local concerns and made it in the places, contexts and ruthlessly competitive environments that truly matter.
Thank you to all that so generously and respectfully contributed to the conversation on the day of the National Online Forum, both ‘on mic’ and in ‘the chat’. The contributions in the below text are not assigned to individuals but rather the general threads and themes are summarised. For more nuance (and less unintended interpretive valence from me) I do encourage you to watch the recording of the forum here.
BY JULIA PRENDERGAST and JEN WEBB — Let us begin by introducing ourselves: we are Associate Professor Julia Prendergast, AAWP President/Chair, and Distinguished Professor Jen Webb, AAWP Treasurer – accepting the invitation to contribute on behalf of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of creative writing (Australasia).
BY VERONIKA KELLY and CHARLES ROBB for ACUADS — The Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) is the nation’s peak organisation representing the interests of art and design schools within Australian higher education. Here, ACUADS draws attention to issues surrounding the interpretation and positioning of ‘world standard’ in creative practice research.
BY CHARLES ROBB — When news broke that Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2023 had been cancelled, a palpable wave of relief swept through Australian universities – no more laborious compilation of packages, impact statements, and ranking spreadsheets.
BY CAT HOPE — Despite an increasing number of artist scholars in the performing arts – those who have higher degree qualifications featuring the creative project/ exegesis model – are being employed in universities, it seems as if scholarly recognition for the so called ‘non traditional research output’ (NTRO) is in decline.
BY SMILJANA GLISOVIC and CRAIG BATTY — The discussion amongst colleagues at the DDCA National Forum on evaluation and assessment of creative practice research – where more than 100 from a range of disciplines were in attendance – was informed, considered and encouraging.
BY ANDREA RASSELL and JO POLLITT — In thinking about the development of a standardisation of assessment of creative research, we, as interdisciplinary artist scholars practising respectively in filmmaking/media and choreographic writing/dance/feminist environmental humanities, are constantly reforming our identities as researchers and artists.