ERA and the creative arts in Australian universities

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.

For a sector already buckling under post-COVID budgetary pressures, it seemed like a welcome reprieve. However, with the dust well and truly settled, it has become clear that the absence of ERA has further weakened the status of the creative arts in the Australian university landscape.

Without ERA’s qualitative, peer-reviewed approach to measuring research quality, quantitative metrics now assume outsize importance. Citations, journal rankings, and research income determine resource allocation, strategic partnerships, and – increasingly – academic progression. Such indicators, while suitable for many traditional academic disciplines, overtly fail to capture the energy and value of creative practice as research.

The result is a tertiary creative arts sector increasingly marginalised, particularly at non-metropolitan universities, while traditional fields forge ahead.

External factors have played their part in this process such as the mainstreaming of ‘culture wars’ rhetoric and the impact of ATAR subject scaling on HASS secondary enrolments. The increasingly vocational emphasis of higher education policies over the past decade has also had an impact, devaluing the entrepreneurial and self-directed professions that are typical destinations for creative arts graduates. ERA, despite its flaws, offered a vital peer-review process that helped leadership teams unfamiliar with creative arts to better grasp its value and contributions. Its absence has further undermined the profile of the creative arts in the university ecosystem.

As the Australian Research Council considers what the future ERA will look like, we must acknowledge the vital importance of its peer review process, while also seizing the opportunity to fix its shortcomings. The resource demands of the ERA reporting process overtly favoured larger institutions that could afford teams to draft impressive research statements and assemble comprehensive packages. In smaller universities and departments, these tasks often fell to individual academics resulting in submissions prepared in isolation and aggregated by faculty staff often far removed from the discipline and with limited knowledge of its conventions. 

The vagueness of key terms such as ‘world class’ was commonly taken to mean ‘international’, resulting in outputs being ranked according to venue prestige rather than methodological merit and rigour.

Consequently, the peer review process favoured metropolitan universities, particularly those in Sydney and Melbourne with greater access to influential ‘world class’ galleries and museums. These combined factors led to a noticeable drop in visual arts and craft participation across successive ERA rounds. (FOR-code 1905, 2010-2018).

To rescue creative arts research in Australian universities, we need urgent action:

1. Reinstate Peer Review: Develop a new, more equitable system of peer assessment that provides clear benchmarks and criteria for creative research quality, ensuring alignment between reviewers and creative outputs.

2. Remove the Low Volume Threshold: Eliminate the 50-output minimum of previous ERA rounds, which excludes many quality projects from review and further marginalises smaller institutions with fewer staff members.

3. Separate Funding for Assessment: Allocate dedicated administrative resources for the reporting and peer-review process, rather than drawing on already stretched Commonwealth student fees and academic workloads.

4. Implement Result Scaling: Acknowledge the qualitative nature of appraisal and use statistical scaling to ensure a fair comparison between peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed codes.

5. Recognise Regional and Smaller Institutions: Develop better criteria that value diverse contexts and resources, breaking the metropolitan monopoly on perceived excellence.

If Australian universities are to maintain their status as ‘universal’ institutions, it is essential that they embrace all major research domains.

We urgently need the re-establishment of a system for evaluating, supporting, and integrating creative research – now more than 20 years old as a research paradigm – within the broader academic context. A more equitable assessment model is crucial. Without it, creative arts departments of all sizes will struggle to measure and articulate their contributions effectively. The result will be a homogenised higher education landscape, deprived of the invention, critical thinking, and cultural enrichment that the creative arts bring.

As we consider the future of measuring creative arts research, let’s ensure that the relief of ERA 2023’s cancellation doesn’t become an elegy for creative arts in Australian universities. The sector’s survival depends on urgent action to recognise and value the unique contributions of creative practice research.


Charles Robb is Associate Professor in Visual Art at QUT, Meanjin/Brisbane and ACUADS Executive member. He has been a practicing artist for more than three decades and his work has been seen in numerous group and solo exhibitions at venues including MONA (Hobart), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney) and the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia (Melbourne). Robb’s studio-based research explores the relationship between the memorial object and incidental form through sculpture, digital, and photographic media.

More from this issue

Artists in academia

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

The ‘tension’ between industry and

Read More +

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 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.
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.