Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

Review

TOP 5 OF 2023

TOP 5 OF 2023 on Creative Practice Research

Candelario, R, & Henley, M (eds) 2023, Dance Research Methodologies : Ethics, Orientations, and Practices, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton.

“Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations, and Practices captures the breadth of methodological approaches to research in dance in the fine arts, the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences by bringing together researchers from around the world writing about a variety of dance forms and practices. This book makes explicit the implicit skills and experiences at work in the research processes by detailing the ethics, orientations, and practices fundamental to being a researcher across the disciplines of dance. Collating together approaches from key subdisciplines, this book brings together perspectives on dance practice, dance studies, dance education, dance science, as well as dance research in cross-, multi-, and interdisciplinary fields. Practice-based chapters cover methodological approaches that provide rich examples of how research design and implementation are navigated by practicing scholars. Dance Research Methodologies also includes a practical workbook that helps readers to decide upon, refine, and enact their research, as well as develop ways in which to communicate their process and outcomes. This vital textbook is a valuable resource for research faculty interested in interdisciplinary conversation and practice, emerging scholars honing their methodological approaches, graduate students engaged in research-based coursework and projects, and advanced undergraduates.” ––From the Publisher

Frizell, C, & Rova, M (eds) 2022, Creative Bodies in Therapy, Performance and Community : Research and Practice That Brings Us Home, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton.

“Creative Bodies in Therapy, Performance and Community champions several diverse and innovative approaches in the professional engagement with the creative body as a catalyst for change in therapy, education, somatics and performance. With contributors from the wide-ranging fields of performance and visual arts, psychotherapy, dance and somatics, this book articulates practice-based experiences in a creative language. The readers are invited to move from the process of reading, into the experience of being in and making sense of the world through a moving body. The book meanders purposefully through practice-led embodied approaches in research that generate new knowledge, methodological frameworks that have emerged in response to the needs of different contexts, as well as offerring a window on first-hand experience as practice. The book will appeal to a wide range of practitioners and trainees in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, arts therapies, counselling and psychotherapy, somatics, community practice and performance.” ––From the Publisher

Modeen, M, & Biggs, I 2023, Creative Engagements with Ecologies of Place : Geopoetics, Deep Mapping and Slow Residencies, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton.

“This book explores an exciting range of creative engagements with ecologies of place, using geopoetics, deep mapping and slow residency to propose broadly based collaborations in a form of ‘disciplinary agnosticism’. Providing a radical alternative to current notions of interdisciplinarity, this book demonstrates the breadth of new creative approaches and attitudes that now challenge assumptions of the solitary genius and a culture of ‘possessive individualism’. Drawing upon a multiplicity of perspectives, the book builds on a variety of differing creative approaches, contrasting ways in which both visual art and the concept of the artist are shifting through engagement with ecologies of place. Through examples of specific established practices in the UK, Australia and the USA, and other emergent practices from across the world, it provides the reader with a rich illustration of the ways in which ensemble creative undertakings are reactivating art’s relationship with place and transforming the role of the artist. This book will be of interest to artists, art educators, environmental activists, cultural geographers, place-based philosophers and postgraduate students and to all those concerned with the revival of place through creative work in the twenty-first century.” ––From the Publisher

Overend, D 2023, Performance in the Field Interdisciplinary Practice-as-Research, Cham: Springer International Publishing

“This book makes a compelling case for ‘performance fieldwork’ as a vital new approach to interdisciplinary collaboration. Refocussing the histories and practices of field research, it shows how creative methods and artistic processes can contribute to an embodied and situated knowledge of complex landscapes and environments. The book brings together case studies of innovative research in the fields of ecology, clubbing, heritage, mobility and deep time, which took place in the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2021. These accessible and engaging field notes connect to international and intercultural contexts, with attention to alternative experiences and perspectives throughout. Together, they provide a critically informed ‘toolbox’ of playful and exploratory strategies for working with a diverse range of urban and rural sites – including a river, a museum, a nightclub, a motorway and a cave. This is a timely methodology that reaches across disciplines to demonstrate how performance continually plays out ‘in the field’. David Overend is an award-winning theatre director and Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research focuses on contemporary theatre and performance, often at the intersection with cultural geography. Previous publications include Making Routes: Journeys in Performance 2010-2020 with Laura Bissell (2021), and an edited collection, Rob Drummond Plays with Participation (2021). David has also written numerous articles for journals including Contemporary Theatre Review, New Theatre Quarterly and GeoHumanities. As well as over a decade of site-based performance practice, he has directed for many theatres, including the National Theatre of Great Britain.” ––From the Publisher

Ruopp, A 2022, Encounters with Theory As Conceptual Medium and Creative Practice, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton.

“Encounters with Theory as Conceptual Medium and Creative Practice explores the relationships and intersections between verbal and visual ways of researching, challenging the privilege of the written word in academe. Rooted in a grant-funded artistic research course, the data and experiences shared here illuminate the transformative power of visual thinking and visual literacy as a research data, analysis as well as artifact. The book begins by outlining the author’s background as an artist/researcher/teacher, laying a foundation for the positionality and thinking within the book. The later chapters, offered as vignettes, share the explorations and subsequent discoveries of emerging scholars from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. A/R/Tography takes a front seat serving as a messy and fluid architecture for theory put into practice. Engaging tension as a catalyst for disruption, the book explores how staying present, intra-acting with ideas, concepts, and theory through visual material exploration expands attention and illuminates data in different ways, affording unexpected insight and discovery. In addition, the image-rich pages invite readers into reading the visual in conversation with the verbal, on equal terms. One is not in service of the other, rather a conversation of literacies. With its emphasis on the visual and materiality as a method of thinking, this book will be of interest to anyone interested in or practicing artistic research. One does not need to have an arts background to engage in visual dialog.” ––From the Publisher

More from this issue

METHODOLOGIES IN FLUX

NAVIGATING CULTURAL TRANSLATION IN PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICE RESEARCH — This paper examines the methodological tensions and transformations in my practice-led research

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PROLIFERATING VOIDS

GENDER’S PRESENCE IN GENDERLESS NARRATIVES — In an experimental attempt to avoid all gendered markers while writing my unpublished novel,

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WHEN AI MEETS CYBERPUNK

CREATIVE EMPOWERMENT OR CRITICAL DISSOLUTION? — This paper investigates the pronounced tension between ‘creative empowerment’ and ‘critical dissolution’ at the

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WALKING WOLLONGONG

As a creative researcher-in-the-making, I am exploring how to practice accountability in the unresolved cultural context of the environmental crisis

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GIVING IT A NAME

INTEGRATING FAMILY ADDICTION TRAUMA THROUGH EMBODIED CREATIVE RESEARCH — This article explores how the phenomenon of ‘affective ambush’(Maguire & Deller

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More from this issue

REVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS IN CREATIVE PRACTICE RESEARCH AT THE CONVERGENCE OF CRITICAL, CREATIVE, THEORETICAL, AND ACADEMIC SPACES
NAVIGATING CULTURAL TRANSLATION IN PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICE RESEARCH — This paper examines the methodological tensions and transformations in my practice-led research exploring photographic representation of gendered bodies across Brazilian and Australian cultural contexts. Through analysing my evolving methodology, I demonstrate how convergence of feminist epistemology, decolonial theory, and photographic practice generates new knowledge at the intersection of theory and creative production.
This paper reflects on a methodology within a Creative Writing PhD that recalibrates selected Buddhist Pāli Jātakas through a parallel reading of Derrida’s Specters of Marx and Buddhist texts on samsarā (rebirth). This cross-cultural dialogue provides a nuanced context for rearticulating the Jātakas. The project’s ‘middle-way methodology’ avoids privileging either Western or Buddhist frameworks and adapts Smith and Dean’s (2009) ‘iterative cyclic web’ through oscillations across creative writing, cross-cultural reading, and critical inquiry.
GENDER’S PRESENCE IN GENDERLESS NARRATIVES — In an experimental attempt to avoid all gendered markers while writing my unpublished novel, Static Sun, Phantom Breath, traces of gender seemed to still appear and, in turn, complicate the presence/absence binary. Inspired by Anne Garréta’s novel Sphinx and her exploration of how genderless characters expand understands of love and writing form, this paper reflects on the logocentric restrictions and aporetic opportunities that come from textually avoiding gender.
'The past inside the present' (2023) begins with surfaces: inscribed, weathered, and imbued with pedagogical significance. The research involves reconsidering reclaimed art school studio tabletops as artefacts of accumulated gestures. It focuses on investigating how artistic labour and the relational custodianship of educational practices become systematically blurred within contemporary institutional frameworks of higher education.
CREATIVE EMPOWERMENT OR CRITICAL DISSOLUTION? — This paper investigates the pronounced tension between 'creative empowerment' and 'critical dissolution' at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cyberpunk, a genre defined by its critical engagement with technology. Grounded in my reflexive practice of generating cyberpunk transmedia (images) using AI, this study analyses how these tools – despite affording creative efficiencies and expanded visual capabilities – may undermine cyberpunk's intrinsic critical spirit, DIY ethos, and narrative depth.
GENERATIVE TENSION IN THE CREATIVE WRITING PHD — Scholars such as Professor Nigel Krauth (2011, 2018) argue that there is an inherent tension between the ‘radical experimentation’ required to innovate in the discipline of creative writing, and the standard exegetical models, orthodoxies and conventional positions of the PhD thesis. In response, this essay looks to the role of structure in the creative writing PhD thesis, asking how experimenting with standard exegetical models can be generative for practice and research.
As a creative researcher-in-the-making, I am exploring how to practice accountability in the unresolved cultural context of the environmental crisis and ongoing intersectional colonising injustice. To address this, I have developed a sidewise ethics of practice that begins with my own unresolved settler cultural understanding of the foreshores of the city of Wollongong on the New South Wales South Coast.
DEVELOPING THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY INQUIRY MODEL IN CREATIVE PRACTICE RESEARCH — This article reflects on the development of the Transdisciplinary Inquiry Model (TIM) as both a methodological framework and a record of my becoming as a creative researcher. Developed during my doctoral research through practice-led inquiry, TIM integrates imagination, embodiment, and relationality to navigate the tensions of knowledge production across disciplines.
COMMERCIALLY VIABLE, ACADEMICALLY FOCUSED, OR BOTH? — Nicola Boyd (2009) declared there is a strong chance of publishing a creative work developed from the creative writing doctorate. But how does this work when the creative output is deeply entwined with academic methodology, especially when the output is popular genre fiction with its own rules and industry expectations for commercial publication?
INTEGRATING FAMILY ADDICTION TRAUMA THROUGH EMBODIED CREATIVE RESEARCH — This article explores how the phenomenon of ‘affective ambush’(Maguire & Deller 2024), influenced the creative practice as research involved in the production of my creative artefact 'The Lighthouse: Personal Essays on the Transgenerational Haunting of Addiction'. Affective ambush occurs when a scholar experiences an unexpected emotional reaction to their academic research.
SUPPORTING WOMEN TO CLAIM THEIR VOICES POST-VIOLENCE — Can creative self-expression support women to gain or claim their voices? This research explores the dialogic nature of self-reflective questions in oracle cards as provocations for theatre and investigates if and how these provocations can assist women with self-expression. A sample deck of oracle cards – including self-reflective questions – were crafted and then tested as provocations for playwriting.
REFLECTIONS ON GENRE WRITING AND CREATIVE PRACTICE RESEARCH — Nearly three years into my creative practice PhD in which I wrote multiple fat and queer science fiction short stories, my supervisor asked: Is there enough science in them? This question has since underpinned my understanding of the ‘perennially revised’ (Latham 2017, p.8) genre borders of literary science fiction, and the ‘validity and rigour of practice-led research’ (Gandolfo 2012, p. 64) in academic institutions.
STRANGE LOOP METHODOLOGY AND THE WRITER AS RESEARCHER — This article presents Smelting, a lyrical-poetic-prose hybrid that performs creative writing as recursive inquiry through Boyd’s Strange Loop methodology. The work loops through narrative, reflection, and fragmentation to explore writing in the Anthropocene where meaning, identity, and climate collapse entangle. The writer is positioned not as commentator but as participant and epistemic agent, embodying the writer-as-researcher ethos within a practice-based research PhD.
BY DAVID CROSS and CAMERON BISHOP — Perhaps it is appropriate that the etymology of risk is caught between two competing meanings. The Italian word risco loosely translates to cliff which implies that negotiating said cliff is not for the fainthearted.
BY DANNY BUTT — On Khaled Sabsabi, the Memo panel and the limits of rhetorical solidarity (excerpt)
BY DARIO VACIRCA — In the age of virality, censorship is a risky business. We’ve seen it play out time and time again: an attempt to bury an idea or image only ends up amplifying it.
BY NADIA ODLUM — This contribution draws upon my experience researching and learning within an adventure playground, and considers what these environments (and the people who facilitate them) might teach us about conditions that allow for a positive approach to risk.
BY FIONA HILLARY, CAMERON BISHOP and DAVID CROSS — Since the pandemic further upended certainties about what a university should do to build culture, our once bustling campuses have increasingly come to resemble empty husks – hollowed out not just by lockdowns and the attendant absence from campus, but by decades of neoliberal corporatisation.
BY PAULINA LAROCCA — Risk – from the Italian risicare, ‘to dare’ – carries both danger and possibility, offering transformative rewards when one embraces uncertainty (Bernstein, 1996).