NiTRO Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

Review

Each issue of Creative Matters will focus a particular theoretical work on the topic of creative practice research. For this edition we put out a call to the community to share their most dear, influential or go-to publications. The list below is long, the dates span 1993-2022, and we also note the discipline-specific and more general publications. This list may serve as a reference list for some; or perhaps we can glean from it a certain shape of thought that has emerged over the last 30 or so years; or perhaps it is indicative of what is of interest now. Use it as you will, and if you’d like to make a contribution of a favourite that doesn’t appear below please email the editor.

We would like to highlight the repeat offenders that appeared more than once in the submissions we’ve received so far.

TOP 10

1 Butt, Danny, 2017 Artistic Research in the Future Academy, Intellect

2 Candy Linda, 2020 The Creative Reflective Practitioner Research Through Making and Practice, Routledge

3 TEXT Journal of Writing and Writing Courses

4 Vear, Craig, 2022 The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research, Routledge

5 Media Practice and Education Journal

6 Biggs, M & Karlsson, H (eds) 2012 The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, Routledge

7 Gibson, Ross, 2010 ‘The Known World’, in TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Programs, vol. 14, no. 8.

8 Barrett, E & Bolt, B (eds) 2010 Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, I. B. Tauris.

9 Smith, H. & Dean, R. (eds) 2009 Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, Edinburgh University Press

10 Gray, C, & Malins, J, 2004 Visualizing research: a guide to the research process in art and design, Ashgate


ARTICLES

Batty, C & Baker, DJ 2018, ‘The role of fiction in screenwriting (as) research’, in TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Programs, vol. 2, no. 1, S48, pp. 1-10. 

Crouch, Christopher, 2007, ‘Praxis and the Reflexive Creative Practitioner’ in Visual Art Practice vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 105-114. doi: 10.1386/jvap.6.2.105/1.

Foster, Hal, 1996, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer’ in The Return of the Real, pp. 302–309, MIT Press.

Gourlay, Stephen, 2002, ‘Tacit Knowledge, Tacit Knowing or Behaving?’ Paper presented at 3rd European Organizational Knowledge, Learning and Capabilities Conference, 5–6 April, Athens. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/2293/1/Gourlay%202002%20tacit%20knowledge.pdf

Gray, C & Pirie, I 1995 ‘Artistic Research Procedure: Research at the Edge of Chaos’. http://carolegray.net/Papers%20PDFs/ead.pdf.

Gray, C & Malins, J, 1993. ‘Research Procedures / Methodologies for Artists and Designers’. http://carolegray.net/Papers%20PDFs/ead.pdf.

Kerrigan, S & Batty, C 2016, ‘Re-conceptualising screenwriting for the academy: the social, cultural and creative practice of developing a screenplay’, in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 130-144. 

McVeigh, M. 2019, ‘Work-in-progress: the Writing of Shortchanged‘ in A Companion to Screen Production. Batty, C.; Berry, M.; Dooley, K.; Frankham, B. & Kerrigan, S. (eds). Palgrave Macmillan.  

Scrivener, Stephen 2021, ‘The art object does not embody a form of knowledge revisited’ in The Routledge International Handbook of Creative-Practice research, Routledge

Wilkie, A, 2010, Creative Assemblages: Organisation and Outputs of Practice-led Research. Leonardo, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 98–99.

BOOKS

Batty, C & Kerrigan, S 2018 (eds) Screen Production Research, Palgrave.

Batty, C, Berry, M, Dooley, K, Frankham, B, & Kerrigan, S 2019, The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production, Springer International Publishing.

Bolt, B & Barrett,E (eds) 2014, Material inventions: applying creative arts research, London: I.B. Taurus

Bolt, B & MacNeill, K (eds) 2020 The meeting of aesthetics and ethics in the academy: challenges for creative practice researchers in higher education London: Routledge

Borgdorff, H, 2012 The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia, Amsterdam University Press

Candy, Linda, 2006, Practice Based Research: A guide, Creativity & Cognition Studios http://www.creativityandcognition.com University of Technology, Sydney

Carter, Paul, 2004 Material Thinking, Carlton: Melbourne University Press.

Gauntlett, David, 2011 Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gibson, Ross, 2015, Changescapes: Complexity, Mutability, Aesthetics, UWAP Scholarly

Gibson, Ross, 2015, Memoryscopes: Remnants, Forensics, Aesthetics, UWAP Scholarly

Gray, Caroline 2004. Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design, Ashgate.

Lawrence, B, & Murray, L, 2000, Practitioner-Based Enquiry: Principles and Practices for Postgraduate Research, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London.

Loveless, Natalie, 2019, How to Make Art at the End of the World: a manifesto for research-creation, Duke University Press

Ravelli, L, Paltridge, B & Starfield, C (eds) 2014 Doctoral Writing in Creative and Performing Arts, Oxfordshire: Libri.

Kroll, J & Harper, G. (eds) 2012 Research methods in creative writing. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mercer, L, Robson, J & Fenton, D 2012, Live Research: Methods of Practice-led Inquiry in Performance. Nerang: Ladyfinger.

Nelson, R 2013 Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

James Oliver (ed) 2018 Associations: Creative Practice and Research, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne

Pont, Antonia 2021 A Philosophy of Practicing, Edinburgh University Press

Sullivan, G 2010 Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts, Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Wilson, Jenny 2017 Artists in the University, Springer

JOURNALS

Australia Art Education Journal

Australasian Drama Studies Journal

Communication Research and Practice

International Journal of Creative Media Research

Journal of Artistic Research

Journal of Screenwriting Special

Journal of Visual Art Practice

Journal of Writing in Creative Practice

Media Practice and Education

VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research

Writing in Practice: The Journal of Creative Writing Research


Contributors: Clive Barstow, Beata Batorowicz, Simon Biggs, David Cross, Ian Gwilt, Daniel Juckes, Susan Kerrigan, Margaret McVeigh, Noel Maloney, Daniel Palmer, Marie Sierra

More from this issue

Practice

Each issue of Creative Matters will focus a particular creative practice research project. But for this edition we put out a

Read More +

More from this issue

SMILJANA GLISOVIC, CRAIG BATTY, GRAYSON COOKE, TULLY BARNETT –––– As we read these voices side by side in this edition the field that they make visible is complex but coherent, the expression of the complexity is clear. The insights, suggestions and visions for the future are bold. The maturity we hear has been cultivated for years – trial and error and attentive consideration on how to create conditions for good research.
GRAYSON COOKE, CRAIG BATTY, TULLY BARNETT ––– As leaders in creative research in our institutions, we want to foster success, engagement, ambition and sensitivity to the needs of the sector. As artists, we want to focus on making and supporting creative work.
TULLY BARNETT, EMMA WEBB AND JUSTIN O'CONNOR ––– We contend that work will need to be done to ensure that the policy can be implemented in a timely and resourced way and in a manner supports a bipartisan approach to cultural policy so that Revive can set a foundation for the sector for decades to come.
SUSANNA CASTLEDEN ––– Being an artist and an academic is about contributing to the cultural capital of a community. From its inception a work of art is created to engage, however, navigating how to measure the success of this, what the cultural impact is, remains difficult to measure and evidence. This ‘wicked problem’ seems to be pertinent for funding bodies, galleries and universities alike.
JOSEPH TOLTZ ––– Artistic practice researchers had been battling internally (within the academy) for years for peer recognition and a slice of the awards and grant offerings. Inclusion in ERA may have seemed like a victory in 2009, but it was fairly pyrrhic. Is it any wonder that academics engaged in artistic research are weary?
VANESSA TOMLINSON ––– Endless questions linger about creative research processes – and everyone reading this article would have heard these before: what is the threshold (size, length, importance) for a work or a body of work being accepted as a creative research output? Who is qualified to endorse this decision? How do we have parity and consistency across artistic disciplines with different working methods, timelines and artefacts (a feature film may take longer to produce than a poem, an exhibition of works longer to paint than an improvised music event)?
PROFESSOR JULIAN KNOWLES ––– By way of background, I have been working as an academic since the mid-1990s across four different institutions... and my career has been built on creative practice research and the leadership of creative practice-based disciplines and schools. In that time, I have worked as an ERA code leader and Head of School at three of these institutions and assessed ERA for all four rounds...

Each issue of Creative Matters will focus a particular creative practice research project. But for this edition we put out a call to the DDCA community to share recommendations on peer-reviewed outlets that publish creative practice works. We share this list with you here. This is not a complete list, of course, and there are many venues […]

By Jenny Wilson — The first edition of NiTRO was published on 30 June 2016. It emerged in an environment of policy change with the National Innovation and Science Agenda pushing research towards greater industry connections, collaboration and end user engagement in response to the Watt Review of Research Policy and Funding Arrangements.
The following perspectives of the DDCA Forum held in Melbourne on 24 November 2022 by some of those who attended gives a flavour of the discussions that took place as our focus turned to the achievements – and challenges – to date and the future direction for DDCA.
By Samantha Donnelly — "Architecture is really about well-being. On the one hand it's about shelter, but it's also about pleasure." Zaha Hadid (Iraqi-British Architect)

In 2015, The Australian National University’s School of Art and Design’s Environment Studio launched a unique field-based program, The Balawan Elective, honourably named with guidance and permissions of the First Nations community on Yuin Country, after their culturally significant mountain Balawan … Seven years on, much has come from these cherished relationships.

For some years now, I’ve taught a course called Pop & Trash … It’s always struck me as entirely odd that I teach a course that attempts to critique such constructed cultural hierarchies, and the next day I need to report to my university my ERA outputs based on the same outdated and outmoded cultural hierarchies and notions of impact.

By Jen Webb — In 2018 I wrote a piece for NiTRO subtitled ‘Are we there yet?’, tracing some of the practical and institutional effects of the Dawkins reforms that folded art schools and other creative teaching programs into universities. At that stage I felt reasonably sanguine about the futures of creative disciplines: despite a variety of hurdles, creative practice seemed fairly well embedded in the Australian academy.
Professor Barb Bolt is well known here and overseas for her work in creative arts research and particularly the creative PhD. Now that she has stepped away from the university “day job” we took the opportunity to get her perspective of the past and current state of play in tertiary creative arts in this extended Q&A with NiTRO Editor Jenny Wilson.

In 2016 I wrote an article for NiTRO titled “Styling Australia’s New Visual Design Identity”, which sought to explore how to incorporate the amazing features of Indigenous iconography into design without denigrating or disrespecting the original owners and creators.

For those following the intensifying links between the economy, equality, sustainability and democracy deficit (clue: problems in the first three, create problems in the fourth), the absence of culture as a domain of serious policy attention is startling.

By Professor Marie Sierra — With the Federal Government pausing the next Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) round, now is a good time to consider the value, and growing influence, of non-traditional research outputs.

In June 2016, we launched the first issue of NiTRO and it is hard to believe that that was over seven years ago. It feels both a short time and a very long time with the last two to three years, stretching time in uncanny ways.

Creative industries are characterised by a gig economy featuring short-term, intensive contracts, word-of-mouth recruitment, ten-hour days, and precarious work. Such conditions can pose challenges for filmmakers with disability to flourish.