NiTRO + Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

Thriving Futures + Leadership

SMILJANA GLISOVIC—This edition of NiTRO Creative Matters takes its theme from this year’s DDCA annual symposium Thrive, with an attendant interest in Leadership. For some time the DDCA Board and membership have been discussing the necessary relationship between thriving and leadership, identifying that for creative practice researchers to continue to thrive, and for the field to continue to develop, we need to cultivate our leaders. In our visioning of creative practice researchers stepping into leadership positions we need to explore what leadership looks like for the creative practice researcher and the disciplines we work in. 

There are a number of programs that the DDCA is developing in view of supporting this vision, one of which is a Mentorship Program for early- to mid- career researchers. We look forward to sharing this program with you soon. We will be seeking expressions of interest from both mentees and mentors to participate in the program. 

The other way we’ve been cultivating this space is in the context of the annual symposium held this year at University of South Australia in November. In addition to the DDCA membership we also welcomed nominated ‘emerging leaders’ in the area of creative practice research to the event. 

Professor Anna Goldsworthy, Director of the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide, welcomed us the evening before the symposium, for an informal evening of music and chat. The symposium proper started the morning after with a generous welcome to Kaurana Country from Elaine Joy Magias and from Provost, Professor Joanne Cys (UniSA).

Our first keynote was Franchesca Cubillo, Senior Curator Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia and Executive Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts at Creative Australia. Franchesca’s talk, Truth Telling, Nation building and the representation of Aboriginal people in the visual record, 1770 – 1901 (Federation), drew attention to the false narratives that were built through the mis-representation of Indigenous Australians by non-indigenous painters during this period. 

Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington AO, Deputy Vice Chancellor (UniSA), philosopher and historian, presented Creativity Thrives: leadership and the future of creativity in Australia. I won’t do justice to Marnie’s expansive and entertaining talk here which addressed, amongst other things, the way artistic practice and research is part of the fabric of other disciplines and that it would serve us all well to start to recognise this and draw on its influence and power. 

Professor Joanne Cys chaired a panel discussion with Jane McFarland from the Helpmann Academy and Brian Parkes from Jam Factory who spoke about the collaborative and supportive community that has been cultivated for artists in South Australia over the past decade. They shared their leadership models of mentorship and support in a non-competitive, collaborative ecosystem. They have worked to build a network of support for young, emerging artists to enter sustainable industry relationships. It takes a village to raise an artist: give them skills, mentorships, residencies, funding for materials, help establishing audiences, and networking opportunities.

Our final presentation came from Jenny Fewster, Director of HASS and Indigenous Research at Australian Research Data Commons. We are fortunate to publish a summary of this talk prepared by Mary Filsell: Building Australia’s Research Future.

Aaron Davis (UniSA) ran a special workshop with the emerging leaders group at the Museum of Discovery. The Speculative Movie Trailers that they came up with are really worth a read (and under copyright, of course)! 

The day finished with an evening event at Port Adelaide for the final night of Bodies of Work, a week-long series of events—lectures, workshops, performances, artist laboratories, activist training—run by Reset Arts and Culture, and Vitalstatistix, exploring a broad range of issues faced by cultural workers. 

This edition also includes additional contributions on our theme. Applied Compassion by Pearl Tan is an audio interview with Catherine Kolomyjec and Claire Tonkin who discuss putting compassion at the centre of our thinking about leadership. Gerard Reed’s piece Embracing Uncertainty and the Unknown looks at the implications and generative potential of uncertainty for leadership, particularly from a Screen Business perspective. Clive Barstow and Paul Gough’s While ERA Sleeps… the new REF awakens contribute an assessment of the recent changes in the REF (UK) and reflect on what this might mean for Australia’s ERA. Is REF leading the (good) way and should we follow?

In our Practice section for this edition we are lucky to share Linda Luke’s reflections on an aspect of the three year, cross-disciplinary arts project BORDERS, supported by Arts Mildura and Regional Arts Victoria through its Rescue funds initiative. In Re-thriving the arts communities residing along the Dhungala (Murray) river, Linda shows us some of the ways artists, rivers, and communities are thriving following the Covid border closures.

Our Review section lists our leading 2023 titles on creative practice research.

Do be in touch if you’re reading anything exciting that you’d like to tell us about. And of course let us know if you’re publishing anything that would be of interest to our readership and we will spread the word through our on-going news section. 

This conversation on Leadership and Thriving is only just beginning and we look forward to continuing the conversation into 2024.

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

IN THE PRACTICE OF MAKING CHANGE
  • CHLOE CANNELL, JULIETTE SAUVAGE, KENDREA RHODES, L. NICOL CABE
REVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS IN CREATIVE PRACTICE RESEARCH AT THE CONVERGENCE OF CRITICAL, CREATIVE, THEORETICAL, AND ACADEMIC SPACES
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METHODOLOGIES IN FLUX
  • PATRICIA AMORIM
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.
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RECALIBRATION OF THE PĀLI JĀTAKAS THROUGH SPECTER AND SAMSARĀ
  • MESH TENNAKOON
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.
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PROLIFERATING VOIDS
  • OSCAR DAVIS
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.
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REHEARSING THE INSTITUTION: ARTISTIC LABOUR AND PEDAGOGICAL TRACE
  • BENJAMIN WATERS
'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.
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WHEN AI MEETS CYBERPUNK
  • NEO XIA
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.
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BODY OF RESEARCH, BODY OF WORK
  • SARAH GORY
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.
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WALKING WOLLONGONG
  • JULIE SMYTHE
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.
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BECOMING THROUGH COMPLEXITY 
  • PAULINA LAROCCA
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.
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POPULAR GENRE FICTION IN THE CREATIVE WRITING DOCTORATE
  • SARAI MANNOLINI-WINWOOD
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?
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GIVING IT A NAME
  • ANA LOUISA DAVIS
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.
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PRACTICE-BASED TOOLS FOR SELF-EXPRESSION
  • BREE GLASBERGEN
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.
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IS THERE ENOUGH SCIENCE IN THIS FICTION?
  • SARAH MOULD
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.
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WRITING THE ANTHROPOCENE
  • SIMON-PETER TELFORD
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.
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Risk in the Institution
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.
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The Risks of Composition in the White Cube
BY DANNY BUTT — On Khaled Sabsabi, the Memo panel and the limits of rhetorical solidarity (excerpt)
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When Institutions Choose Control Over Creativity
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.
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Bent Nails Trace Risk: Lessons from an Adventure Playground
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.
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Hacking with Hope at the Hollow of the University
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.
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Risking Complexity: Deferring Judgement as an Act of Creative Resistance
BY PAULINA LAROCCA — Risk – from the Italian risicare, ‘to dare’ – carries both danger and possibility, offering transformative rewards when one embraces uncertainty (Bernstein, 1996).
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