Capturing Creative Practice – The Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools

This paper will map the initial research surrounding capturing creative practice for the improvement of supervision and learning experiences in higher degree creative arts research in the School of Communications and Arts and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at Edith Cowan University. Despite differences in what constitutes ‘practice’ across creative disciplines, the difficulties in representing practice-led research processes in an academic context are shared. Through interviews and focus groups, this research explored how the failure to capture the creative process impacts on supervision and learning experiences for creative arts Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates and their supervisors.

One of the biggest challenges for supervisors of creative arts HDR candidates is providing students with guidance on how to document the tacit knowledge that informs and underpins their creative process. As supervisors of HDR candidates in the creative arts at ECU, we see the problems that arise when key aspects of the creative process cannot be written down. The first aim of this research was to gather more concrete data on how the failure to document tacit knowledge in creative research processes can impact on supervision and learning experiences. This data was gathered from interviews with a selection of creative arts HDR supervisors and focus groups with HDR candidates at ECU.

About the author

Lyndall Adams is a Perth based contemporary artist currently working as a research supervision leader and HDR student research consultant and in the Faculty of Education and Arts at Edith Cowan University. Lyndall is an arts practice-led researcher interested in complex narrative structures role in positioning visual images of the body. Lyndall draws influence from the interface between post-structuralist and new materialist feminist thinking. Her arts-practice articulates the female body; the lived body that is determined and specific though paradoxically in a state of flux, defined and redefined by changing practices and discourses. Lyndall has participated in solo, collaborative and group exhibitions within Australia and internationally.

Dr Christopher Kueh is Senior Lecturer in School of Communication and Arts, of Edith Cowan University. Coming from graphic design background, Christopher is committed to apply design thinking approaches to innovate educational, organisational and social situations. Christopher’s research and consultancy works have earned him positions of academic consultant and Visiting Professor to University Tunku Abdul Rahman (Malaysia in 2009), and STIKOM Surabaya University (Surabaya, Indonesia in 2011). Christopher’s roles were to expand the boundaries of design education in these universities and promote trans-disciplinary design research and practice-led research.

Renée Newman-Storen has been a performer, writer, and director for over fifteen years. In 2011 she completed a PhD that was a theoretical and creative analysis of media-induced moral panics considered as forms of social performance. She has worked in theatre and film locally, nationally and internationally as a performer, writer and director. She is currently a research supervisor for WAAPA at ECU in Western Australia and her research interests include where the arts meets social enquiry, arts interventions in the built environment and performance praxis/research nexus.

Neil Ferguson is a HDR research consultant at Edith Cowan University where he is also a research assistant working on practice-led research related projects. Neil has also lectured and tutored in theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Fremantle). His current research interests relate to practice-led research: its nature and rigour as a methodology as well as its theoretical foundations. Neil is also a committee member with the Mandorla Art Award.