Contextsideas require the material of evidence on which to feed otherwise they simply slip
away. Research is the work of assembling ideas and evidence and bringing them into
a productive relationship. To avoid misunderstanding, i want to be clear this is not to
suggest a linear relationship between ideas and evidence. it is, rather, dialogical; in
creative arts research (though not only here) one may literally manufacture or bring
the evidence into being, and reshape it as one brings it into a meaningful relationship
with evolving ideas (though of course as any practitioner knows the material world
is not infinitely malleable; there is both objectivity and rigour in the process). nor
am i seeking to prescribe the shape ideas or evidence might take. evidence could be
experiential, visual or numerical amongst other forms, and primary or secondary; ideas
could be written down, or embodied in artefacts or performances. my argument is not
dissimilar to that offered by mark Johnson (Chapter 8) who, following John dewey,
puts forward a definition of research as: ‘ongoing inquiry aimed at the transformation of
a problematic situation into one that is more harmonious, fluid, expansive, and rich in
meaning’. The ‘problematic situation’ here might be reconceived as troubling evidence
in search of ideas; the work of research is the struggle to bring ideas to bear on the
situation and to derive meaning from it; the process should be conceived as proactive,
it is one of making the situation meaningful, rather than simply discovering meaning
that is latent in the situation. it is important to recognize the interdependence between
ideas and evidence. i am not sure i would name something as research in which i could
not perceive both of these components.
it may be argued that there is a need for explicit research questions. To a large extent i
would not disagree. Research ideas and arguments often start life as questions: questions
that emerge from reading, questions that emerge from experience or observation,
questions that are given by a supervisor or funding body. sometimes these questions
are poorly articulated, but without some sense of questioning there cannot really be
research. however, explicit questions or at least the right questions are not always
clear at the outset of a research project. initial questions often change shape during
the project, indeed sometimes one gets very near the end of the project before realizing
that the questions one started with are wrong- headed; and as i always tell students,
the work of formulating a research question is part of the process of researching, not
something which takes place prior to research. This is particularly true of qualitative
forms of inquiry.
high quality and original research of course requires good/original ideas (or questions)
and good/original evidence, by the standards and in the forms that are meaningful to
a particular research community; something which i think applies across the arts and
humanities as well as the sciences, whether or not we use a different language to talk
about them. To be a researcher one needs not only a solid grasp of the ideas current
in a particular field, but an understanding of the evidence that supports those ideas,
the techniques by which it has been gathered and so on. Research training, therefore,
provides a critical insight into the process of knowledge production.
at this level, in my view, research in the arts does not depart significantly from
research in any other field of enquiry. The differences lie in the kinds of ideas and
questions being explored and the nature of the evidence that is brought to bear upon
them. That, indeed, is why i see no harm in comparative thinking, and reject the
special pleading that has on occasion accompanied discussions of arts- based research.