researCh training in the Creative arts and designFor example, artists, filmmakers and musicians who are exploring the possibilities their
particular medium affords for the creation of new forms of expression or communication
are therefore, by this definition, engaged in a research process. The originality of the
end result and its contribution to the field are not established through rhetorical claims,
but with reference to the evidence provided before one’s eyes and ears. it goes without
saying that not all claims to originality are well evidenced.
however, before we go further it is important to acknowledge that just because
something is research it does not make it worth a doctorate. a doctorate is a particular
form of research, one which requires a kind of methodological self- consciousness and
reflexivity that is more pronounced than in most of one’s subsequent research. (This
is one of the reasons why most phds, even many very good ones, require significant
work to become equally good books; and maybe the same applies to phd arts practice).
Why is this the case? i would suggest there are two distinctions here that need to be
appreciated: the first, between academic and non- academic forms of research; and the
second, between academic research in general and the phd.
academic research, of which the phd is a particular subset, brings with it a
particular set of values, at the heart of which are commitments to methodological
transparency and communicability. academic researchers are required not just to
present their findings, but to account for the research journey; in some cases as a well
documented set of experiments or exercises in data collection, in others as a series of
intellectual engagements with ideas, theories and practices. it is at this point, rather
than in the act of research itself, that the culture of arts and design practice often has
difficulty accommodating to the culture of the academy. The commitment to opening
up and accounting for the research process and, related to it, the collective project of
building the knowledge base and scholarly discourse of the subject, whilst an explicit
commitment for the academy, is not of equal importance for professional practice. of
course the relationship between the creative professions and the academy is not set
once and for all, indeed arguably it is in a period of profound change, an issue i will
return to below; and, to be fair, many areas of professional practice in the creative arts
already overlap with the academy, so the extent to which there is a clash of values
varies considerably (see Chapter 5 for an extended discussion of this issue). however,
this distinction is important to understanding the imperatives of academic research.
The second distinction – between the phd and academic research in general –
occurs quite simply because the phd has a pedagogical imperative: it is about learning
to do research. most, if not all, researchers and practitioners reflect on and review what
they do (more or less explicitly, depending on the context), but they do not always offer
this reflection up for inspection in a way that the form of the phd demands. Just think
of that classic examination question ‘how would you do things differently if you were
starting this project again’ – reflection is not optional. This is quite different from forms
of criticism which take the object as immutable. To my mind both within doctoral
research, and more broadly, we need (following Raymond Williams) to develop a
critical approach that, ‘instead of reducing works to finished products and activities to
fixed positions, is capable of discerning in good faith, the finite but significant openness
of many actual initiatives and contributions’ (Williams 1977: 114).^4
putting these elements together, a creative arts phd, therefore, is a training in
research through which the student develops a reflexive competence in the procedures