Contextsfor handling and generating ideas and evidence appropriate to the specific field of study
and demonstrates the capacity for making an original contribution to that field of study.
The stress is most often on the first word of the phrase ‘original contribution’, but the
latter is no less important, indicating that the knowledge produced through research
has a value for a community beyond the individual researcher. now this does not sound
very different, if at all, to the definition of the phd in any other subject, but then
that is precisely the point. i want to emphasize that this is not to impose a kind of
methodological uniformity on arts- based research. nothing could be further from my
intention. it is simply to establish a robust definition of doctoral research.^5
at this point i think i should try to articulate what i believe to be the central value
of research in the creative arts and design. This is a somewhat tricky thing to do,
perhaps even unwise, especially given my dislike of general theories. Creative arts and
design research does not exist as a single coherent programme, and inevitably the
specific value of each research project has to be argued on its own terms. i subscribe
to a school of thought that argues against the promotion of a single research approach
or paradigm to fit all research in the creative arts and design. The pursuit of some
abstract notion of pure art or design research methods often seems to me misguided;
beg, borrow and steal seems a more productive strategy. The field is by its very nature
methodologically diverse, even at times promiscuous. This is a position that finds
support in the available record of completed phds over the past fifty years. in short,
there are many and diverse questions in our fields that justify research and it would
seem counter- productive to seek to limit the tools available to respond to them.
But i think at a broad level one can argue that a significant contribution of creative
arts research is to articulate knowledge from a practitioner perspective, often within
arenas of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary enquiry. By this i do not mean that all
researchers need to be practitioners, or vice versa, though many do occupy this position
productively, but rather that research has a close proximity to practice.^6 if i take my
own area of research – photography – whilst i do not consider myself a photographic
practitioner (or at least not any longer), nevertheless, in my research i have sought to
develop a methodology that, as i might put it, ‘does not forget that photographs are
made by photographers’, and that therefore attends closely to photographers’ accounts.
more broadly, any arts- based research should seek ‘an attentive understanding of what
artists [or designers] actually do when they make work’ (Bell 2006). however, if this
definition gives a central position to practice and the practitioner, i think we have
to remember that this cuts both ways. its central value depends on its articulation;
whilst this might not necessarily be a key value for practice, as i have indicated above
it absolutely is for research in the academy. practitioner- researchers, and anyone who
considers themselves to be doing research that is practice- led or practice- based, have
to make a commitment to articulating the knowledge they have in forms with which
others can engage. and where this research is contributing to debates within a broader
public sphere and/or seeking public funds they also have to be prepared to articulate
this knowledge for non- specialist audiences. here again we return to the question of
what it means to be a researcher and to the importance of research training.