The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

Contexts

to a student who is supposed to acquire clearly defined knowledge and competences
for a future career in a digitalized knowledge society. Therefore many art colleges in
europe are facing demands for changes of the curriculum from crafts- centred training
focusing on the material (glass, wood, metal, etc.) to a curriculum which comprises
both artistic and reflective competences in order for the students to understand their
art work and research in a broader context and participate in the debate both verbally
and in writing. This is a challenge to the traditional- romantic role model still prevailing
at fine art colleges, above all (Karlsson 2007: 164).
Quality assurance and assessment are not exclusively related to completed results
(exams, theses, research reports, etc.) but should be founded on an institution’s long-
term strategy and involve all stages of the research- training process. This is necessary
not only to avoid using doctoral students as guinea pigs without competent back- up from
the institution, but also to build up and maintain a creative research environment. The
uK Council for graduate education reported that almost half of the 82 respondents to
their 2001 enquiry had fewer than 11 doctoral students and commented:

it is clear that collaboration can advance the quality and range of research

provision. despite the often competitive nature of higher education it can be

argued that the fields in Cpad [Creative and performing arts and design] will

develop more rapidly if there is cross- institutional fertilisation as well as cross-

disciplinary co- operation. The intellectual and artistic values are obvious in

sharing research ideas, supervision and facilities in order to open up debate,

to offer students and staff richer environment, and to generate original work

across sub- discipline boundaries.

(uKCge 2001: 42)

The evaluation of the swedish Research Council’s grants to arts- based research
2001–2005 came to similar conclusions, adding that qualified artists should be involved
in assessments on all levels from admissions to final exams, that the development of
theoretical knowledge should at all times be linked to practice, and that all art genres
need to devote great care in developing the internal ‘reflective language’ to make it
more transparent for cross- disciplinary use (Karlsson 2007: 130–3).

three cases

in our opinion, art and research have potentially conflicting aims, depending on
the model of arts practice one adopts, i.e. this is especially apparent if one adopts
the revolutionary and transgressive model of arts practice. dissatisfaction will occur
when researching artists claim their right to provoke, to freedom of expression, to be
disrespectful, etc., and at the same time attempt to meet the academic demands of
transparency, intelligibility and objectivity. This conflict can be illustrated through
three examples of what could be regarded as the supreme ‘arts demand’ position, that
tested or trespassed boundaries in two specific areas, by means of illegal acts and fiction.