The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

Michael Biggs, Henrik Karlsson, Michael Biggs, Henrik Karlsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136897924
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts is a major collection of new writings on research in the creative and performing arts by leading authorities from around the world. It provides theoretical and practical approaches to identifying, structuring and resolving some of the key issues in the debate about the nature of research in the arts which have surfaced during the establishment of this subject over the last decade.

Contributions are located in the contemporary intellectual environment of research in the arts, and more widely in the universities, in the strategic and political environment of national research funding, and in the international environment of trans-national cooperation and communication. The book is divided into three principal sections – Foundations, Voices and Contexts – each with an introduction from the editors highlighting the main issues, agreements and debates in each section.

The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts addresses a wide variety of concepts and issues, including:

• the diversity of views on what constitutes arts-based research and scholarship, what it should be, and its potential contribution
• the trans-national communication difficulties arising from terminological and ontological differences in arts-based research
• traditional and non-traditional concepts of knowledge, their relationship to professional practice, and their outcomes and audiences
• a consideration of the role of written, spoken and artefact-based languages in the formation and communication of understandings.

This comprehensive collection makes an original and significant contribution to the field of arts-based research by setting down a framework for addressing these, and other, topical issues. It will be essential reading for research managers and policy-makers in research councils and universities, as well as individual researchers, research supervisors and doctoral candidates.

Part I Foundations

DOI: 10.4324/9780203841327-1

In the Preface we identified that research in the arts is principally an academic concern. We had in mind our observation that the whole activity arises as a consequence of the academicization of the arts. This could be viewed in a number of ways, for example as a historical trend or an intellectual trend. Viewed historically, one can identify certain key events including the incorporation of arts schools into universities at various specific dates in national histories. As an intellectual trend, one can see the progressive adoption – over decades and even centuries – of different fields of study by the academy, and the transformation of the values and concerns of those fields into ones that have an academic focus. What happens with either of these trends is that an activity that has a particular manifestation in one realm – such as the realm of professional arts practice – is transformed so that it manifests itself in an academic way. In this sense, academicization is not a passive process that simply adds to a community’s knowledge about a particular activity, but instead, it is an active process that transforms the object of study.

When one approaches the subject of research in the arts and seeks to inquire into the foundations of this activity, one is already approaching it from an academic point of view. An inquiry into the foundations of research does not have as its focus the practical activities of artists or researchers, but rather it attempts to define the activity according to essential criteria that determine whether the activity is research, and of what kind. Such definitions are usually based on either a comparative study – in which criteria are identified in cognate fields and transferred to the one in question – or else they proceed, as it were, from first principles. Part I of this book presents elements of both approaches.

Apart from the historical genealogy of the subject, Part I looks in detail at the relationship between the existing field of professional arts practice and existing conceptions of academic research, what is shared between these two areas and what is particular and distinct to each. On the one hand, if one sees research in the arts as a combination of art with research, then one needs to account for the amount that is shared. Is it the case that there is just a small portion that is common and represents shared interests and concerns between professional arts practice and academic research, or is there a very large commonality between the two? It may even be that there is a complete convergence between arts practice and arts research if they are construed in a particular way. And if one’s understanding of these concepts depends upon construing existing terms – such as ‘research’ – in particular and perhaps novel ways, then foundational inquiry will help to make explicit the understanding of these terms. On the other hand, one might think that this new field of research in the arts produces completely new outcomes and provides a new context for both study and practice. If arts research is something completely novel, then there will need to be new structures within which the professional practice of arts research can operate and within which individuals can be trained and find careers.

A potential benefit of arts-based research is that it might reveal new ways of researching and provide insights and understandings beyond the arts themselves. This would occur if arts-based research offered something new to the academy in terms of its methods and outcomes rather than simply its interest in art. The ‘something new’ that it might offer is a change to the dominant knowledge model. The academy has been dominated until very recent times by a largely scientific concept of knowledge building. This kind of knowledge is somewhat impersonal and does not reflect the subjective interest of any one individual; it is supposed to tell us something objective about the world and that is why it is contrasted to ‘opinion’. If the term knowledge can be applied to the arts, then it seems unlikely that knowledge will be of this kind. Artistic knowledge seems to have more potential in relation to the human individual, their experience, their emotions and their embodied relationship with the world rather than something as abstract as the scientific concept of knowledge.

A further aspect that a foundational inquiry can clarify is whether it is significant that arts-based research generates artefacts such as musical compositions, performances, paintings, etc. Clearly this is a very striking difference of output compared to research in other subjects. Indeed, most universities have had to modify their regulations regarding what kind of submission doctoral candidates can make in order to accommodate this difference. Traditionally the expectation has been for an extensive written report (a thesis) that contains critical analysis and makes an explicit claim regarding the original contribution that the study makes to the field. Although in some subjects it may be the case that experiments have been undertaken, it is the critical reflection upon, and analysis of, the significance of these experiments and their results that forms the content of the doctoral submission. However, the newly incorporated arts faculties have often demanded that they be allowed to additionally or alternatively submit non-textual material in the form of artefacts and artistic productions.

Some artistic researchers claim that the artefacts themselves embody knowledge or in some way play an instrumental role in the research or its communication, and that is why they must be allowed as part of the submission. This claim is apparently reinforced at institutions in which the size of the textual document is reduced in proportion to the scale of the artefact-based submission thereby implying that one substitutes the other. The potential for artefacts to embody or communicate knowledge is a bold claim that should have impact far beyond the arts. This will be achieved when the nature of this embodied knowledge is clarified and when there is an agreement about its relationship to concepts such as skill, know-how and experience.

1 University Politics and Practice-Based Research

Torsten Kälvemark

DOI: 10.4324/9780203841327-2

The emergence of practice-based research in and through the arts is closely connected with politics of higher education and research, nationally and internationally. This connection is twofold. On the one hand the discussion around practice-based research as a special concept has in some countries been prompted or encouraged by politically motivated structural changes in the university landscape. On the other hand the development of practice-based research has led – and will certainly in the future lead to – significant changes in national research policies and institutional patterns.

The aim of this chapter is to describe and analyse this process. The perspective will partly be historical. The historical prism is due to my own academic background (although I have been a university administrator for most of my life) and the reason is simple: it is impossible to understand the present state of discussion without looking back at a process which has been going on for the last decades in the international academic world.

The description and discussion will be done under five different headings:

• Art schools and structural reforms of higher education systems
• European integration, the Bologna process and the third cycle
• Research and the ‘creative industries’
• Quality assurance and research funding
• Practice-based research and degree-awarding powers

Writing from a Swedish perspective I may be excused for taking some of my examples from my own country. The reason is that I have been rather heavily involved in the national debate here. I have also to some extent taken part in the decision-making process, in particular with regard to funding artistic research. Since Sweden has a rather coherent system of higher education and research it is also easy to see the institutional structure and its relevance for the subject.

The second perspective is European. Although I will pay some attention to the debate in Australia, I will leave other continents aside. The first reason for this is of course a lack of knowledge. The second reason, however, is a feeling that the specific organizational pattern of higher education and research in a country like the United States gives the subject of ‘university politics’ quite a different meaning than in Europe. Despite the fact that European higher education and research is more and more deregulated it can still be perceived in terms of national systems where general policies for the sector of tertiary education affect art schools and their programmes for teaching and research.

Art schools and structural reforms of higher education systems

In many countries the issues related to research in the performing and fine arts have been prompted by changes in national policies in the higher education area. This was certainly the case for Sweden when, back in 1977, the whole tertiary education sector was subject to wide-ranging reforms.

One part of the structural changes was the integration of art schools into the wider national system of higher education. Some colleges of arts and music were integrated into universities. Others were left with an independent status but still subject to rules and regulations designed to fit mainstream universities or other research-based institutions.

In this context a natural question was raised. If research in the classical sense is the basis for teaching and training in universities, what then is the equivalence for the teaching and training in art schools? The answer was the creation of a new concept: ‘artistic development’. A policy document written at the time defined this concept as a means of developing ‘experiment with artistic forms of expression, as well as research’. It went on to say that some of these experiments could be regarded as research, even if the line of demarcation could not be clearly described.

Art schools were given additional funds for this new activity but there was great confusion about the content and validity of the new concept. The funds were happily received but it is obvious from the discussions going on in the 1980s that art schools were really not aware of what the government was expecting of them in terms of renewal, development or research. A review made in the early 1990s showed that the concept of research was emerging in the art schools, although it was obvious that many teachers in the schools were reluctant to describe anything in their field of activity as related to research.

In broad terms the situation could be described as a government intervention in the life of the art schools. They were encouraged to define their activities in terms of the historical and general academic distinction between teaching and research. Once this problem was put on their agenda the discussion about the foundations of the teaching led to an ‘academic drift’ in the search for a research equivalent. Further on in this chapter I will try to discuss the implications of this in a longer perspective.

A similar development could be seen in relation to a structural reform in the tertiary education sector that was initiated in Australia in 1987 (The Unified National System). Again a number of art schools were integrated into the classical university structure and again the question was raised about the basis for academic teaching in this field. Added to that was the desire from the art schools to get access to the general funding streams for research (The Research Quantum) or the extra project funding from the Australian Research Council. The problem was described by Dennis Strand from the Canberra School of Art in a report to the Australian federal government in 1998:

The question of what is research in the creative arts is one that has special significance in Australian universities today but little significance elsewhere. Its importance lies in the fact that there are scarce dollars attached to the definitions of research. This has led to the need to define research in the creative arts in ways that will give the creative arts in universities a foothold in the competition for research dollars. Attempts to force mainstream creative arts activities into the mould of scientific research has led to semantic arguments that often have not been particularly helpful. However, with only two funded categories – teaching and research – the opportunities for alternative arguments have been limited.

(Strand 1998)

In his report he also wrote that a literature search on the topic of research in the creative arts yielded very little result: ‘it is not the subject of popular or widespread discussion among researchers or artists, either in journals or other forms of publishing, the extent of the literature being quite limited’.

It is a bit surprising to note that this statement was made only a decade ago. One reason for the lack of results in his search was of course that the internet had not yet been the prime source of information and discussion. But the most important reason is obviously that the concept of artistic research was only the subject of public discourse in a limited number of countries.

The fact that national university policies and the structure of the higher education and research systems triggered a special kind of debate was also underlined by Malcolm Gillies, professor of music at the University of Queensland. In 1997 he noted:

Our problematic role within this research environment is made more difficult by the very definition of ‘research’. While in the United States the move during the 1980s and 1990s has been more for establishment of ‘research equivalent’ categories of professional work in the arts – largely driven by the university staff in the Arts for career progressions and recognition equal to those in other disciplines – the tendency within Australia has been more to agitate for the broadening of the definition of ‘research’. The reason for this is simple: with only two funded categories, ‘teaching’ and ‘research’, the opportunities for ‘research equivalent’ arguments have been limited.

(Strand 1998)

In 2000 I made a review commissioned by the National Swedish Board of Universities and Colleges with regard to the international debate on artistic and practice-based research (Kälvemark 2000). At the time it was obvious that three countries stood out as examples of a lively national debate on these issues. Australia was of course one of them. The other two were Finland and the United Kingdom.

Compared to the situation in Australia and Sweden, it was difficult to find external factors for the emergence of a vibrant research community in the art schools in Finland. No major national reform could be mentioned as an explanation. Compared to the situation in Sweden it was easy to see a contrast between the uniform and strictly regulated Swedish scene on the one hand, and a more traditional university autonomy in Finland on the other. In combination with a historically strong position for the art schools in Finland this had apparently led to the call for artistic research from within the schools themselves.

As far as the United Kingdom was concerned it was easier to point to a number of commissions and reform strategies that had triggered debates about teaching and research in universities and colleges during the 1980s and 1990s. Looked at from the outside developments in Britain seemed exemplary. The Arts and Humanities Research Board had produced a booklet where basic problems seemed to have been sorted out. The guidelines with regard to the PhD process were eagerly studied in many other countries and provided a much...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Part I Foundations
• Part II Voices
• Part III Contexts
• References
• Index