Judith Mottram

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puncturing the comfort zone
pinning jelly to the wall
creating form from fluff
spinning yarns from gossip
pulling the wool over
breaking the mould
herding cats
or
being responsible academics
setting the standards
and setting the agenda for future work

• Judith Mottram
• Associate Dean, Research Graduate Studies,
  Nottingham Trent University

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Presentation content

• Fine art research strategies modes/models of
  practice
• Art practice research practice fundamental
  questions
• 1984-2005 a few landmarks
• Looking at practice an example
• Research practice in fine art a few current
  issues
• The research student project parallels with the
  subject

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Defining strategies, modes and models

• Strategy research strategy as the
  overarching theoretical framework within which a
  set of methods are operationalised to achieve
  some contribution to the understanding within
  that theoretical framework, or strategy as the
  conduct of a campaign to achieve advantage, or as
  artifice or finesse generally
• Mode mode of practice as (most frequent)
  way or manner of acting, whether necessary,
  contingent, possible or impossible
• Model model of practice as something to
  be copied, an imitation on a small scale, or a
  pattern of excellence, exemplary

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Art practice, research practice and questions
What is art practice? What is research practice?
What should we do with research practice? What do
we want to know about? Whats special about our
discipline? Whats special about my art practice,
or your art practice? Is that a good topic to
look at or work with within a research frame? Who
should be looking at what? How can we do it? Why
should we do it? Is there a difference between
an art question and a research question? One of
the things bothering me has been creativity
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Identifying creativity as a research topic

• National strategy - creative cultural education
• central to economic prosperity and social
  cohesion
• Stimulation of creativity and innovation
• to ensure that the UK has the creative talent
  for the C21st

Department for Education Employment (DfEE). All
Our Futures Creativity, Culture Education, 1999
Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Creative
Industries Mapping Document, London 1998
How many art design graduates?
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What do we say about creativity?

• Study in art design has
• always provided a vocational outlet for creative
  endeavour

Programmes emphasise imagination, creativity
and, where appropriate, craft skills
The student experience stimulates an enquiring,
analytical and creative approach
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Perspectives on creativity
Resistance to explanations of creativity it
should not be sullied by the reductionist
tentacles of scientific explanation
Margaret Boden, The Creative Mind. Abacus, 1992
Everyday creativity and the historically
significant
Two conditions for creativity knowledge
practice
it does strike me that a few of the art students
I met over the last year were sorely
disadvantaged in their knowledge base
Janna Levin, A fish out of water, in A
curriculum for artists, 2004. Eds Paul
Bonaventura Stephen Farthing. University of
Oxford New York Academy of Art
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Do we value extensive domain knowledge?

• Current emphasis is on theoretical frameworks
  that
• strengthen and support personal positions and
  practices which offer the maximum flexibility and
  potential for both dislocating dominant regimes
  of power and knowledge and the construction of
  different ones
• any notion that there is a cultural
  inheritance, canon, or body of knowledge that can
  be transmitted through education will become
  redundant if learning is focused acutely upon the
  learners discourse with the situation

Swift, Jacquie. Art Education and Art Practice
Introduction, (Eds.) Jacquie Swift and John
Swift, Art Education and Art Practice. ARTicle
Press, 1999
Jones, Tim. Art and Research Methodology,
(Eds.) Jacquie Swift and John Swift, Art
Education and Art Practice. ARTicle Press, 1999
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What about practice?
The playful or intelligent misuse of
expertise tends to be seen only in an
individuals area of specialisation
Weisberg, Robert W. Creativity and Knowledge A
Challenge to Theories, (Ed) Robert J. Sternberg.
Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University
Press, 1999

• Creative advances are made in the domains in
  which individuals have cutting-edge expertise

Smith, Steven M., Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A.
Finke. Paradoxes, Principles, and Prospects for
the Future of Creative Cognition, The Creative
Cognition Approach. (Eds.) Steven M. Smith,
Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A.Finke. The Creative
Cognition Approach. MIT Press, 1995
either there is tacit acceptance of a truly
vast wastage rate or the training of professional
artists constitutes only a relatively minor
curriculum objective
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1984 CNAA statement on Research

• activities which infuse teaching with a
  sense of critical enquiry
• Academic research
• Applied research
• Consultancy
• Professional practice
• Scholarship
• Creative work
• Curriculum and pedagogic research
• as well as the development of applied,
  interdisciplinary and collaborative activities
  and work which is responsive to industrial and
  community needs

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1988 Matrix conference

• Livingstons concerns, and call for a major
  shake-up
• Pride in the lack of research tradition
• Mistaken belief that analysis leads to
  paralysis
• Langrish on evidence
• knowledge evidence, originality and
  evidence-gathering
• Allison on the embodiment of research in
  outputs
• but not for research students
• research topics, knowledge maps and research
  programmes
• Cornock on the things we might want to know
• Progress based on questioning or rejection of
  prior knowledge
• and the practicalities

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1989 CNAA statement on Research

• Progress in art and design
• rapid in professional practice and creative work
• slow in research degrees and pedagogical research
• Issues
• Creative work not accepted as legitimate
  scholarly activity
• Confusion about academic research and research in
  design process
• Questioning whether propositional framework is
  appropriate
• Debate about alternative awards to recognise
  advanced creative work
• Recognition of breadth of activities necessary to
  advance subjects

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1989 definitions

• That practical work in art and design can
  be encompassed by the phrase research and related
  activity
• However, academic research, including that
  for research degrees, refers specifically to
  research directed to the discovery of some fact
  or facts or to a new understanding of some aspect
  of existing knowledge. This is not the same as
  professional practice

And the outcomes of practice?
Exhibitions of work, portfolios of design
work or a completed design in production should
be accepted as equal to traditional research
outcomes in the contribution which they make to
the academic life of an institution equal
to but not the same as, because creative
work within a research degree submission must be
clearly related to the argument.documenting or
summarising alone is not adequate, elements of
critical study, interpretation and evaluation
must be included
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By 1993/4 Frayings little r and big R

• r as used for the past 400 years,
• of art practice, of personal quests, and of
  clues and evidence which a detective must decode
• R as used since 1900,
• of chemistry, architecture, physics, heavy
  industry and the social sciences
• For both, the subject or object of research
  must exist outside the person or persons
  doing the searching
• Research into art
• Research through art
• Research for art

also 1994, Tebbys RADical paper
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The theory, the evidence, and the practice

• An example of a doctoral project, 1999-2003
• Conceptualising the do-able within the
  doctoral framework
• Analysis, hypothesis-testing, inference,
  record-keeping
• Early differentials between doctoral work
  and CPD
• Early RAE success 1992 1996
• The review of research assessment
• Increasing clarity on distinctions between types
  of research
• Practice-led a methodological approach
• Applied research a type of knowledge in
  practical context

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Emerging issues?

• The inclusion of visual material in the
  final submission
• Visual evidence and visual knowledge
• established means of deposit and exchange
• intentionality ambiguity
• Raising the quality if evidence, records
  and archives

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Parallel processes

• The individual, the network, and the discipline
• Surveying the field - strategic focus and finding
  the gaps
• The shoe-box and the canon of knowledge
• Leaving what is known to confront the new

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Wood, trees, or pencils in waiting?
And as for interpretation.