Knowledge and a scholarship of creativity

This paper is an attempt to respond to this challenge by Stelarc – one of Australia’s most accomplished artists – who has excelled in both arts research and creative practice while maintaining appointments at two Universities. The impetus for this reflection on practice-based or practice-led research comes from an ongoing engagement within the staff of our School who are seeking to establish within Design and Media Arts Practice the terms that would establish it as a “scholarly” endeavour. The motivation is provided in part by the urgency to enable conformity to the earlier DEST categories for research output. Since that time, the now defunct RQF and current ERA regime also demand that we measure the impact and quality of our research. As Donald A. Schon has written, “…Bureaucracies are the institutional setting for professional practice…” (326) Those of us who teach and research within the academy as well as maintain a creative arts practice would recognise the significant bureaucratic processes that mediate our worlds. The implication of Schon’s statement is to highlight the constraints under which this kind of work must proceed. The consequence of this bureaucratisation results in a split in the discourse surrounding the strategic engagement with practice-based or practitioner-based research in the academy. For those within the bureaucracy itself that work as administrators, the urgency is to develop the criteria that can drive the valuations of this research and degree-assessment – both Honours and Higher Degree – so that a credible comparison can be made between the accepted conventions of scholarship3 and creative arts research.