PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Haseman: Brad | Australia

Oversight: Practice as Research in Australia

Panel members: Associate Professor Brad Haseman (Chair), Professor Lelia Green and Dr Alison Richards

This panel will introduce and discuss practice as research in the context of the current Australian research landscape. The research establishment in Australia has been wary of practice as research despite some early policy successes and ever-increasing numbers of higher research degree students. This may be about to change as researchers in performance are joining colleagues in other disciplines to shape the Research Quality Framework, a federal government initiative with threats and opportunities for researchers in the arts, media and design. This panel will address those threats and opportunities.

Presentation1: The Concerns and Strengths of Australian Performance Research by Alison Richards

Australian efforts to establish performance research as a bona fide scholarly activity within the higher education system began in the late 1980s, in concert with a broad push to give creative arts and creative industries a more secure place on the national research agenda. While there is no uniformity of aims and methodologies, the field is reasonably mature and it is now possible to establish a clearer picture of the concerns and strengths of Australian performance research.

This paper will provide a brief background together with an overview of current performance research activity in Australian universities and major studio schools. It will pay particular attention to constraints on growth, for example funding, program development and the establishment of evaluation processes including peer review, with the aim of identifying the major issues faced by Australian institutional leaders and the problem-solving strategies being adopted. Trends will be analysed and some predictions made on future growth of the field.

Presentation2: Creativity from the periphery by Leila Green

This panel presentation looks at one of the most isolated, yet vibrant and innovative, southern hemisphere centres for academic research into the creative and performing arts - Western Australia. From BEAP'04, the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (http://www.beap.org/site/index1.html), through the world-renowned SymbioticA project (http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/) Perth has been home to a huge range of talent and innovation in terms of creativity and performance. How does research into the arts flourish in a comparatively isolated locale? Is there a specific challenge faced by creativity on the periphery?

Presentation 3: Practice-led Research: speculation and innovation in action by Brad Haseman

This paper will discuss Australian inflections of practice-led research as evidenced at the conference Speculation and Innovation: Applying practice-led research in the creative industries. Held at QUT in Brisbane from 30 March to 1 April 2005, this conference featured 110 presenters from across fourteen disciplines including all of the creative arts as well as from the media and design disciplines. Based on the action of the conference, this paper reviews the emerging agendas of practice-led researchers within the region and identifies a range of broad systemic issues around the provision, implementation and evaluation of practice as research.

Biographies:

Alison Richards

Alison is a leading Australian theatre maker and scholar. She began her career in the 1970s ‘New Wave’, working as a writer, performer and director in community and experimental theatre with companies including the iconic Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory, Melbourne. She has published extensively on contemporary Australasian performance practice and was instrumental in setting the agenda for performance research in Australian Universities in the mid 1990s through her work for ADSA, the Australasian Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies Association. Her interest in embodiment, gender, and the cultural politics of paradox and perversity, led to the creation of a series of solo performance research pieces from 1990 onwards. The latest, no/body home, will be presented in October 2005. Her current major research project ‘Performing Community’ investigates how the public sphere is imagined and realised through community-based performance, focusing on the interaction between professional artists and citizen participants. Alison is Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Creative Arts, The University of Melbourne.

Lelia Green

Lelia Green is Professor of Communications and Associate Dean, Research and Higher Degrees, in the Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries at Edith Cowan University.

 After her honours degree in Anthropology, Philosophy and Psychology, Lelia joined the BBC as a Trainee Research Assistant and worked on a range of programmes as a research and film director. She migrated to Australia in 1986, having been sponsored by Edith Cowan University as a lecturer in Film and Video/Media Studies. Over the years Lelia has taught in a range of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies courses and has co-edited (1994) Framing Technology: Society, choice and change and authored (2002) Technoculture: From alphabet to cybersex (marketed in the UK and US as Communication, technology and society). Soon after her appointment to the Associate Dean position in Communications and Creative Industries, Lelia began to research the lack of academic recognition of research outcomes in Drama, Dance and the Performing Arts in Australia compared with the situation in the UK. This was reported in a BEAP'04 paper: Talking arts research with a British accent (http://arn.cci.ecu.edu.au/symposium_view.php?rec_id=0000000003 ).

Brad Haseman

Brad is an Associate Professor and Head of Postgraduate Research Studies with the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Formerly a Head of Drama at QUT, Brad has worked as a teacher and researcher for over thirty years pursuing his fascination with the aesthetics and forms of contemporary performance and pedagogy.  He is well known as an author (Dramawise and Communicate Live!) and as an invited workshop leader, regularly presenting throughout Australia and overseas. Brad is an active participant in the current national debate in Australia concerning Innovation in the Arts, Media and Design, co-convening the first national symposium on this topic in Brisbane (October 2001) and leading sessions at subsequent symposia in Melbourne (May 2002) and Perth (August 2002). He co-edited the report on these symposia, Innovation in Australian Arts, Media and Design (2004, Post Press) and most recently was the ‘Creative Practices’ section editor of Creative Industries (2005, Blackwell). Last year he received a QUT Distinguished Teaching Award for Postgraduate Supervision.