- The starting point is usually an idea; and the attitude is more often a concern with how humans construct the world through ideas, images, narratives and philosophies, than a generalisable ‘truth’, or understandings of cause and effect.
Creative work as/and practice: The new paradigm
Jen Webb, 2008
Practice-led research has practically no relationship with the positivist tradition or with classical empiricism. Although practice-led researchers frequently both produce and draw on concrete observations and measurements, the starting point is usually an idea; and the attitude is more often a concern with how humans construct the world through ideas, images, narratives and philosophies, than a generalisable ‘truth’, or understandings of cause and effect.
Any kind of research carried out by a practitioner in the course of performing their practice will involve:
- research for practice (generating data that will provide knowledge about the content of, and the context for, your current creative project). Draws on conventional methodologies: archival research (reading, observing); field research (participant observation; case studies; interviews, surveys and focus groups; ethnographies).
- research into practice (generating knowledge about techniques, approaches and thinking to do with how practice is carried out in your discipline). Draws on methodologies of practice (sketching; note-taking; photography; drafting and editing; simulations; self-reflection; concept mapping; story boards; flow charts; etc) as well as the conventional methods suggested above.
- research through practice (using your creative techniques, often along with more conventional methodologies, to generate knowledge about a social, political, philosophical or other issue)
Is all creative work also a form of research?
Not necessarily. What makes something research is that it is: intentional, deliberate, accessible and creative; and that it is geared towards the generation of new knowledge that is of benefit to others. Research that is geared towards your personal goals, or the needs only to develop content for a creative project, is not the same as research that is directed towards knowledge more generally: to increasing the store of humanity’s knowledge.
Approaches – logic
Answer the Big Questions that apply to any research question:
§ ontological – what do you think about the nature of being, what the world is?
§ epistemological – how do we know what we know; what counts as knowledge?
§ axiological – what is your ethical framework; what matters?
§ rhetorical – how will you engage with language, story and argument?
§ methodological – what does it mean to you to do research?
Approaches – principles
1. identify a problem (the thing you want to research);
2. formulate a hypothesis (what are your ideas about what’s going on?);
3. delimit the field (what are you looking at, what approach will you take?);
4. reflect on yourself – know your own biases and interests;
5. develop the ‘tools’, or methodologies, to take on the project – appropriate for what you want to find out;
6. don’t be afraid to be less systematic than the scientists; use bricolage, phenomenology, intuition
7. make the work/s
8. interpret and disseminate findings
Approaches – processes
1. definition (of your own practice; of practice in your field and its traditions; of the issue you are pursuing in this particular project)
2. reflection (continually call a halt in your practice, change hats, and reflect critically and analytically on both what you are doing, and what – and why – you are thinking)
3. intuition (pay attention to your intuition; don’t be afraid to be led down some interesting and productive paths)
4. attention (think about how you observe the world, or the part of it that is currently engaging you; know how to look, how to make, record and analyse observations)
5. experiment (don’t be bound by the conventions of form in your practice; take chances; don’t be bound by the conventions of your own thinking; take chances)
6. practice (make the work; keep making, keep manipulating, keep absorbed in it)
http://www.writingnetwork.edu.au/content/brief-notes-practice-led-research-0
