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research and professional practice.
Chris Wainwright
• Rapidly move away from the tired assertion that practice based research is somehow exclusive to arts
What Can Research Do
research.
For Art? The Role of
• In relation to the above point, explore creative
Artistic Research
and academic links with other sectors including
Networks in Europe
the sciences where there are similar approaches to research and the role of practice. • How do we capitalise on the growing postdoctoral communities of research that are being created in our art schools? • What is the effect of the growth of Graduate Schools in arts disciplines? Is there a common understanding of their purpose and how do we capitalise on the network potential they offer the sector? • Can the environments adopted within our institutions be harmful to arts research by adopting over prescriptive frameworks in relation to the Bologna implementation process and its tendency to instrumentalise education and culture? • On the other hand, can a focused and coherent research culture in the arts lead to an improvement in our societies through addressing the significant issues of our time such as, climate change, technology and identity? The overriding question that frames the above points and observations is simply “what can research do for art?” This is a fundamental question absent from most discourse as understandably there is a preoccupation with the rules of engagement with institutional structures and reconciliation of ideological approaches. My concern here is not so much for ensuring rigour, but for maintaining the focus of arts research as one that recognises the value and place of art itself as a complex site of critical activity that is improved by the processes of research. The rest of this paper sets out, as an example, how ELIA as a representative network contributes, initiates and stimulates dialogue that enhances opportunities for artistic research across Europe and the part it plays in critically questioning the shaping, production and application of creative “new knowledge” within a variety of institutional and public contexts. It is important to bear in mind that the term “creative knowledge” remains vigorously contested and seen by many as a form of instrumentalisation of practice that challenges the fundamental ethos of arts education as a complex, essentially reflexive and at times a methodologically mercurial process. Over the last ten years, the agenda of Higher Arts Education has become increasingly influenced and conditioned by an emphasis on research and on the increase of third cycle degrees in Higher Arts Education. The ELIA 2004-2005 survey publication Research in and through the arts3 has shown that artistic research and third cycle degrees are
3
defined differently within the Higher Arts Education and professional
Contribution to New Knowledge in a Creative
arts sectors across Europe. In the context of this paper, “arts” is used
Europe (2008) European league of Institutes of
as a generic term to represent a wide range of disciplines including the
The Importance of Artistic Research and its
The Arts, Amsterdam
maHKUzine