Abstract:Practice-led research is by its very nature multi-disciplinary. This means that often
both the student and the supervisor find themselves, from the very beginning of the
project, working across a ra...Practice-led research is by its very nature multi-disciplinary. This means that often
both the student and the supervisor find themselves, from the very beginning of the
project, working across a range of familiar and unfamiliar fields. The postgraduate
students we have supervised in the visual arts and creative writing have engaged with
ideas ranging from racism to erotica, from blindness to cannibalism; they have
situated themselves in literary studies, in cultural studies, in feminist and art theory.
The best of these projects produce innovative and challenging artworks/creative texts.
The exegesis is often a hybrid and ‘messy text’ with multiple voices and perspectives.
As a writer and an artist with experience working in a range of collaborative creative
arts projects, and more recently as supervisors of PhDs and MAs in visual art and
creative writing, we have found that some of the elements of, and processes used in,
successful collaboration also enhance supervision of practice-led postgraduate
research supervision. While higher degree research belongs to, and must always be
the work of, the individual student, like any good collaboration it cannot be achieved
without significant and engaged dialogue, and a joint commitment by student and
supervisor to the project.
In this article, we draw on our extensive experience as collaborators both in
university research projects and in other contexts, on cultural-historical theories that
place emphasis on the social sources of knowledge development, and on postgraduate
supervision scholarship. We will distinguish the different elements of successful
collaboration in a creative context and the way in which these elements can be
applied to the supervision of practice-led postgraduate research projects in the visual
arts and creative writing.Read More
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot