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Creative and practice-based research

Guidance on resources and techniques to searching the literature and writing for creative and practice-based research.

Upcoming Research Spotlight webinars

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Unlocking Research Visibility: Discover the new Research Repository and Open Access Support

Join us for an in-depth session on RMIT's new Research Repository. This platform is designed to amplify the visibility and impact of your scholarly work. We will provide a step-by-step guide on how you can add research to the repository and showcase it to a worldwide audience. 

This session will also outline the Library's support for Open Access availability of your research outputs. Open Access is pivotal in making research freely accessible, increasing citation rates, and fostering global collaboration. We'll offer practical insights into self-archiving (“green” OA), allowing you to share your research while complying with publisher policies.  

Wednesday, April 9, 2:30 - 3:30PM

Register via link below:


Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

What is creative practice research?

Creative practice research, ​also called practice-based research, is where a specific research question is explored via creative practice processes and/or via the product of a creative endeavour. It is commonly employed in art and design creative practice HDR projects. However, practice-based research also has a history in other disciplines such as medicine, engineering and education where it is often referred to as "action research".

Definitions vary, but research in the creative areas may be considered practice-based or practice-led (Skains, 2018). Practice-based research, according to PRAGUK (n.d., para. 11), is research where the "creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge", whereas in practice-led research the contribution of the research "leads primarily to new understandings about practice". As such, in practice-based research, creative outputs, such as a sculpture or a novel, are integral to the research process and form part of the submission. The creative output may not be fully understood as a research object/output without the dissertation/written component, and the written component cannot be fully understood without the creative component. On the contrary, in practice-led research, the research results can be entirely conveyed through language, offering theoretical insights into the practice without requiring the inclusion of a creative work.

References

Candy, L. (2006). Practice based research: A guide. Creativity & Cognition Studios. https://www.creativityandcognition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/PBR-Guide-1.1-2006.pdf
PRAGUK (n.d.). Methodology. PRAGUK. https://prag-uk.org/glossary-of-terms/methodology/
Skains, R. L. (2018). Creative practice as research: Discourse on methodology. Media Practice and Education19(1), 82-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2017.1362175


The following video is a presentation and teaching supplement of practice-based methodology for arts practitioners.

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