Students in Creative Arts Research (DDCA and University of Newcastle)
This DDCA and University of Newcastle event focused students in creative arts research, exploring models for the creative thesis and showcasing the research of creative arts students across the country.
About The Symposium
Location: University of Newcastle, Newcastle NSW
Dates: 7 – 9 April 2016
Download Symposium Program
This DDCA and University of Newcastle event focused on students in creative arts research, exploring models for the creative thesis and showcasing the research of creative arts students across the country. Key Note speaker, Professor Stephen Goss ( University of Surrey, UK).
The presentations exemplified the diversity in research currently taking place across the sector, featuring explorations of screenwriting; effects of choral singing on stroke recovery, digital arts aesthetics, comic book creativity and contemporary arts in lived Australian culture. The event attracted over 50 attendees including many current postgraduate students which provided an opportunity for timely feedback and advice to improve theses.
Speaker Information, Papers And Presentations
Symposium Program
For speaker information and abstracts please download the conference program
Symposium Summary
Anyone who attended the Symposium – Students in Creative Arts Research: exploring frameworks and models for the creative thesis, could not fail to note the commitment and passion with which the Higher Degree Research students presented their work
While there were a variety of approaches in evidence, in many cases it was the personal, autobiographical and artistic journeys that formed a starting point for student’s research. Exploration of such approaches, presented alongside the idea of ‘models for the creative thesis’, gave the symposium a particular dynamic that invigorated discussions and debates.
Co-sponsored by the Deans and Directors of Creative Arts (DDCA) and the University of Newcastle, School of Creative Arts, the symposium triggered open discussion on topics such as: how the Creative Arts can have impact; how that might be measured; the difference between impact and dissemination; measuring the economic impact of Creative Arts practices and issues involving business, industry and economic indicators of esteem.
Keynote speaker Professor Stephen Goss from Surrey University UK, who joined all sessions, enabled direct and relevant dialogue between himself and participants, in the intersections between UK-based research and Australian research conditions. Goss evaluated his own research and his evolving compositional process through a narrative of five stages: Decision making; Insight; Creating a structure for spontaneity; Tacit knowledge – finding the most important things; Refinement – the editing process, tacit and embodied knowledge built up over many hours of experience that enable various forms of intuition.
The RMIT Creative Writing Panel presented an engaging discussion titled, “Innovative Approaches to Knowledge and ‘Text’” as did the Australian Screen Production Education & Research Association (ASPERA) Research Sub-Committee on, “Writing with/on/for Screens: Screen Production and the Doctoral Experience”
Artistic research often takes place in contexts outside of academic institutions. The impact of research is felt in social, cultural and community environments, and connects the academy in meaningful dialogue with the world at large. Creative Arts research plays an important part in making these connections and we need to profile and celebrate those engagements. This symposium confirmed the need to hear the voices of those involved in this form of discovery andreinforced the notion that artistic research continues to find significant traction within the context of the academy and is defining its impact across and within disciplines and areas of postgraduate interdisciplinary study.
Many of the student presenters were new to research. Their involvement and collaboration during the event has hopefully inspired them in their research journeys, and also given them a wider lens through which to consider their work in relation to the research work of others.
The symposium proved to be a very powerful tool for developing postgraduate research in the Creative Arts and beyond. It was unanimously agreed that such coming together should continue and develop further through evolving formats.
– Frank Millward