Deans and Directors of Creative Arts
DDCA holds regular conferences and co-hosts other events in collaboration with member institutions and peak bodies.
On August 9, 2024 the DDCA held a National Forum to generate discussion on the shape of the future of creative practice research in Australia, and beyond.
The session focussed on reporting, assessment and evaluation processes and frameworks of university research.
For our 2022 DDCA Roundtable, the DDCA invited Justin O’Connor, Tully Barnett and Julian Meyrick from RESET to present.
Reset is a collaborative group of people representing the three universities and members of the arts and culture sector in South Australia seeking to understand and reframe the discussion around arts and culture in South Australia, nationally and internationally.
Creative Research in the academy: lived experiences of a ‘wicked’ problem
In this online seminar, held via Zoom on Friday 22 July 2022, three remarkable artist-researchers from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand – Vanessa Tomlinson from Griffith University, Rand Hazou from Massey University, and Beata Batorowicz from University of Southern Queensland – give insights into their creative practice and their strategies for negotiating the tensions of creative research in the academy.
This seminar was presented jointly by the ACHRC Australian Consortium for Humanities Researchers and Centres, and the DDCA Deans and Directors of Creative Arts, and it was convened by Craig Batty from the University of South Australia and Grayson Cooke from Southern Cross University.
The 2021 DDCA conference, developed in partnership with the Australian Council of University Art & Design Schools (ACUADS), explored the theme of networks to consider their possibilities in response to the challenges and future agendas of the Tertiary Art, Design and Creative Arts Sector in a post pandemic world.
This conference was hosted by RMIT University and sponsored by the DDCA, ACUADS and UniSuper.
2019’s DDCA event focused on its leadership interests, inviting leaders in tertiary arts from across its membership in Australia to join for a day of discussion and debate on the topics of graduate employability and research measurement and assessment.
Over the past decade we have seen creative arts disciplines fall to the periphery when research and graduate education issues are raised. This is despite the fact that many in industry are reinforcing the importance of the creative thinking that arts study embodies and the emergence of AI is stressing the need for arts to be included in STEM innovation.
The conference featured presentations and Q & A panel discussions with experts who each brought their own perspective to the question of how tertiary creative arts can showcase their contribution to the research, engagement and innovation agenda beyond the research definitions and metrics that have been much of the focus of tertiary artists to date.
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. The Keynote speaker was 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.
The Outstanding Field: Artistic Research Emerging from the Academy was the first symposium of its kind to foreground practice-led research and showcase some of the most outstanding practice-led PhD projects to have emerged out of Creative Arts programs in Australia and New Zealand over the last decade. The symposium represented a “coming of age” for the creative arts PhD and offers the opportunity to evaluate how we stand up as a research discipline in the broader research environment.
DDCA’s 2015 conference included discussion on cultural values; on disciplinary innovation in music at three universities; and strategic directions to improve creative arts connections with research peer review, HERDC performance; the teaching-research and graduate destination data collection. As part of the conference round up, the board produced a ‘Communique’ which reflected the common perspectives resulting from the conference and suggested future initiatives that would improve the position of creative arts in higher education.
DDCA’s inaugural conference brought together national and international perspectives on learning, teaching and research to consider the question ‘Where are we now and what lies ahead for the creative arts in higher education in Australia? It was held as part of Creative Arts Leadership Week which included the ACUADS 2014 conference and 2 book launches : Staging Ideas: Set and costume design for theatre by Australian performance designer and author Stephen Curtis and Material Inventions: Applying Creative Arts Research by Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt.
In the spirit of reconciliation, the DDCA acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.