Postgraduate Supervisors’ Conversation 3: Supervision of Creative Practice
Tue, 28 June (12.00-2.00) in the Upstairs Lounge, WEL Academy of Performing Arts
Presenters: AProf Ian Whalley, Dr Hazel Gamec, Dr Karen Barbour (video), Dr Debbie Bright
Discussion
1. AProf Ian Whalley, Music, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Action Points
Comments:
 The requisites of performers are different from that of other areas of academia.
 It has taken ten years for creative practice to be accepted as research.
 Music previously was taught in a conservatorium. Creative work, now, includes recording, performance, media,
electronic arts, etc. together with critical reflection/grasp of literature.
 How best to supervise students in creative practice:
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Do what you’re teaching about
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Cultivate good practice
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Learn professional strategies that work
Cultivate a creative culture across disciplines
Link to international festivals to get a benchmark back and forth
2. Dr Hazel Gamec (Design supervisor)
Comments
 The notion of a PhD in Design is new and not accepted nationally. The Master of Fine Arts has been considered the
terminal degree. However, some creative research is ground breaking and worthy of studies.
 Creative work is very diverse, such as design, history, language, etc.
 Teamwork is an important part of creative supervision as we can’t live in isolation and create something not done
before.
 Creative research is part applied and part research, i.e. there is a written component and a practical component that is
the application of research.
 In theatre and dance, the question has been raised: “How does one see that as research?”
 The expertise of advisor is essential as students are only as good as their advisor.
 In design, the design process and how it is used is documented and an important part of research.
3. Dr Karen Barbour, Sports & Leisure Studies, Faculty of Education
Comments
 Karen Barbour’s research is in dance and related arts.
 Australian colleagues in their work on assessment in postgraduate degrees in dance, use terms such as “practice based
research practice led research, practice as research, performance as research, creative practice as research, creative
arts research and research through practice”.
 What is integral is art-based research degrees where the creative process and/or artifact form part of the doctoral
outcome and they are concerned with how the creative process is understood as research.
 Colleagues at the University of Bristol completed a five year project in the early 2000s into Practice as Research (PAR)
which looks at practice as a mode of research. It makes the distinction between practice and practice as research.
Research must have a set of separable, demonstrable findings that are abstract-able and not locked into the
experience of performing. There also needs to be some written work in which the originality of the piece is set out and
the work is made useful to the work of the wider community.
 The term “creative practice as research” is more inclusive of all forms of creative practice at the University.
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 To visualize the idea of creative practice as research, Karen developed the diagram below:
 The diagram shows embodied
knowing as the centre of creative
practice. It shows the relationship
between traditional ways of
thinking about research with
different ways of knowing,
choreographic process and some
broader stages in creative process.
 Ideas for the supervision process:
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Value of a supervision team: it’s very important to have someone with subject knowledge. In addition, other
supervisors on the team can bring cultural, philosophical and methodological knowledge. There is a much richer
experience for students with a broad supervision team that encompasses different areas of supervision practice.
Supervisors support students to engage in reflexivity, exploring “Who am I? Who are my people? Where do I fit
within creative practice and within research? How best can I create and share my knowledge?” Supervisors need
to acknowledge that many things are possible and potentially relevant. There is the need for students to play,
actively experiment and improvise. There is relevance to place research in the context of everyday life.
Supervisors need to be flexible and supportive of a range of methods and means of representing creative research
and support students to proceed with the same courage, passion, commitment and unbending intent as
supervisors themselves do.
4. Dr Debbie Bright (completed PhD in Dance)
Comments
 Debbie Bright’s Masters in reflective practice and dance making expanded into her PhD. She completed the second
dance PhD in New Zealand (Karen was the first). People have gone elsewhere to do PhD’s in Dance.
 She was awarded a University funded scholarship which demonstrated to her that someone believed in her.
 Debbie wasn’t sure what her PhD would look like until near the end. Most PhD students are unsure but with creative
practice there is the added layer of whether the work is academically acceptable and acceptable in creative and
performing arts.
 With creativity, some of it is not verbalizable. The question is raised of “How do you write a PhD on creative practice?”
 Her supervisors Toni Bruce and Karen Barbour pushed her to the edges of what was expected. It was helpful to receive
readings and authors who might be of use. It was also helpful to receive feedback on the big picture, not just the
details.
 Debbie started her written thesis as a choreographed work and created an image narrative on DVD. She presented a
part of the creative process in her oral when she danced during the presentation. Both assessors were artists (painter
and musician), therefore had an understanding of creative practice.
5. Questions/Discussion
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Comments
 The question was raised about what percentage of research output is composition, and what percentage is written.
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This is not set in concrete and depends on the nature of work. In music, a large part is compositional work. In
some cases, there is about 50% compositional work and 50% data collection and analysis.
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This also depends on the focus, i.e. is the focus on process or actual performance?
Music has been assessed for a long time so assessment is not something new. However, some of the emerging
arts do not have the same infrastructure. Emerging arts can piggyback on creative disciplines that have done this
for a long time and make use of their models and templates, for example the D.M.A. model.
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At Waikato, the creative arts PhD is more flexible in terms of the text: performance proportion. In other
institutions, such as Auckland University, regulations require 60,000 words in text and an equivalent 40,000 words
in performance. A couple of respondents on this issue opposed the formality of this approach, believing it
incompatible with the creative process and balanced towards written, rather than creative work.
 The question was raised about the challenge of finding external examiners.
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The University of Auckland has developed a consortium of people across disciplines who are able to examine.
There are a number of places internationally offering cross-disciplinary examiners. New Zealand is a bit behind in
making international links.
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In the area of Design, it is easy to find people with expertise but not necessarily the ‘mana’ at the PhD level. It is
now linked with other disciplines.
Emerging arts have to consider that people can be nominated as examiner but don’t have paper evidence.
Debbie preferred not to have examiners from dance because she wanted to communicate with those in the other
arts, not only dance.
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 The question was raised about the credibility of research in creative practice and how academic rigour is measured. It
was argued that small universities may have doctorates in creative practice, but recognized, reputable universities
don’t as of yet.
 The question was raised about the need for a PhD in creative arts and the difference between a Masters and a PhD.
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Creativity is a combination of two domains: the immersion into literature and developing of a new terrain. Firstly,
there is a focus on literature which is built on. A PhD goes to a new domain either through incremental steps or a
bigger leap which moves the field. It may cross disciplines. With new disciplines there are a lot more leaps to be
made. Therefore to develop the discipline, a lot more PhDs are needed.
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The report is objective and is not only about the creative output, but also about the use of reflexive methods.
A caution was raised about maintaining academic rigour and credibility in future. Anything can be the subject of
design. It can be problematic if the focus is only one discipline. It was suggested that a PhD in design couldn’t be
envisioned unless it was cross-disciplinary. The bachelor’s degree is a project, not based on original work;
masters’ degrees are 50% written and 50% practical/original material. Masters in Design includes a defence panel
of experts. Students work may be bounced based on poor/incomplete research and unfounded/anecdotal
research.
 Questions were raised about the assessment of dance, such as: Would questions come in the form of dance? How is
plagiarism detected in dance?
- As Debbie was doing her degree, there was difficulty in catching up on theoretical issues because the field was
being developed as she was doing her degree. Now at undergraduate level, Debbie’s daughter is doing “miniresearch” projects.
- Creative research is very personal. A lot of Debbie’s research is not verbalizable. It is embodied knowledge which
includes history, culture, etc.
- The performance that Debbie included in her oral defence was not memorized but spontaneous as it was a
presentation of research.
- She submitted a DVD and written work with instructions on using both.
- Dance may be annotated in the same way as music to judge originality. There are unlikely to be any ‘new’
movements in dance. The Western idea of plagiarism is in some other cultures imitation which shows respect.
Next conversation: Tue, 27 September 2011 (12.00-2.00) in Upstairs Lounge, WEL Academy
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P Pratapsingh
13 July 2011
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