Research and arts education

I've just finished a note about research and arts education. It's entitled 'Tertiary Arts Education and Research: A note to help artists and arts educators required to conduct research in tertiary education institutions'.

The purpose of this note is to share some ideas with artists and arts educators who are working in tertiary institutions, particularly in the polytechnics and wa-nanga, concerning the matter of research and arts education. It has been my experience to note the general anxiety that exists with respect to research requirements placed upon artists and arts educators teaching in polytechnics and wānanga. For many, research activities amount to having to write lots of essays about things that have little to do with their art activities. This is a mis-understanding and much anxiety can be diminished by achieving an appropriate understanding of research as an activity designed to create new knowledge.

My key idea is that both research and art are fundamentally about the creation of new knowledge and that research in an arts education setting should assist the artist to deepen and broaden their artistic practice, not inhibit it. I provide the following example.

A choreographer is working on a new work. She takes her inspiration from a variety of quarters and gathers knowledge about those things that inspire her. She wishes to delve deeply into the topic which her new work will reflect or be about. She also examines the work of other choreographers who have worked in this area. She examines their dance techniques as well as the processes by which they have gathered knowledge. She watches what they do when, having gathered all the knowledge together about the topic, she analyses, explores and distils out the key ideas she finds in the knowledge. She is 'panning for gold', looking for those key ideas, energies and inspirations within what she has gathered which will spin off into elements of a new work. Slowly fragments, hints and suggestions comes forth, not yet a full work but pieces nonetheless. Slowly these pieces are honed and refined, placed next to one another. A work emerges.

As the piece unfolds in both her mind and in her studio workshops, she has much material in front of her. She has the work itself slowly taking shape. She videos her dancers, watches them intently to see how her mind's eye becomes manifest in the performance.

She also has many materials gathered along the way - CDs of music, videos of events, films of dance works, newspaper clippings, diary notes, posters, letters, manuscripts, food, perfumes, a whole pot-pourri of materials which have shown her depth in her topic, depth in her chosen field of dance and in which elements and ideas have emerged to inspire her new work. Additionally she has her own notebooks containing sketches of things, ideas that have come in the middle of the night, inspirations that have arisen while visiting a place of significance, a performance, meeting people of significance. Epiphanies.

Finally, she has to make sense of this entire activity. She has to reflect upon this process as a whole. How does one choose a topic as an inspiration for a new work? How does one gather knowledge about this topic? How can we learn from studying the work of other choreographers? In the studio, what has worked? What didn't work? How do we know what works and what doesn't? When we are 'panning for gold', what are we looking? This reflection and theorising helps her to understand her practice, her discipline as an artist. Preparing a statement about this reflection and theorising catalyses her to focus directly upon the nature of her practice, her discipline.

Research involves this entire process - the creation of the new artwork, all the supporting materials gathered during the process of creating the artwork and reflecting critically upon the entire process.