The literature/practice review: use of creative practice during the review period and its potential to reshape research projects

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on my experience of supervising research degrees undertaken by practising artists, mainly painters. It is driven by the question of whether and how practice might be incorporated into the review process to encourage the development of more relevant research skills for practitioner-researchers. The aim is to develop methods of search and review for practitioner-researchers which take into account the types of projects practitioner-researchers are engaged in as well as the types of knowledge at play as a result of the role of practice in the research. Beginning with the concept of the literature/practice review and the aim of locating researchers' work in relation to that of other practitioners through the creation of a lineage of practice, examples of creating a lineage based on the experiences of four artist-researchers are presented. In addition, strategies for creating a lineage, which require the researcher to engage in creative practice, are outlined. In conclusion, ways that practitioner-researchers from different practical domains might share experiences to develop more relevant strategies for undertaking, assessing and presenting results of search and review within practice as research projects are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Art
• practice
• literature review
• practitioner-research

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors for all of their formative suggestions and for pointing out that my process of developing my own supervisory practice is similar in its organic development to the development of the approach to search and review including practice that I describe. Thanks also to all of my colleagues who have supported and contributed to this work over the years. I am overwhelmingly grateful to all of our research candidates, who have each helped in some way, and continue to help, in this process of developing our approaches to APaR. They are incredibly patient and affable. In particular, I would like to thank Sasha, Renuka, Ran and Christabel for giving me permission to share their insights, experiences, and images of their doctoral work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Pott

Dr Emily Pott, Director of Research Programmes at the School of Traditional Arts in London which encourages artists to research the arts of the past as living practices, aims to develop arts research that recognises the contributions that artists make to many contexts and to our understanding of the world.