30 April 2009

The Humanities and Creative Arts will be among the first disciplines to trial the new Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) process for Australia.

Although it will be some time before the ERA is finalised, it will have major impact on what research is funded in Australia and therefore what we research. As the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator the Hon. Kim Carr said at the Universitities Higher Education conference in March this year,

What I believe should be our highest priority of all … is the pursuit of excellence. It isn't enough just to increase the quantity of research we produce - we also need to increase the quality. And it isn't enough to just go around telling ourselves how good we are - we need to measure ourselves objectively against the world's best. We must submit to the discipline of international competition. We must be accountable. That's why ERA is so important.

As the trials approach a number of issues are beginning to surface including the need to define research in the creative arts, an area long identitied with practice based work.

Professor Margaret Seares AO, a CHASS board member, was chair of the Creative Arts committee which advised on the ERA indicators and talks here about Creative Arts research.

The Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) project initiated by the Federal Government has brought to the fore, once again, some key issues relating to the nature of research in the creative and performing arts within our universities.

Since a range of specialist arts training institutions merged into universities as part of the Dawkins Reforms of 1989, the issue of the status and recognition of the work of academic artists, in terms of research, has been an often fraught one. The national system for collating, auditing and, ultimately, rewarding research outputs -known as HERDC - did recognise creative work for a time, but for the past decade this has not been the case. This has meant a degree of marginalisation for academic artists when the research performance of their university has come under discussion or review, and so it was inevitable that when the RQF was announced and then ERA, there should be concern that any new system should remedy the problems of the past.

Such a remedy has meant a review of how research is undertaken in the creative and performing arts and recognition that there can be "practice-based" and "practice-led" research that reflects the definition of "research" being used by the Australian Research Council. That definition proposes 'research' as being "the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings." As the ERA documentation spells out "This definition of research is consistent with a broad notion of research and experimental development (R&D) as comprising 'creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise applications.'"

Those people working in the creative and performing arts have long known that much of their work reflects exactly these principles, and it is good that the ARC has demonstrated a recognition of this through the content of the ERA guidelines. But there is still a way to go to getting acceptance established right through our system. For example, as long as ERA remains in a pilot/trial mode, universities will continue to be funded for research as an outcome of the HERDC data collection, which continues to exclude creative work. After 20 years of a unified national system, such exclusions are inexcusable, and this is an issue that CHASS and its members can usefully work on.

Another issue that perplexes many people, not least university administrators, is the distinction between work that reflects the definition of research outlined above, and other work that represents a high level of professional endeavour but which doesn't reflect that definition. For that reason the Creative Arts working group recommended to the ARC that a set of words be employed for each creative work submitted, to elucidate the research component of that work. That set of words has been included in the draft ERA guidelines and it is hoped that it will bring everyone - including Research Administrators and DVCs Research - onto the same page on this important issue and, in so doing, increase understanding of and recognition for the work of academic artists in the national research and development endeavour.

Margaret Seares

30 April, 2009

 

Professor Seares is a Board member of CHASS, is Chair of the Creative Arts committee, Australian Research Council and recently retired as Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor at The University of Western Australia (UWA).

Related links

• ERA - Indicators consultation paper
• Advocacy paper
  Humanities and Creative Arts: Recognising Esteem Factors and Non-Traditional Publication
• Excellence in Research Australia Background