Supervising Practices for Postgraduate Research in Art, Architecture and Design EDUCATIONAL FUTURES RETHINKING THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume 57 Series Editors Michael A. Peters University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Editorial Board Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Miriam David, Institute of Education, London University, UK Cushla Kapitzke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Australia Mark Olssen, University of Surrey, UK Fazal Rizvi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA Linda Tuahwai Smith, University of Waikato, New Zealand Susan Robertson, University of Bristol, UK Scope This series maps the emergent field of educational futures. It will commission books on the futures of education in relation to the question of globalisation and knowledge economy. It seeks authors who can demonstrate their understanding of discourses of the knowledge and learning economies. It aspires to build a consistent approach to educational futures in terms of traditional methods, including scenario planning and foresight, as well as imaginative narratives, and it will examine examples of futures research in education, pedagogical experiments, new utopian thinking, and educational policy futures with a strong accent on actual policies and examples. Supervising Practices for Postgraduate Research in Art, Architecture and Design Edited by Brent Allpress, Robyn Barnacle, Lesley Duxbury and Elizabeth Grierson Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne, Australia A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-94-6209-017-0 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6209-018-7 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6209-019-4 (e-book) Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/ Printed on acid-free paper Cover Image: The Turn On, plaster sculptural pieces, Pia Ednie-Brown, 1998, artist’s collection. All Rights Reserved © 2012 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword: Creative Practice, Creative Economy vii Michael A. Peters Notes on Contributors xi Acknowledgements xv 1. Supervising Practice-led Research by Project in Art, Creative Writing, Architecture and Design 1 Brent Allpress, Robyn Barnacle, Lesley Duxbury, Elizabeth Grierson 2. Opening the Door: Portals to Good Supervision of Creative Practice-led Research 15 Lesley Duxbury 3. Pedagogical Practices for Supervising Project Based Research in Architecture and Design 25 Brent Allpress 4. Good Supervision: The Creative Work in Process: Effective and Engaged Postgraduate Supervision in Creative Writing 41 Catherine Cole 5. Articulating Sound in a Synthesised Material Space 51 Philip Samartzis 6. A Complex Terrain: Putting Theory and Practice to Work as a Generative Praxis 65 Elizabeth Grierson 7. Becoming a Practitioner-Researcher-Writer 81 Robyn Barnacle 8. Pedagogies of Invention 91 Linda Daley 9. Supervising Emergence: Adapting Ethics Approval Frameworks toward Research by Creative Project 103 Pia Ednie-Brown 10. Beside Myself: Scrutinising Decades of Supervising Designers 117 Peter Downton 11. How to Work Better: Supervising for Ph.D. Exhibition 131 David Thomas 12. Designing a Practice and Pedagogy of Postgraduate Supervision 147 Laurene Vaughan v TABLE OF CONTENTS 13. The Flying Doctorate: Doctoral Supervision by Distance in Hong Kong 163 Kevin White Index 173 vi MICHAEL A. PETERS FOREWORD Creative Practice, Creative Economy It is quite remarkable how the creative, design and expressive arts once marginal and marginalised have become central to the mission of the university. Indeed, under the ideology of the creative economy the so-called cultural industries have taken centre stage and in some senses displaced or eclipsed the role and place of the traditional humanities. The modern university was built around philosophy and literature. Kant talked of the “conflict of the faculties”, Hegel occupied the first chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1811, and Henry Newman crafted the Idea of the university around a body of literature. In 2010 The United Nations released its Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option, which details evolving concepts of creativity, cultural and creative industries and aspects of the “creative economy”, its multiple dimensions and cross-sectoral linkages. Its first Creative Economy Report was released in 2008 concluding that the creative industries were among the most dynamic sectors of the world economy and offered new, high growth opportunities for developing countries. As Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, and Helen Clark of United Nations Development Programme note in their joint Foreword to the 2010 report: This report builds on the earlier analysis of its predecessor, with new and improved data, showing how creativity, knowledge, culture, and technology can be drivers of job creation, innovation, and social inclusion. It suggests that world trade in creative goods and services remained relatively robust at a time when overall levels of international trade fell. It analyzes the rapid growth in the creative economy sectors across the South and the growing share of creative sector trade which is coming from the South. Which university or nation can afford to ignore the ideas and analysis behind this report? The ten key messages (summarised and truncated here) are (pp. xxiii–xxv): 1. Even in times of crisis “the creative industries hold great potential for developing countries that seek to diversify their economies and leapfrog into one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy”. 2. “The world economy has been receiving a boost from the increase in South- South trade”. 3. “A right mix of public policies and strategic choices are essential for harnessing the socio-economic potential of the creative economy for development gains”. 4. “Policy strategies to foster the development of the creative economy must recognise its multidisciplinary nature – its economic, social, cultural, technological and environmental linkages”. vii M. A. PETERS 5. “A major challenge for shaping policies for the creative economy is related to intellectual property rights: how to measure the value of intellectual property, how to redistribute profits and how to regulate these activities”. 6. “The creative economy cuts across the arts, business and connectivity, driving innovation and new business models”. 7. “The creative economy is both fragmented and society-inclusive. It functions through interlocking and flexible networks of production and service systems spanning the entire value chain”. 8. “Policies for the creative economy have to respond not only to economic needs but also to special demands from local communities related to education, cultural identity, social inequalities and environmental concerns”. 9. “In the aftermath of the crisis, the firmness of the market for creative products is a sign that many people in the world are eager for culture, social events, entertainment and leisure”. 10. “Each country is different, each market is special and each creative product has its specific touch and splendor”. This is considered the new development mantra and its principles for the United Nations’ development programme. It is a powerful reassertion of the notion of the knowledge economy still couched within a theory of international trade and oriented towards a development paradigm and without the neoliberal recipe enshrined in the Washington consensus. Yet it also provides a philosophy and ethos for ‘development’ across the board and for developed countries. It is in the context of this evolving understanding of development that the contribution of Supervising Practices for Postgraduate Research in Art, Architecture and Design edited by Brent Allpress, Robyn Barnacle, Lesley Duxbury, Elizabeth Grierson, from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia can be appreciated. Supervising Practices for Postgraduate Research makes clear the fundamental shift towards a model of applied practice- led research which, as the editors explain in their introduction, “offers an effective means to conduct research on knowledge both embodied in, and discovered through discipline-specific art, architecture and design practices”. And they themselves note the centrality of such a conception to the “creative economy”. The shift can be contextualised as a response by the academy to global changes in knowledge generation. Today productive and creative forms of applied and situated knowledge are being validated for their contribution to innovation economies with universities and industry working in close partnership to forge a practice-focused research and innovation nexus. The emphasis is on a form of creative practice harnessed to project-based knowledge work that encourages intensive knowledge exchanges between teacher and student (or should I say co-investigators or co-creators), and between university and industry where the emphasis is on knowledge as enactment, knowledge as doing. Yet the element of criticality is not to be forgotten in the market or in trading knowledges that demand an applied and entrepreneurial context. These are critical models of social and public entrepreneurship. viii FOREWORD The emphasis on knowledge as a social practice has taken a long time to mature from its early formulations in the work of Wittgenstein and in Bourdieu, before it begins to get institutionalised in the doctrine of the reflective practitioner with Donald Schön and Chris Argyris in the 1970s, and accounts of “practitioner cultures”. What this new collection does so well is to adopt a creative approach to the notion of supervision in art, architecture and design and to examine, as the editors phrase it, “emerging modes of postgraduate research and supervisory practice”. This is a very astute and valuable contribution to the literature on supervision in the applied arena with a series of excellent discussions on creative practice-based research, pedagogical practices of supervision, creative writing and the creative work in process, “generative praxis”, distance supervision, doctoral exhibitions, supervision of designers, and a range of related issues and concerns. I particularly like the phrase of Linda Daley who talks of “Pedagogies of Invention”. It is a path-breaking, path-finding book that will be of great assistance to all kinds of professionals and students across a wide range of disciplines and with important lessons for all doctoral supervision. It is an exciting and accessible book and a great achievement for a group of colleagues in a leading institution. REFERENCES United Nations (2008) Creative Economy Report. Retrieved May 10, 2012, from http://unctad.org/en/docs/ditc20082cer_en.pdf United Nations (2010) Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option. Retrieved May 10, 2012, http://www.intracen.org/uploadedFiles/intracenorg/Content/About_ITC/Where_are_we_working/Multi- country_programmes/CARIFORUM/ditctab20103_en.pdf ix