Practice based research

I think practice based research helps you to understand your own practice more and in turn the practice of others. Once you've understood how the techniques you use help you work, you can then start to understand how they could help others in their practice. 

Moving onto a MA level I am having to include theory alongside my practice. Whenever I think of theory I automatically think of reading lots of books/academic papers but reflecting and writing about your own work is also theory. Doing reflective action alongside your practical work helps develop your creativity and practice as you take the action, consider it, reflect on it and then decide what you would do next time. You can discover new things revealed by the practice itself. I have to develop myself from a practitioner to a practitioner - researcher.

Looking at Robin Nelson’s text ‘Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances’ was inspiring for me. It showed the different steps for tying in theory alongside the practical elements. 

The first step he talks about is posing a question, I already have mine ‘what methods can be employed to develop creativity in relation to technology and practice?’

He then talks about setting a time line for your activities - making sure you keep reflection alongside the practice, checking back to the question whilst doing this and to gather evidence by documenting the process. I try to do this by dedicating certain days to different tasks, for example one day will be spent creating work and reflecting on it after. Another day will be researching artists and how they link to my work or a day spent reading theory relevant to my themes. I have spent a day looking round museums and thinking about how I could use the things I've learnt in relation to my work.

Then he suggests capturing the moments of insight. When something goes well and you're excited about it, its all too easy to get carried away in the moment and just keep going without writing it down and reflecting. It will always be helpful in the future to look back at what went well in your work and how you achieved this. Like an archive of your own practice. I am achieving this by using this blog! It helps me to express everything going on in my practice and lets me categories it so I can look back at things if I need to. I take photos of physical work I make and post it on this blog and write my reflections with it.

The next step is to find whats already been done in similar fields to your own practice. This can help you look at your own work in a different way as you can spot similarities and differences between the works. Since doing screen printing and etching, I have found several artists that use these techniques and I am currently looking into what I do similarly of differently to them.

Also looking at current topics on your subject can be useful, not just historical context and whats already happened but whats happening now can help you gauge where you stand within the field.I have started to look at technology and creativity within schools, looking at the younger generation and how they use technology as this will influence how they develop their creativity in the future.

I found this text from the library resources: ‘Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century: Crayons are the Future’ where they talk about aiming ‘resources at infusing creative thinking into education for the 21st century’ using the Kinect for the xbox 360 to teach maths. They want to ‘Reconnecting technology and creativity through (in)disciplined learning’  which ‘allows students to view mathematics as few students have been able to do before—as abstraction embodied in physicality.’ They claim that ‘This is learning that breaks disciplinary boundaries to cross-pollinate ideas, and thus helps students become creative divergent thinkers.’

Mishra, P. (2012). Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century: Crayons are the Future. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice To Improve Learning, 56(5), 13-16. doi:10.1007/s11528-012-0594-0

Nelson, R. (2013). Practice as research in the arts: Principles, protocols, pedagogies, resistances. Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9781137282910