This #Take5 is brought to you from Simone Maier. Simone is an inspirational lecturer in the LondonMet School of AAD – art, architecture and design – and is soon to complete an MA in Art Education, Culture and Practice at the Institute of Education (IoE).
Working with Simone, we became fascinated by the concept of practice-based research – where the practitioner makes something – anything – as a way of exploring or researching their own theory and practice. This, we thought, was something that every practitioner – every educationist – should think about and get involved with.
Read on and be inspired – and then think about producing some practice-based research of your own.
My experience of studying towards a master’s degree: learning to accept practice-based research
One of the enjoyable parts of working in a School of Art, Architecture & Design (AAD) is the opportunity to discuss the things we make. The AAD school at London Metropolitan University has two research units, CREATURE and CUBE, which organise exhibitions of work produced by AAD staff. Video, sketchbooks, fabric, VR, wood, photography and metalwork were among the materials that 13 CREATURE members displayed as part of their recent exhibition, Making Matters. It was a fascinating opportunity to see how a diverse group of colleagues engage with materials and concepts to examine, challenge and contribute to knowledge production. I’ve struggled with accepting my own art as research and the exhibition helped me to understand a little bit more about what practice-based research (PBR) can be.
A blessing in disguise
Last academic year, my teaching hours got dramatically cut. I was not happy about it, but the reduction did grant me the time I needed to begin the master’s degree I had wanted to undertake. So, in September 2022, I started the MA in Art Education, Culture and Practice at the Institute of Education (IoE), UCL. It’s a taught programme that is carefully constructed for those, like me, who are at the intersection of art and education with experience in both teaching and art practice. It promised to develop my knowledge and ‘capacity to develop innovative educational research’. The course began with a module called (you guessed it!) ‘Practice-Based Research’. We discussed the pre-readings and then found a studio spot to start making something – anything.
Practice-Based Research
Practice-based research (PBR) is where, in order to explore their research question, the researcher makes things as part of the process. The research is exploratory and embedded in a creative practice.
Image: PBR experiments in my IoE studio space (October 2022).
I began bringing in materials and chatting with my peers who came from all over the world and who teach in different art educational settings from early years through to universities, museums, galleries, theatres and neurodivergent adult spaces. Our creative practices span dance, calligraphy, puppetry, performance, paper, painting, video, mark-making, sculpture and drawing.
I found it enjoyable to make art knowing that it was not going to be subject to the usual art school aesthetic regime. Instead, I could let my materials lead me, playing like I did when I was a kid as my purpose was to explore my teaching practice but not necessarily in an explicit way. I could allow myself to make, allowing subconscious influences in including that of the things I was reading about and discussing with my peers: educational theories, the impact of assessment practices, ideas of material agency, and the relationship of language to creative practice (I’ll return to this later).
Please read the rest of the blog here: https://aldinhe.ac.uk/take5-90-reflecting-through-art-culture-and-practice/
Take 5 