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Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry
Practice-led research is a burgeoning area across the creative arts, with studio informed doctorates frequently favoured over traditional approaches to research. Practice as Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry is specifically designed as a training tool and is structured on the model used by most research programmes. A comprehensive introduction lays out the book's framework and individual chapters provide concrete examples of studio-based research in art, film and video, creative writing and dance. Comprehensive in its approach, the volume draws on thinkers including Deleuze, Bourdieu and Heidegger in its examination of the relationship between practice and theory demonstrating how practice can operate as a valid alternative mode of enquiry to traditional scholarship.
236 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
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May 9, 2026
A Neo-Narrative for the City: Bridging Bricolage and Praxis
In reflecting on my current research into Yoruba Diasporic Technics in Southwark, I find a compelling anchor in Robyn Stewart’s Creating New Stories for Praxis. Her work offers a vital framework for understanding the "studio" not as a walled-in room, but as a lived, participatory arena.
Stewart (2001) writes:
"The relationships between the studio form meaningful partnerships... These stories address processes for exploring the aesthetic, empirical, and ethical dimensions of what it is to practice... These are processes of border crossings that come together as bricolage. The resulting stories create a third space by melding theory and practice into a neo-narrative."
My Takeaway:
For me, the "studio" is found on the pavements and within the civic spaces of Southwark: Peckham Square, Rye Lane, Camberwell, Peckham Road, Burgess Park, Southwark Council HQ, Nigerian Modernism at the Tate Modern, and Chumleigh Gardens. My practice, which comprises photo-walks and photo-writing sessions alongside Encounter Curators, is an intentional act of bricolage. It draws from my professional background as a design strategist, design educator, participatory photographer, and participatory visual arts researcher, melding these disciplines with the lived, sensory expertise of the Yoruba-speaking diaspora.
We are not merely documenting space; we are engaging in a "border crossing." By presenting the credible and compelling stories of Encounter Curators to the "triumvirate" of urban policy, planning, and design, we create a third space. These neo-narratives are inherently richer and more inclusive than the institutional frameworks that have gone before, surfacing knowledge that has been historically "invisible" to the city.
Stewart reminds us that when we treat participatory research as a partnership, we don't just find data, we author a new story for the city.
In reflecting on my current research into Yoruba Diasporic Technics in Southwark, I find a compelling anchor in Robyn Stewart’s Creating New Stories for Praxis. Her work offers a vital framework for understanding the "studio" not as a walled-in room, but as a lived, participatory arena.
Stewart (2001) writes:
"The relationships between the studio form meaningful partnerships... These stories address processes for exploring the aesthetic, empirical, and ethical dimensions of what it is to practice... These are processes of border crossings that come together as bricolage. The resulting stories create a third space by melding theory and practice into a neo-narrative."
My Takeaway:
For me, the "studio" is found on the pavements and within the civic spaces of Southwark: Peckham Square, Rye Lane, Camberwell, Peckham Road, Burgess Park, Southwark Council HQ, Nigerian Modernism at the Tate Modern, and Chumleigh Gardens. My practice, which comprises photo-walks and photo-writing sessions alongside Encounter Curators, is an intentional act of bricolage. It draws from my professional background as a design strategist, design educator, participatory photographer, and participatory visual arts researcher, melding these disciplines with the lived, sensory expertise of the Yoruba-speaking diaspora.
We are not merely documenting space; we are engaging in a "border crossing." By presenting the credible and compelling stories of Encounter Curators to the "triumvirate" of urban policy, planning, and design, we create a third space. These neo-narratives are inherently richer and more inclusive than the institutional frameworks that have gone before, surfacing knowledge that has been historically "invisible" to the city.
Stewart reminds us that when we treat participatory research as a partnership, we don't just find data, we author a new story for the city.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review