Research
The UTS Centre for New Writing's starting point is to acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK's distinction between creative activities and practice on the one hand and research on the other. Not all creative activity and practice, even of the highest quality, constitutes research and much research in the creative arts and creative writing, in particular, involves no such creative activity. However, there is much high-quality research that can be undertaken successfully only if creative practice is essential to the work. It is in this innovative and unexplored area where creative practice is regarded as research itself or as an integral component in relation to research questions, issues and problems, and to the generation of new or enhanced knowledge that the Centre for New Writing is concentrating much of its work.
Objectives
The objectives of the Centre for New Writing's Research Strength are:
- to develop practice-led and applied research activity of the highest quality.
- to enable creative practitioners to pursue well-defined small-scale projects, or parts of larger projects, that are likely to bring advances in insights, knowledge or understanding of interest and value both to the research community and to a wider public.
- to maximise the value of research outcomes by promoting their dissemination and, where appropriate, to facilitate the knowledge transfer of those outcomes, both to the research community and to the community at large.
- to demonstrate that creative practice is an important example of 'practice as research' and to develop more accurate esteem measures around practice-based and creative research.