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		Research in the Creative Arts
		98/6 Dennis Strand Canberra School of Art The Australian National University May 1998
		Evaluations and Investigations Program Higher Education Division Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

©Commonwealth of Australia 1998

ISBN 0 642 23768 9

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission from AusInfo. Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the Manager, Legislative Services, AusInfo, GPO Box 84, Canberra ACT 2601.

This report is funded under the Evaluation and Investigations Programme of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.

Executive Summary and Recommendations

The Research in the Creative Arts Project is a joint study of the Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) and the National Council of Heads of Tertiary Music Schools (NACHTMUS), funded under the DEETYA Evaluation and Investigations Program. In 1996, a grant was awarded for a project to undertake a comprehensive study of research outputs in art, craft, design, music and drama in order to develop a set of performance indicators and weightings in the creative arts. This report details this information and is organised into four parts:

Part A—the context for the study;

Part B—the meaning of research in the creative arts;

Part C—the funding of creative arts research; and

Part D—research performance indicators for the creative arts.

Part A

Chapter 1: An Overview of the Creative Arts in Australian Universities

This chapter outlines the context for the study, providing an overview of the place of the creative arts both in Australian society and in our universities, together with a statistical profile of staff and student involvement in the creative arts.

The creative arts are a key contributor to the development of an Australian culture that shapes both our individual and collective identities. The arts are dynamic, reflecting the changing socio-political climates, adding to our understanding and appreciation of our culture, shaping our values and attitudes. They accommodate in positive ways the multi-faceted traditions that exist in Australia and are playing an important part in the reconciliation process with Australia’s indigenous peoples. In a practical way, the arts are a very important contributor to the nation’s economy and a significant source of export dollars. The Australia Council estimates that in 1997 the value of the total supply of cultural goods and services will be greater than $15 billion.

There is a long history of the creative arts contributing in important ways to the core activity of universities. Most of Australia’s arts practitioners are now educated and trained in creative arts schools located in universities. Universities provide an important audience for the arts, and have a key leadership role in developing an Australian artistic culture.

The merger of many creative arts schools into universities under the Unified National System of universities in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought about major changes to both the schools and the universities, some positive and some negative. For some universities it was a case of the ‘poor cousins coming to stay’ and ‘another hungry mouth to feed’, as they brought little in the way of research resources with them. In addition, many universities were having to operate their research programs with reduced funds.

Academic staff generally have three broad areas of professional responsibility—teaching, research and administration—although in the visual and performing arts they have two additional areas—community service and professional practice. The creative arts are at the forefront of universities’ community service activities, although there is often not proper recognition of the financial cost to the creative arts schools of presenting these activities, nor are there formal mechanisms for acknowledging the contribution of academic staff to them.

Academics in the arts are expected, as part of their professional obligations, to maintain and develop their expertise and professional standing. Apart from their capacity to teach and to communicate, they are hired by the university because of their reputation as highly competent and/or experienced practitioners of their field. Working conditions reflect a mutual expectation and commitment between the university and the individual to maintain this practice at a high level and to produce original work.

Statistics

In 1996 there were 24 412 full-time equivalent students undertaking visual and performing arts courses in universities and colleges around Australia. During the 1990s they have consistently represented about 5.0 per cent of all higher education FTE student enrolments and in 1996 they were just under the 5 per cent mark. The greatest concentration of creative arts students occurs in the larger universities in the major cities, where about 45 per cent of all arts students attend universities in Melbourne (24 per cent of all students) and Sydney (21 per cent). Music is the single most popular activity in terms of enrolments in a discipline, while at the other end of the spectrum there are small numbers of students undertaking dance, craft and art conservation courses. Creative arts students make up only 2.2 per cent of all postgraduate students; however, as a proportion of all students undertaking research higher degrees, they are 3.9 per cent of all enrolments, and represent 8.4 per cent of all enrolments in masters by Research degrees.

In 1996, staff in visual and performing arts schools accounted for 5.4 per cent of all teaching and teaching–research staff, although there is considerable variation within the individual universities. Since the late 1980s there have been consistent demands from both the creative arts and other interests in universities for academic staff to upgrade their qualifications and to become more research focussed. There has been a significant overall improvement in the level of qualifications held by creative arts academics between 1992 and 1996, including a sharp increase in the number with postgraduate qualifications. In 1992, there were 36.6 per cent of creative arts academics with either Doctorates (12.9 per cent) or masters degrees (23.7 per cent), whereas in 1996 these proportions had increased to a total of 50.8 per cent—21.0 per cent and 29.8 per cent respectively. The visual and performing arts was one of the two fields of study which showed the greatest improvement in the gaining of higher degrees, indicative of important changes in the research culture of many schools of art, music, theatre and dance. The biggest changes occurred among staff in the universities that were colleges of advanced education prior to the introduction of the Unified National System in 1987.

There has been considerable interest in these staff and student statistics—in policy and planning contexts, for example. The Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs publishes its higher education statistics annually and, while their publications provide very useful information, they are limited in the range of tables that are published. In view of the lack of access to information the Advisory Group recommends that:

Recommendation 1

The Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs should expand its Selected Higher Education Staff Statistics and Selected Higher Education Student Statistics publications to include more information on staff numbers, student participation and completions at all levels in the visual and performing arts, in order to permit more meaningful comparisons between these areas and other academic areas.

Part B

Chapter 2: Research and Publication in the Creative Arts

Research and Research Equivalence

The meaning of the term ‘Research in the Creative Arts’ is a controversial subject where there is a lack of common agreement among key stakeholders. Defining both research and, with it, publication in the creative arts are important tasks for this study, as there are direct links between their definitions and the distribution of research funds. In this chapter, definitions of research as understood by the main funding bodies—the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and the Australian Research Council—are examined, together with those from professional peak bodies, significant people within the creative arts, and other academics with an interest in the subject. The meaning of publication in the creative arts is similarly explored.

The question of what is research in the creative arts is one that has special significance in Australian universities today but little significance elsewhere. Its importance lies in the fact that there are scarce dollars attached to the definitions of research. This has led to the need to define research in the creative arts in ways that will give the creative arts in universities a foothold in the competition for research dollars. Attempts to force mainstream creative arts activities into the mould of scientific research has led to semantic arguments that often have not been particularly helpful. However, with only two funded categories—teaching and research—the opportunities for alternative arguments have been limited.

It is clear, however, that some of the practice of academics in the creative arts is already meeting the criteria and definitions of mainstream research to the satisfaction of the main research funding agencies. The Australian Research Council, the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and other organisations have consistently recognised such projects through their funding of research in the creative arts over the years. The Advisory Group wishes to see this form of creative arts research continue to expand and recommends that:

Recommendation 2

Individual universities, the Australian Research Council and the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs should continue actively supporting that part of the work of creative arts academics which meets the prime criteria of conventional university research.

Important as this kind of research is to the creative arts, it represents only one facet of creative arts research—research about the arts. There remains the question of the research activity of the great majority of the creative arts academics in Australian universities, who are employed as artists, rather than theoreticians or historians. Their research methodologies are in the arts, their investigations are in their practice. Unfortunately much of their practice is not recognised or funded, in spite of arguments that their work does meet the accepted definitions of research, is investigatory, and is about inquiry.

We are faced with an inequitable and confusing situation where a substantial degree of high quality creative arts research is neither supported as research nor even recognised as such by the major funding organisations. This has a flow on effect to the individual universities which often take their lead from these organisations, resulting in a double disadvantage.

In response to these problems, a pragmatic solution is proposed that allows the debate over creative work in universities to move forward. It is proposed that, in addition to conventional mechanisms, the major funding bodies and individual universities adopt the notion of research equivalence as an appropriate and valid mechanism for recognition of the great variety of research-based work in the visual and performing arts. The term is widely used in overseas universities to recognise that the research-based work of academic artists is the equivalent of scientific and scholarly research and of equal value to it in the advancement of knowledge and in terms of its legitimacy to access research funds.

Such a position recognises that the research methodologies, the forms of publication and the outcomes of creative arts research will be different from, but equivalent to, research in other disciplines, removing the necessity of having to artificially ‘shoehorn’ some kinds of creative arts research into a traditional research model. In so doing, a key distinction is drawn between research-based practice, which is investigatory in nature and therefore eligible for research funding, and professional practice, which is not investigatory and consequently not eligible.

Distinguishing between research and research equivalence would allow the Australia Council to retain its long held exclusion on funding of ‘academic research’ while allowing Australia Council grants (and other philanthropic grants) nonetheless to be counted within a ‘research equivalent’ section of the National Competitive Grants Index, from which they are currently excluded. Such a distinction should also be of assistance to universities in achieving a fairer division of ‘research’ funds between creative arts and other sectors of their institutions. The adoption of this notion has implications for the funding bodies, such as the Australian Research Council, which may need to broaden its criteria to include both research and research equivalents for its guidelines. In this regard the Advisory Group recommends that:

Recommendation 3

In addition to conventional definitions of research, individual universities and the major funding bodies (the Australian Research Council, the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and the Australia Council) should adopt the notion of research equivalence as an appropriate and valid concept for recognition of research-based practice and performance in the creative arts, and incorporate it into their documentation and processes for allocating research funds. Research equivalent activity should be recognised as being equivalent to research and scholarly activities in traditional fields.

In developing expanded categories of research outputs for the creative arts, a full and meaningful explanation of what constitutes publication in the arts is presented together with discussion of the links between publication and research. Composite Index definitions of publication have been conservative and subject to frequent change. In the context of defining research output, publication has tended to refer largely to the written word and primacy has been given to books, chapters in books, refereed and unrefereed journal articles, refereed and unrefereed conference papers, reviews, edited works and letters or notes. Publication in other forms—the spoken word, the musical or dramatic performance, dance or visual texts—have had limited and non-continuous acceptance as manifestations of research activity. This limited view of publication as part of research is also shared by the Australian Research Council.

While there are many academics working in the visual and performing arts who publish in similar ways—musicologists, art and music historians, art theorists—for most academics who are also practicing artists, publication takes other forms. For the painter or the craftsperson, making the work publicly known involves exhibition of their work in an art gallery or public space; for the playwright or the

choreographer it occurs on the theatre stage or in the film studio; for the musician or composer it is through public performance in the concert hall or through sound or audio-visual recordings; for the designer it is through the design or product.

The decision to limit publications data collection to four Research Quantum categories has effectively confined the national list of research publication to the written word, ignoring all other forms. This has placed the creative arts in an invidious position. Such situations highlight the need for universities to develop systems for their internal purposes that cover the range of research and publication activity of all the academic disciplines and not simply a select few. Consequently the Advisory Group recommends that:

Recommendation 4

In adopting the notion of research equivalence, individual universities and the major funding bodies (the Australian Research Council, the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and the Australia Council) should broaden their definitions of publication to encompass all the accepted forms of publication in the creative arts.

Part C

Chapter 3: Current Funding Arrangements

This chapter provides an analysis of research funding to the creative arts through the three main channels—the Australian Research Council, the Research Quantum and the Australia Council. It also reports on the recently completed National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education in the United Kingdom.

The ARC section examines the distribution of funds in 1996 and 1997 through its five main funding programs and its fellowships and postgraduate awards. The analysis indicates a consistent pattern of science-based projects receiving 70 per cent of the grants and 80 per cent of the funds. Overall, the visual and performing arts received 1 per cent of the grants and 0.6 per cent of the total funding. It also examines the distribution of funds in the period 1988–1992 and compares it with the distribution today, finding that in 1997 the creative arts as a sector receives about the same share of ARC grants that it did prior to 1992. This is despite an increase in the proportion of visual and performing arts staff, an increase in postgraduate qualifications held by them, and the development in many places of a more mature research culture.

It identifies a number of reasons for the lack of success and concludes that the challenge for the creative arts is to produce more high quality submissions for research grants, while for the Australian Research Council it is to broaden its view of research and, specifically, what constitutes research in the creative arts. Four recommendations affecting the Australian Research Council are made:

Recommendation 5

The Australian Research Council, in determining the ‘track record’ of applicants for ARC grants, should recognise the record of applicants from the creative arts in terms of criteria which take account of past performance, not only in traditional research but also in research equivalent activity.

Recommendation 6

University faculties, schools and departments of creative arts, and individuals working within them, should increase their efforts to submit more and better quality applications to the Australian Research Council, and to be prepared to re-work rejected applications, recognising that in this competitive arena an application may not succeed at the first attempt.

Recommendation 7

The Australian Research Council should provide specific support for initiatives which are aimed at improving the quality and quantity of applications from the creative arts; and

the national peak organisations representing the discipline areas should play an active role in assisting the development of such applications and their assessments.

Recommendation 8

The Australian Research Council should maintain a representative from the visual and performing arts on the Humanities sub-panel of its Large Research Grants Committee beyond the term of its current visual and performing arts member, which expires at the end of 1998.

The Research Quantum (RQ) section looks at its distribution to universities, the significance of the financial measure, publications measure and the postgraduate degree measure to the arts. It finds very large differentials in the distribution of the Research Quantum that indicate that in the top quartile of universities academics will receive, on average, $8 750 per academic staff member, compared to $1 428 per academic staff member in a fourth quartile university. In the largest and most important element affecting the distribution of funds, the financial element (which reflects the capacity of universities to attract nationally competitive grants), Australia Council grants, which are the most important competitive program for the arts, have been disallowed from inclusion in two important areas. In response, the following recommendation is made:

Recommendation 9

The Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs should include Australia Council grants in the allocative mechanism of the Research Infrastructure Block Grants and the National Competitive Grants Index. These should include all Australia Council grants whether or not they had formal university support.

The publications measure has also provided the best avenue for the creative arts sector to attract research funds, to increase its profile and bargaining position within the universities, and to be taken seriously by them and the funding bodies as a bona fide and legitimate competitor for research funds.

Chapter 4: Recent Developments Affecting the Research Quantum

This chapter provides an overview of decisions by the Commonwealth Government which have affected the funding of universities and, specifically, research funding. Changes to the publications component of the Composite Index following an audit of the 1995 data set are examined, including initial responses to it by the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs and the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee. One university’s response is included as an example of a positive and sympathetic reaction to the changing circumstances. Other developments—the Government’s response to the Senate Inquiry into Arts Education, and the National Symposium on Research in the Performing Arts—are also raised.

The Composite Index has undergone some important changes in 1997 with the decision to radically alter the eligibility criteria for the publications element of the Index. In March, the then Minister, Senator Vanstone announced that the number of eligible publication categories would be reduced from twenty-two to four, effectively excluding Categories H (Design) and J (Creative Works)—the two categories covering the creative arts. The publications data process was seen to be problematical for a number of reasons:

an audit report of the 1994 publications data collection had found an unacceptably high error rate;

there was a widespread belief in universities that the data collection requirements were excessive and that the process was inefficient;

there was a concern in the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs that the universities were using the data in ways that had never been intended; and

there was generally a wish for a more streamlined, efficient and less time consuming process.

The danger for the creative arts, however, was that with the demise of Categories H and J some universities might also adopt the new system in a literal way and provide funds only to those schools or departments which ‘scored’ on the new proxy index. In August 1997, however, the Composite Index Working Party wrote jointly to all vice-chancellors indicating that universities ‘should properly take account of the relative contribution of each discipline’ to its research output, making it clear that there is a need for systems which can, and will, accommodate all appropriate outputs. The Advisory Group strongly agrees with this statement and makes the following recommendation:

Recommendation 10

Universities should actively support the AVCC statement concerning the need to collect a broad range of publications data to assist with the allocation of research funds within universities. Data that properly take account of the value and range of research and research equivalent outputs in the creative arts should be collected and counted in the allocation of funds.

In responding to the new conditions the Advisory Group sees the Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Works Grant Scheme as an appropriate and sympathetic response to changing conditions and urges Australian universities to ensure that they have mechanisms in place that give proper recognition to the creative arts and their need for support. It recommends:

Recommendation 11

Universities should develop mechanisms, appropriate to their institution, for distributing research funds in ways which recognise the importance of research and research equivalent activity in the creative arts and the need for their appropriate and continuing financial support.

During 1994, the Senate’s Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee undertook an inquiry into arts education in Australian schools, TAFE colleges and universities. It published its report, Arts Education, in October 1995 and in the chapter addressing the creative arts in universities, ‘University reforms: the rough end of the pineapple for arts?’, made some specific recommendations about the Relative Funding Model, noting with concern the submissions which suggested systematic disadvantage of the creative arts. This report covers many of the issues raised by the Senate Committee in these three recommendations and will be a useful resource for the bodies given the task of taking the Government’s response to the next stage. It is therefore recommended that:

Recommendation 12

In line with the Government’s response to Recommendations 23, 24 and 25 of the Senate Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts References Committee’s Arts Education, the Composite Index Working Party, the Australian Research Council and the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee should consider the findings and recommendations of this report as a matter of high priority.

The National Symposium on Research in the Performing Arts

Arising out of this Symposium held in Melbourne in May 1997, there was a concerted feeling among leading people in the creative arts who attended that there was a need for a national body to represent the research and policy interests of the creative arts. At a subsequent meeting of the project’s Advisory Group, which the chairs of all the national peak creative arts bodies attended, the idea was taken further. The Advisory Group supports the notion of a national body and recommends:

Recommendation 13

The national creative arts peak bodies should continue the process begun in 1997 of developing a nationally coordinated approach to advocacy for creative arts policy and research interests.

Chapter 5: A Survey of Funding Needs for the Creative Arts

The project identified a need for a description of both the current levels of resourcing for research, scholarship and creative works by academic staff and postgraduate students and, importantly, the level of unmet need for resources. In order to gauge this need, a survey of the heads of all creative arts schools was conducted.

It is estimated that in 1996 creative arts schools in Australian universities would have received about $4.2 million of grants from external sources—the Australian Research Council, the Australia Council and other sources such as industry, state government arts funds, private funds and others. In comparison, an estimated $4.7 million was received from university sources. External funding is critical to the maintenance and development of research, scholarship and creative works for academics and postgraduate students in the creative arts. At present this funding is not taken into account in the calculations for the Research Quantum. For those research and research equivalent grants that are awarded on a competitive basis, the Advisory Group believes that they should be counted and recommends that:

Recommendation 14

The Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs should include competitive grants for research and research equivalent activity from state and territory government organisations, together with competitive grants from cultural and philanthropic agencies and organisations, in the allocative mechanism of the Research Infrastructure Block Grants, and the National Competitive Grants Index, including those that are awarded to people who applied as individuals without necessarily seeking the formal support of their university.

About one respondent in six considered that their school was receiving an adequate level of funding for research, scholarship and creative works, whereas five out of six thought otherwise. Without the support of external organisations, which provide almost half of this funding, the figures would be substantially worse. Some respondents indicated that the internal funding situation in their universities was in crisis, especially as it related to postgraduate students and provision of funds for performance works. More than a quarter of respondents rated their situation as ‘grossly inadequate’ indicating a very difficult situation.

Respondents indicated their three highest priority areas for research funding in 1997. It seems that the amount spent in 1996 in these priority areas (approximately $4.0 million) is about half of what is needed in 1997 ($7.6 million), indicating a significant gap. Overall the survey shows a real need for additional funding in creative arts schools, with the estimated current funding levels of about $4.7 million from the universities and $4.2 million from other sources probably only meeting about half of the true level of need.

Part D

Chapter 6: A Statistically-based Rationale for the Development of Research Performance Indicators for the Creative Arts

In this chapter a rationale for weighting the various kinds of publication outputs from the creative arts is developed. Using the 1995 publications data set, it analyses the distribution of the data and identifies the 1.0 level publication as the key element against which other publication activity can be compared. The 1.0 publication accounts for at least half of all unweighted contributions and probably more than two-thirds of weighted contributions. The average output for an FTE academic staff member under the superseded system was about one publication per year, which translates into about 0.8 weighted publications per FTE academic per year.

Chapter 7: Characteristics of Publications at Three Levels

This chapter examines the characteristics of publications as defined by the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, and according to their statistical profile. Publications at three levels—the 1.0 level, less than 1.0 and greater than 1.0—are detailed as a precursor to the development of equivalent categories for the creative arts. The 1.0 publication is the main focus, as it is the one that largely determines the ‘shape’ of the definitions of other levels. In addition to the Research Quantum eligibility characteristics, a number of other criteria have been added which reflect both common considerations and others of a specialised nature which are specific to a particular arts discipline, allowing finer grained descriptions of creative arts activities:

the level of sustained effort required to produce a given output at a given level;

the statistical distribution of publication outputs within the various levels;

location of publication—where the work is ‘published’;

the question of whether or not the publication is the output of research, research equivalent activity or professional practice; and

review of a work by peers or other quality assurance mechanisms.

Because of the importance of the 1.0 publication in determining the relative value of other works, a checklist has been developed to spell out its specific characteristics.

Chapter 8: Categorisations and Weightings for the Creative Arts

The final chapter details the categories and weighting for the various visual and performing arts disciplines and makes the following recommendation:

Recommendation 15

Individual universities should adopt the categories and weightings as detailed in this report as valid, appropriate and reliable measures of research and research equivalent performance for the creative arts and use them in the allocation of research funds.

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