One of my own confusions that I have been grappling with through this research period is what is meant by practice-based and practice-led research. My experience has been that these terms, which describe the generative and reciprocal relationship between research and practice, are different in subtle but significant ways. Yet they also seem to be used interchangeably at times. Being a bit of an obsessive when it comes to understanding terminology, I have been looking into how these terms are understood by others.
Within the field of creativity, Linda Candy’s differentiation is helpful. She describes practice-based research as ‘an original investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge partly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice’, whereas practice-led research ‘is concerned with the nature of practice and leads to new knowledge that has operational significance for that practice’. In other words, practice-based research emphasises the practice itself as a mode of research, with the outcomes from practice, an exhibition, or performance for example, being legitimate research outcomes. Research that is practice-led, on the other hand, studies the practice itself and produces knowledge that informs the future development of that practice. In this way practice-led research resembles action research, in that it is a way of practitioners learning about and enhancing how something is done, through a focused study on it.
These two characteristics – that practice can be constructed as a form of research and that its purpose can be to bring about change – both appear relevant in the context of the art museum. Museum professionals in my experience are keen to locate their research as an integral part of their professional activity, seeing this a means by which to raise the profile of their programmes and activities and enhance and enrich their work. So, should we use both terms, or bring the two together, as in practice based/led research? To add further complexity, within Tate Learning we have been referring to our ongoing initiative with staff as ‘practice as research,’ in part to reinforce the equality of the relationship between the two activities. But does this term convey the various motivations, methods and outcomes associated with practice based/led research adequately?
These and other questions were at the centre of a presentation given by Dr Esther Sayers to staff at Tate Modern this week as part of a Practice as Research Forum organised by Helena Hunter, with the help of Rita Evans and Beckie Leach-Macdonald. Over the course of two hours, Esther took us nimbly through different understandings of practice itself and of what she described as ‘practice research,’ as this is the term that Goldsmiths College, where Esther works, has adopted. She highlighted the value of knowledge derived from doing as well as conceptual thinking, particularly in relation to researching gallery learning. She drew attention to the risk of ‘explaining’ rather than ‘encountering’ practice and of theorising away from practice rather than theory emerging from and returning to practice. She introduced us to methodologies that can be employed within practice research and had us undertake our own mini collaborative sensory ethnographic study within the Turbine Hall. The experience was illuminating and valuable for those of us taking part.
Esther also reinforced the importance of practice research being a space of uncertainty and discovery, where ideas can be explored and revised and where knowledge gained through an embodied engagement with stuff and people provides insights into what we do and how we operate in the world. This resonates with my own experience as a practitioner researcher who is learning all the time through the doing of my practice and my research. Yet my experience of the art museum also tallies with Esther’s cautionary note regarding the willingness of cultural organisations to live with unpredictability and ambiguity and acknowledge ‘not knowing’, all of which is necessary for practice research to thrive. Esther did not have a ready answer for this and neither do I, but she urged us to keep going and continue to implement practice research in all its various forms.
What I realised at the end of the session is that rather than spend forever fretting about the different terms, what is vital is to recognise the important contribution that practice, coupled with research, can make to our understanding of our work and how it sits in wider theoretical and doing contexts. The more I read and speak to people and involve myself in various institutions, the more I can see how practice as research, to stick with the Tate term, affords a means to deepen our knowledge and enhance the activities and experience of the museum.
PRAM 