Smart Art

Next up is Robyn Stewart from the University of Southern Queensland, speaking on the practice-led researcher as a mindful 'knowledge worker'. (And I just lost my first paragraph, I'm afraid. Bugger.) She notes that there is no practice without an informed theory. Practitioner-research is a form of hybrid practice, then, which aims to capture and reflect the processes of artistic or design practice. It metamorphoses theory into practice, and studios function as experimental laboratories of practice in this context. Robyn points to creative work by Shelagh Morgan as an example here.

The research approach here is eclectic and breaks many boundaries; it is multifaceted. It creates intentional meanings through rigorous planning, documentation, and design. The process involves both artistic and scientific elements with elements of bricolage, perhaps reflecting a contemporary postmodern impulse of reconnecting with existing antecedents - we cannot break with tradition unless we are familiar with that tradition.

While set traditional approaches may feel constraining, they serve here mainly as points of departure, as a basis from which to develop one's own research approaches and scholarly choices. We are also challenged to recognise our role as researchers by sharing our scholarly practices in an effort of building a practice-led researcher's resource kit. Robyn highlights ethnographic and autobiographic (or autographic) approaches as well as narratology and feminist sociology as potential elements of this researcher's resource kit. Many of these methods of course come under the banner of personal experience methods.

The smart artist, then, Robyn concludes, will hopefully become the 'super-practitioner' of the future and ascend to a new level of mindful practice.