Too many cooks? Co-creating and co-teaching studio courses in the creative media context : a career-focussed approach

This Case Study relates to the creation and implementation of career‐focussed courses in Creative Media for film, television, animation, broadcast and web contexts. The paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of co‐teaching, and how different professional and academic backgrounds and disciplines can productively inform curriculum design and delivery in the academic/professional context. The authors, as co‐creators and co‐lecturers, have developed a number of courses which represent current working models for intermediate to advanced level academic/professional study, and attract students from across the creative disciplines; including theatre, media, visual arts and music. These courses are structured to develop in students a wide range of aesthetic and technical skills, as well as their ability to apply those skills professionally within and across the creative media industries. Issues regarding the balance between academic rigour, practical hands‐on skill development, assessment, logistics, resources, teamwork and other issues, are examined in the paper.

Looking yonder : a model of arts engagement with teacher artists and professional artists in Queensland Schools

Since 2007 Kite Arts Education Program (KITE), based at Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), has been engaged in delivering a series of theatre-based experiences for children in low socio-economic primary schools in Queensland. KITE @ QPAC is an early childhood arts initiative of The Queensland Department of Education that is supported by and located at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. KITE delivers relevant contemporary arts education experiences for Prep to Year 3 students and their teachers across Queensland. The theatre-based experiences form part of a three year artist-in-residency project titled Yonder that includes performances developed by the children with the support and leadership of Teacher Artists from KITE for their community and parents/carers in a peak community cultural institution. This paper provides an overview of the Yonder model and unpacks some challenges in activating the model for schools and cultural organisations.

Do look now : re-imagining and re-purposing audiovisual creative practice

The appropriation and elaborate re-working of mediated images and sound stand in a fluid relationship with established notions such as creativity, originality and artistic freedom. The evocative, recontextualised montage works of the eminent video artists Christian Marclay (The Clock) and Tracey Moffatt (Other; Love) may be viewed critically in the light of several theorists’ work, such as Walter Benjamin’s ideas on the crisis of reproduction and reactivation. The ironic pastiche, Do Look Now, a recent video installation work, is presented here as a similar dialogical intervention, representing a subversive deconstruction and critique of filmic codes and conventions, as well as being a new work crafted out of old film clips. (The films quoted in the work are listed here in an Appendix). These practical provocations are framed within a renewed, ‘queering’ investigation of creative works. Such an exploration is, arguably, both illuminating and liberating for particular practitioners and researchers engaged with the unpredictable intersections of creative meaning-making in a heavily legalised, mediated and digitised world.

Sustainable creative career development pathways for young people in Tanzania : a case study

Tanzania has a rich and diverse cultural history based in community cultural life. However, at present, young people have limited opportunity to exploit this richness of traditional knowledge and engage in creative jobs as their means of future sustainable employment. Hence, the significant challenge remains: how to integrate and enhance the traditional knowledge in a learning strategy, while there is no “inter-ministerial action and institutional mechanisms” (United Nations 2008, 33-35) to promote creative employment for young people. This article reports on a case study that examined how the two Ministries of Culture and Education might work together to support Tanzania’s young people to secure, and engage successfully in creative jobs. The case study employed mixed methods, incorporating questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The study was undertaken in Dar-Es-Salaam, Mwanza, Bagamoyo, Dodoma, Lindi and Morogoro from July to October, 2012. This paper discusses some of the issues and argues that there is no practical utilization of traditional knowledge and skills in “putting education to work” (UNESCO 2012, 170) for the better prospects of young people and to reveal the story of their lives. Although this study is specific to Tanzania, the case may also apply to other developing countries.

The 2013 creative industries statistical analysis for Western Australia

The Department of Culture and the Arts undertook the first mapping of Perth’s creative industries in 2007 in partnership with the City of Perth and the Departments of Industry and Resources and the Premier and Cabinet. The 2013 Creative Industries Statistical Analysis for Western Australia report has updated the mapping with the 2011 Census employment data to provide invaluable information for the State’s creative industries, their peak associations and potential investors. The report maps sector employment numbers and growth between the 2006 and 2011 Census in the areas of music, visual and performing arts, film, TV and radio, advertising and marketing, software and digital content, publishing, and architecture and design, which includes designer fashion.

Ambivalent realities : postcolonial experiences in contemporary visual arts practice

This practice-led research project investigates how new postcolonial conditions require new methods of critique to fully engage with the nuances of real world, 'lived' experiences. Framed by key aspects of postcolonial theory, this project examines contemporary artists' contributions to investigations of identity, race, ethnicity, otherness and diaspora, as well as questions of locality, nationality, and transnationality. Approaching these issues through the lens of my own experience as an artist and subject, it results in a body of creative work and a written exegesis that creatively and critically examine the complexities, ambiguities and ambivalences of the contemporary postcolonial condition.

The curious case of the embedded creative : creative cultural occupations outside the creative industries

This chapter is concerned with innovation that involves creative cultural occupations, but not within the creative industries. Rather, we examine the operation of cultural creative occupations that exist outside the creative industries - so-called 'embedded creatives' who work across all industry sectors (Cunningham and Higgs 2009). In doing so, we concur with Bilton (2007) that the separation of creative industries from other industries is a 'false step'. All industries must be innovative; however, they also must be able to combine both scientific and artistic creativity, and that creativity comes from the intersection of different thinking styles (Kurtzberg 2005). Moreover, we suggest that there are now detailed empirical studies, as well as a nascent theoretical base, to suggest that the transdisciplinarity which results from embedded cultural creativity is an engine of growth in the broader economy. Thus, it is relevant to both policymakers and managers. This chapter addresses the following questions: What is the role and significance of the embedded creative? Given a paucity of detailed empirical work in the area to date, what can be deduced from what extant literature there is about the nature of employment and management of these workers? And what are the practical implications of these consideration?

The “virtual” producer in the recording studio : media networks in long distance peripheral performances

The producer has for many years been a central agent in recording studio sessions; the validation of this role was, in many ways, related to the producer’s physical presence in the studio, to a greater or lesser extent. However, improvements in the speed of digital networks have allowed studio sessions to be produced long-distance, in real-time, through communication programs such as Skype or REDIS. How does this impact on the role of the producer, a “nexus between the creative inspiration of the artist, the technology of the recording studio, and the commercial aspirations of the record company” (Howlett 2012)? From observations of a studio recording session in Lisbon produced through Skype from New York, this article focuses on the role of the producer in these relatively new recording contexts involving long distance media networks. Methodology involved participant observation carried out in Estúdios Namouche in Lisbon (where the session took place), as part of doctoral research. This ethnographic approach also included a number of semi-directed ethnographic interviews of the different actors in this scenario—musicians, recording engineers, composers and producers. As a theoretical framework, the research of De Zutter and Sawyer on Distributed Creativity is used, as the recording studio sets an example of “a cognitive system where […] tasks are not accomplished by separate individuals, but rather through the interactions of those individuals” (DeZutter 2009:4). Therefore, creativity often emerges as a result of this interaction.

Creative industries : a new pathway

The creative industries have become a key part of the economic development of many nations, with a particularly lively debate in the developing world taking place now.

Iterative intersections

Iterative Intersectioning is a body of art works that comes out of the collaboration between author and electronic artist Jen Seevinck and a community of print artists, most particularly Elizabeth Saunders (EJ) and Robert Oakman. The work shown here is concerned with the creative process of collaboration, specifically as this informs visual forms. This is through our focus on process. This process has facilitated a 'conversational' exchange between all artists and a corresponding evolution in the artworks. In each case the dialogue is either between the author, Jen and EJ or between Jen and Robert. It consists of passing work between parties, interpreting it and working into it, before passing it back. The result is a series of art works including those shown here. The concept evolves in parallel to this. Importantly, at each of her iterations of creative work, the author Jen determines a similar 'treatment' or 'interpretation' across both print artists works at that time. A synthesis of EJ and Robert's creative interpretation -- at a high level -- occurs. In this sense the concept and works can be understood to intersect with one another.

Bridging the gap in school achievement through the arts : summary report

Educational Transformations Pty Ltd was commissioned by The Song Room (TSR) to conduct a study of the impact of TSR programs in government schools in relatively disadvantaged communities in New South Wales (NSW) on indicators of student performance that have been identified in previous research as related to potential engagement in juvenile crime. Students in Grades 5 and 6 were the subjects of study. TSR is a not-for-profit organisation in receipt of grants from public and private sources that conducts free programs in the performing arts in schools where these are not currently offered. These programs are conducted by mutual agreement between TSR and participating schools. Across Australia, approximately 200 schools and 40,000 students are engaged for a minimum of six months each year. Students typically participate for approximately one hour per week in each class. Instruction is provided by a Teaching Artist (TA), contracted to TSR and working in partnership with the classroom teacher at the school of placement. TSR received a three-year grant from the Macquarie Group Foundation to investigate the efficacy of its interventions in improving social and education outcomes for children in a range of high need target group areas participating in its program...

Experimental creative practices

From the earliest human creative expressions there has been a relationship between art, technology and science. In Western history this relationship is often seen as drawing from the advances in both art and science that occurred during the Renaissance, and as captured in the polymath figure of da Vinci. The 20th century development of computer technology, and the more recent emergence of creative practice-led research as a recognised methodology, has lead to a renewed appreciation of the relationship between art, science and technology. This chapter focuses on transdisciplinary practices that bring together arts, science and technology in imaginative ways. Showing how such combinations have led to changes in both practice and forms of creative expression for artists and their partners across disciplines. The aim of this chapter is to sketch an outline of the types of transdisiplinary creative research projects that currently signify best practice in the field, which is done in reference to key literature and exemplars drawn from the Australian context.

Open-ended art environments motivate participation

In this research we observe the situated, embodied and playful interaction that participants engage in with open-ended interactive artworks. The larger project from which this work derives [28] contributes a methodological model for the evaluation of open-ended interactive artwork that treats each work individually and recognises the importance of the artist intent and the traditions from which the work derives. In this paper, we describe this evolving methodology for evaluating and understanding participation via three case studies of open-ended interactive art installations. This analysis builds an understanding of open-ended free-play non-narrative environments and the affordances these environments enable for participants.

Evoking gesture in interactive art

In this paper, we describe an interactive artwork that uses large body gestures as its primary interactive mode. The artist intends the work to provoke active reflection in the audience by way of gesture and content. The technology is not the focus, rather the aim is to provoke memory, to elicit feelings of connective human experiences in a required-to-participate audience. We find the work provokes a diverse and contradictory set of responses. The methods used to understand this include qualitative methods common to evaluating interactive art works, as well as in-depth discussions with the artist herself. This paper is relevant to the Human - Centered Computing track because in all stages of the design of the work - as well as the evaluation - the focus is on the human aspect; the computing is designed to enable all-too-human responses.