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Cooking Class: Helping Students to Cook and Eat Better - A Creative Campaign

    Updated: May 23, 2023

    Eleanor Sydenham (Bath Spa University) | June 2023



    This work is one of two 2023 winners of our Centre for Media Research Student Award, a special prize awarded to a final-year Media Communications student. This work stems from the Media Communications Final Project, a module which asks students to embark on a challenge-led research project, the insights from which are disseminated as a cross-platform communications campaign for a real audience. The winner of the award is invited to publish both their background research alongside their creative campaign as a journal article.


    What follows is a short walkthrough video of both the research and the campaign, followed by a detailed presentation of the work in full - the Research Portfolio and the Campaign.



    Research has repeatedly shown that students are failing to cook and eat to

    maintain nutritional well-being. Data from the British Nutritional Foundation

    indicated 18-year-olds are six years behind their real age when it comes to cooking

    from scratch. Further to this, survey data suggests as high as 18% of students are

    consuming takeaway food up 5 times a week (Sorted 2021). The result of these

    behaviours is a demographic who are skill deprived, lacking in knowledge,

    unhealthy and out of pocket.


    This can be creatively combatted to address the social challenge but also provide

    a chance for industry innovation. In order to create a strategic and meaningful

    response, several stages of research are going to be undertaken. The first of these

    being comprehensive audience research through primary survey, and secondary

    data from across fields of study in marketing, food and nutrition and market

    research. Alongside academic literature, there will also be competitor brand

    analysis, ethnographic research and content analysis from the sector to

    understand on the broadest level what the industry landscape currently looks like.

    This research comes at a particularly difficult time for students. The prominent

    cost of living crisis means a student loan is simply not stretching far enough, and

    now more than ever key skills in food and nutrition are needed.


    This project proposes a solution to this problem; industry facing advice on how to

    diversify product lines to aid in the cause demonstrated through a mock

    campaign. Cooking Class will be a one stop platform for cooking knowledge, meal

    kit shopping, nutritional advice and food budgeting, all to suit a student lifestyle.

    The hope is this research provides an easy fix to a complicated problem- ensuring

    that students reprioritise their health and wellbeing to save money and live

    better, with the help of industry backing.


    To begin this year-long project, the Research Portfolio serves to captures a substantial amount of background research into the topic in order to develop new insights that can be shared as a communications campaign targeted towards the relevant industry audience.


    Click through below to read all of the background research that informed this campaign, including academic insights and a full campaign plan complete with brand mock-ups.


    You can also download the complete Research Portfolio below.




    The following Communications Campaign took all of the research, insights and campaign plans from the above Research Portfolio and disseminated this work as a large-scale cross-platform campaign, one that was also evaluated to assess it impact on real audiences.













    A final step for the project was to implement a systematic evaluation of the campaign, such as social media engagements, data analytics and audience responses, in order to understand the reach and impact of the campaign. Below is a snapshot of the results and learnings.








    Editorial: Black sheep of academia? - Recontextualising Creative Practice-based Research

      Agata Lulkowska (Staffordshire University) | Issue 9 | October 2022



      Introduction, or how to be an academic rebel

      Practice-based research, under may names and sub-categories, has been present and increasingly vibrant (although mostly limited in its recognition to the UK and Australia) for several decades now. A number of rich, insightful texts have been written about the phenomenon, and some significant work has been done towards academia’s recognition of practice-based research as a legitimate and valuable form of new contribution to knowledge. Not to mention some fantastic and innovative creative practice work that keeps appearing and inspiring myself and others alike.


      For someone who has struggled with her professional identity for a very long time (keeping my creative and intellectual hungers separate, not knowing how to reconcile both in one coherent action – after all, who would be the target audience for that!?), the realisation that there IS a legitimate space on the crossroads between creative world and academia was a very joyful one.


      It would be too optimistic, however, to claim that there are no struggles for those engaged in creative practice research. There are still numerous challenges with the identity of many such works, difficulties to manage disciplinary rules, which, in turn, lead to often confused expectations of supervisors, examiners, funding bodies, publishers, and HE institution, let alone the audiences. With great examples of practice-based work comes a question: not only what this kind of research means, but how do we go about it, nurture it, train and support new creative practitioners, and, why do we do in in the first place.


      This Special Issue and all the widespread work surrounding it, comes from a genuine passion. What keeps me happy and motivated every day are the vast possibilities of practice-based research, the joy of creativity is promises, it’s rebellious potential (who doesn’t appreciate that!), but also the amazing opportunities it brings. I truly believe that creative practice research can bring real-life impact on communities, inspire young people, and – without sounding excessively grandiose and naïve – genuinely make the world a better, and somehow nicer place. What always bothered me about academia is its elitist approach, specialised jargon, inaccessible dissemination practices targeting small and very specialist readership, and, often, quite pretentious seriousness. I truly believe research is and should always be for people. It has to find a way to become accessible and, if possible, exciting. But in order to do this, we need to evaluate the existing status quo and make sure we all, as the community of practice-based researchers, agree on some ground rules and understand what we do. The challenge is how to marry strict academic rigour with innovation and creativity. Personally, I don’t think these two things work in contradiction. On the contrary – they complement each other, offering a possibility to create a clear structure, a scaffolding which can support any creative practice project, no matter how extravagant. Elsewhere, I write about strategies to support and supervise practice-based researchers, here, I have a privilege to have attracted some exquisite contributors who explore some essential aspects of practice-based research, highlighting important issues and challenges.


      What I propose is quite simple – to ensure that creative practice research flourish, there needs to be a common ground of agreed expectations; that includes, as already highlighted, the creative practitioners themselves, so-called ‘traditional’ researchers, Higher Education Institutions, academic societies, publishers, research councils and other funding bodies. If that sounds overly ambitious, it only proves the urgency of the matter, making me even more keen to contribute my modest initiatives. After all, the alternative is lined up with frustrations, misunderstandings and mis-aligned expectations. Even worse so, it could lead to unfortunate omissions of some work and practices of great potential, exposed so brilliantly by ever so inspiring Tara Brabazon in her revealing ‘The Creative PhD: Challenges, Opportunities, Reflection’ (2020), as well as series of vlogs. Rarely do I find such an inspiring read, and I owe Tara a debt of genuine gratitude.


      If feels like enough time has passed for creative practice research to grow out of its infancy and continue to thrive. As a community of practice-based researchers we have a lot of to be proud of, and seeing the benefits and impact of our work, we should not be shy to demand full recognition and support for our work. In fact, it’s our obligation, for it is not enough for us only to know what we’re doing if we want to ensure that creative practice doesn’t get discouraged, misjudged, prejudiced against or diminished. For this to happen, not only we need to continue sharing our work and reaching out beyond the silos of academia, but we must make sure that we agree on and keep developing the strategies to support creative practice research and appreciate it. To do this, it is important to evaluate the current status quo, and defend our place in academia, proud and bold.


      The idea for this Special Issue emerged directly from a seminar on Art/Practice-based Research I have designed and led over the last year. However, the real origin goes much deeper. Our journey into practice-based research in academia is hardly ever a simple and straightforward one, and there are no rules or guidelines on how to do it. Having an academic career in maths or astrophysics might be, arguably, more difficult, but at least you know what needs to be done to get you there. This is certainly not the case with creative practice research. In many cases, experienced practitioners make their (complete or partial) transition to academia, while trying to preserve some times and energy for their creative work. They frequently acquire PhDs, which is often the first moment where the long-established creative practice needs to respond to a different set of criteria, and survive a thorough peer scrutiny which follows a specific set of rules. Creative practice, in contrast, tends to allow for more freedom, more chaotic methodologies, and less constrained rules (including outputs, dissemination, or impact). Even the process and making or the artwork have to dramatically change, suddenly having to adhere to the requirements of academic rigour, originality and significance. Another challenge is the need to explain the practice, prove its value to the research community, and demonstrate its original contribution to knowledge. This can cause a lot of confusion and misaligned expectations for both researchers-practitioners and those supporting/examining/reviewing their work. A common misconception which leads to many frustrations on both sides, centres around the role of practice (and the artwork) in relation to the surrounding ‘research strategies.’ The originality and quality of the artwork are often confused with the originality and quality of research. I’ll borrow from Tara Brabazon who is wonderfully blunt about it: when reflecting on the role of an artwork in creative PhDs saying that ‘Whether or not it is an art, let alone quality art, is irrelevant.’ (Brabazon, 2020: 78). She goes even further, suggesting that ‘art is not a doctorate. It can create a new way to think about evidence. It can be the basis of research. It is not the research.’ (ibid: 40). Of course, there is a significant difference between a PhD and a fully independent research project, nevertheless, this distinction still counts. What follows, a successful supervision or peer review processes requires clarity and consistency of expectations, which, as we all know, is not always the case. As a supervisor and editor, I have witnessed many battlegrounds which stem from mismatched expectations and misaligned priorities. In many cases, this could be easily avoided if the expectations around practice-based research were consistent across the board. Many institutional PhD provisions focus and prioritise traditional research, and not all the supervisors and reviewers are equipped to understand how to successfully balance the rigours of research with creative innovation in a form of the hybrid entity hiding under the umbrella term practice-based research. What certainly doesn’t help is the multitude of definitions and sub-divisions (practice-based, practice-led, research-led, etc) and the challenging process of judging the value and relevance of the artwork.


      In my numerous conversations with fellow practice-based researchers, they related to my experience where my research film was rejected from most traditional film festivals, yet awarded for its research value, and even nominated for the prestigious AHRC Research in Film Awards. Some practitioners I talked to ended up showcasing their artworks on their personal websites or Vimeo, frustrated that the best examples of their work often goes unnoticed. This is due to the fact that there are, with few notable exceptions (this very journal being one of them), still very few places where practice-based research can be successfully disseminated. This could be particularly frustrating when we keep in mind the importance of publishing for academic careers. Many practitioners, myself included, often decide to publish traditional written-word papers to talk about their practice. As much as it ‘ticks the box’, perhaps we are missing the point and also missing out on a wider reach (and even impact!) – two things academia really is about. Of course, there are some exquisite examples of practitioners who know how to manage that, but, again, that’s not always the case, and there is no easy roadmap to navigate it.


      What this Special Issue highlights quite well is the puzzling landscape of creative practice research: despite multiple obstacles, it seems to be doing pretty well. Multiple talented and inquisitive people drive this non-discipline (or multidiscipline), unpacking new concepts, experimenting with techniques and concepts, and challenging the existing status quo where creative practice research is still the black sheep of academia.


      Confused identities

      I am incredibly privileged to have been educated both in theory and practice, having studied five different degrees across two countries. But even with such a thorough understanding of theory and practice, it took me a long time to understand the hybrid identity of practice-based research. For many years, I meandered on the outskirts of disciplines (filmmaking, film studies, Latin American studies, postcolonial studies, visual anthropology, ethnography, indigenous studies, photography, representation studies, intercultural communication, and many others), struggling to find a comfortable place for my ‘doing’. My networks, associations, outputs and go-to journals were difficult to manage, and the sense of not belonging grew deeper, the more different projects I engaged with. Moving between ethnographic film to abstract video installation or photography only deepened the crack in my professional identity. Somehow, I managed to pull it all off, but the process was lengthy and not very straight forward (although enjoyable throughout). I am aware, however, that we could help make this journey a bit more structured, while still allowing for innovation and creative experimentation, and that’s what I am hoping to provide for my current and future PhD students. For this to happen, I repeat again, a collective effort to recontextualise practice-based research is required. Understanding of our practice, rules and expectations, the ways to measure innovation while maintaining academic rigour are of the upmost priority. The community of colleagues working with practice-based research is creative, dynamic and inspiring, but we need to set some basic common grounds we all agree on. This editorial article is an open invitation to collaborate, discuss and evaluate our practice and the way we collectively manage it.


      Practice-based research has an incredible potential for innovative, wide-reaching and accessible results, potentially building the bridge between academia and general public. This is not only one of the criteria for successful research our funding bodies and institutions ask us to demonstrate, but, much more importantly, a genuine reason why we should engage in research in the first place – after all there is nothing more rewarding than to inspire new generations of creative research practitioners and individuals who see the potential creative practice have to improve the world.


      Art/Practice-based Seminar Series

      The Seminar Series was designed to be the first step to find my way out of the maze. Apart from the reasons mentioned above, the very direct motivation that pushed me to organise it was the lack of institutional support and training for practice-based PhD candidates. There is not much provision graduate schools allocate to support anyone wishing to break through traditional expectations. What started as a modest one-person initiative, quickly became a very successful monthly gathering. I designed the seminar around the core elements of the creative practice journey, and invited some specialists in the field to talk about the topic. I delivered the opening session What is practice-based research, and accompanied it with some seminar texts by Linda Candy and the REF case study of The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer. The second session, Creative Process Meets Academic Rigour featured Michael Branthwaite. Session three, Creative Methods, was run by Nicole Brown, followed by Session four, Methodological Quagmires in the Post-disciplinaryEera by Prof. Carola Boehm, Session five, Who is it for and How to Communicate it by Charlie Tweed, Session Six, Research Impact: Making a Difference through Practice-Based Research by Jackie Reynolds and Colette Dobson, and finally, Session seven on Reflective Practice by Robert Marsden. Each seminar was accompanied by a reading material I have shared with the participants ahead of the sessions. Following the overwhelming success of an online interdisciplinary extravaganza (Communities and Communication, and International Interdisciplinary Conference and Art/Film Festival), a creative practice focused event I co-founded with two excellent colleagues, Sharon Coleclough and Stephanie Steventon, just before the pandemic which attracted an astonishing over three thousand submissions from hundred and twenty-six countries around the world, I decided to keep the even online. It was free and open to everyone, and it has not disappointed. Each session was recorded, and some of them have reached over 500 views (a laughable number for a contemporary influencer, but a significant one for a modest academic).


      A short questionnaire conducted at the inaugural session of the Seminar revealed an unexpected variety and creative potential in creative practice-based research. Some of the research questions and ‘artefacts’ were: ‘an investigation into how European artisan footwear can inspire a craft-based slow fashion model (footwear prototype); Can visual communication be used more systematically in reducing stigma towards metal illness (a visual communication campaign); can you feel dance, or do you have to see it? (a dance sound and light installation); how can psychogeography be used as an artistic strategy to express one’s relation with the city? (a digital soundmap of a city); Changing “the change”: re-visioning menopause, (film/installation); The role of sound, nature and healing in personal and collective urban transformations (sound installation); the screen is the Brain: a moving-image enquiry into visual thinking in Dyslexia (desktop documentary); how can collage be used to critically reflect upon animal-human hybrids in the age of bioengineering (collage/film); what is the impact of theatre-making in children’s self-concept (mixed media); how can collage negotiate and represent the complexities of history and identity? (collage film); ageing and inequality: using feminist architectural practices in the design of inclusive practice space (a design for inclusive public space); how interactive products can change people’s behaviour toward littering (motion graphics and product models); investigation into collaborations between artists and scientists in artistic collaborations (museum of epistemology); how does the action of hand stitching impact on the wellbeing of men, including self-knowledge and understanding through act and gesture (textiles and embroidery); can people find alternative spaces for HIV sense making using creative methods (film website exhibitions); if weaving is a metaphor for storytelling, can a weaving tell a story? (hand shaft weaving), migration and place making (video and podcast); spaces of difference: attuning through immersive dance with children who sometimes don’t speak (contact improvisation). Of course, there are endless other options, and since we are talking about creative practice, the originality drives the innovation.


      The same anonymous questionnaire asked about the training and guidance participants feel they would benefit form. Some answers included guidance on methodology and sharing outputs, an overview of current practice, how to bring together research and practice, understanding around how traditional assessment criteria are applied to artefacts produced through the research process. One of the recurring comments was about getting enough exposure to the exiting body of work in the respective fields. Questions of methodology often appear in these conversations, with many researchers struggling to design the most optimal methodology and research planning. The challenge is even more acute if we realise that, in many cases, the methodologies design is precisely the answer to the research questions.


      We also cannot forget that for any given practitioner to produce a quality output (be it for research or for purely artistic reasons, if that ever exists), the relevant craft skills need to be required and maintained. This, of course, makes all practice-based research interdisciplinary by definition.


      The final question asked at the seminar series was about the training or support the researchers felt they were missing. Most of the answers identified understanding what practice-based research really is, how to design research and methodologies, talking to other practitioners and understanding different perspectives. Some participants identified the need to understand the relation between the theory and practice in the context of practice-based research. Producing a proposal, understanding what counts and how it differs from an exhibition outside academic context also appeared among the answers.


      The idea for this Special Issue was a direct follow up from the seminar (which will continue into year two, and expand into a new podcast about practice-based research). I cannot be happier that it has attracted some excellent researchers who have responded to the call and contributed greatly to the idea to recontextualise practice-based research.


      The content

      The way the submissions responded to the brief was intriguing and, at times, eye-opening. It made me realised that apart from what I thought was an exhaustive list I proposed as a suggested topics for the Special Issue, there are other, often rarely spoken of aspects related to contemporary practice-based research which should be considered.


      Prof. Agnieszka Piotrowska and her ‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a radical intellectual gesture: A case study of an experimental hybrid film Wash (2022)’ proposes a thought-provoking postulate to re-invent creative practice research. This rich and refreshing reflection brings many (sometimes unexpected) inspirations and paints a picture of a contemporary practice-based researcher – an exciting but sometimes challenging portrait. This challenge emerges, precisely, from the need to rethink and recontextualise the current status quo of creative practice research. Piotrowska’s rich experience and inquisitive mind results in an article which is a genuine pleasure to read, questioning the standard expectations of both research and practice (and even the ‘standard’ way to write an article.) It is quite liberating to read her call for action: ‘be free in your thinking and see where it takes you.’ She proposes to rid of the rigidity of incompatible expectations of traditional research and tune in to creative freedom while maintaining the rigour required in academia.


      Catherine Gough-Brady reflects on the ethical considerations in creative practice research. She reveals the tensions and the underlying institutional assumptions, and contrasts that with the (creative) industry standards. Wondering whether ethics can be discipline specific, she argues that creative practice is pushing all kinds of boundaries, engaging with other disciplines, and forging its own space in very exciting ways. She explores the question of anonymity, often assumed and taken for granted, when, in fact, contesting it might empower participants (something which will come back in other texts submitted to this SI). Behind the assumption about participant protection lies the quiet danger of inequal power relations and confused knowledge ownership. Gough-Brady advocates for a tailored approach, where consent is negotiated and not assumed. She also touches on grey areas of ethical choices which are often personal and parts of personal narratives. Most importantly, she suggests that morals and values inform what we come to know and understand – a crucial point to take away from this fantastic text. Gough-Brady ‘s brilliant definition of documentary filmmaking is a perfect description of the complexity of the craft; she writes: ‘I tend to convey ideas using audio-visual means where I simultaneously simplify lives into linear narratives while at the same time intentionally complicating the viewer’s understanding of the world.’ Finally, she raises the question of accountability (both to participants and academia).


      Sophie Hope and Josephine Coleman go beyond the question of creative researcher’s identity (and sense of alienation), both mentioned repeatedly this this editorial introduction, and address the question of employment. In their collaborative Artist-researchers on the margins: Communities of practice beyond the PhD, they raise the crucial question of support and resources, exploring the impact of creative PhD on creative researchers’ practice and the way the hybridized identities function within and beyond academia. The study is based on Hope’s amazing initiative, the AHRC-funded Corkscrew practice-based research network, supported and inspired many aspiring creative PhD candidates, myself included. In their revealing text, Coleman and Hope explore the post-PhD ‘rupture’ of experiences, and the structural barriers and missing communities of practice which could impede the development of creative practice. They also point out to the urgent need for support structures needed to support practice-based researchers beyond the PhD for professional development. Finally, speaking of creative practice research, Coleman and Hope explore the potential of podcasting as a research method, a publicly engaged one, reflecting on knowledge embedded in experience and experimenting with formats for collective inquiry. This eye-opening text reveals many challenges and traps of ‘pracademics’, and various career choices they tend to have.


      Michael Chanan explores pedagogy of practice-based research. In his What does the student need to know in order to make a documentary,? he considers the main challenges of teaching knowledge production in creative arts, here, a documentary filmmaking. He targets the tension between theory and practice, deconstructing the ingredients of documentary filmmaking trade. He contrasts research jargon with vernacular language of documentary,

      describing research for documentary as cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and even anti-disciplinary, embedded in ambiguous audiovisual representation, where the research itself becomes the process, and not the outcome. This kind of research requires a different kind of epistemology, a one based on uncertainty and subjective judgement of the encounter. Chanan discusses different types of knowledge involved in the process, and evaluates the ontology of documentary filmmaking.


      In their joint article Mapping a sustainable support model for practice-based researchers, supervisors and examiners, Érica Faleiro Rodrigues, Deirdre O’Toole and Manuel José Damásio provide an overview of a complex body of work done under the umbrella of FILM EU alliance. Designed as a research statement accompanying a podcast under the same title, this comprehensive work aims to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers, with special attention on training the supervision. Quite importantly, the authors evaluate the role of artistic research may play in meeting contemporary global and social challenges. A number of valuable documents were produced alongside this project, among others, report on opportunities and challenges of creative research, and another one focusing on supervision models in film and media education. Both reports encourage to ask difficult questions and talk about ideas which might not have an obvious and easy solution, and remain open to new perspectives. The podcast responds to three main questions: How to reconcile notion of artistic freedom and academic boundaries in artistic research;? what are the specific needs of PhD supervision in artistic research;? and finally, what should be the framework for evaluation of artistic research PhDs? The authors suggest some useful strategies, among others, the ability to work together with macro and micro; zooming in and out as supervisors.


      Sabine Kussmaul and her Intra-action, self and the other; drawing and installation in the British Peak District brings another fascinating contribution. It looks at processes of embodied engagement between the artist and outdoor environment through experimental dimensions of research topic. Revealing details of her creative methodological framework, Kussmaul explores the need to justify the rigour and explain how it adheres to standards of research. We are invited to witness this intimate and meditative practice, and have an insight into the artist-researcher elaborate processes. Starting from production and implementation of a mobile artmaking kit, the subjective experience of artmaking, transplanting the outdoor installation to indoors gallery spaces and the analysis and evaluation of the Practice-as-Research process. The author ponders how change occurs between environments, arts practice and the research process. She evaluates how change occurs and manifests in different ways in research and creative practice, and how the production of meaning occurs in the creative arts. Using the illustration process to reflect, Kussmaul’s poetic work is a beautiful example of alternative ways of practice-based research. In this contexts, the work’s final destination, a gallery space, serves as platform to communicate it with the public and the academic audiences.


      How to establish film practice research and evidence impact in the Greek academic environment? is an interesting proposal by Iakovos Panagopoulos, which takes us to another academic contexts. Looking at film pedagogy and film practice research specifically, Panagopoulos offers an eye-opening overview of challenges and struggles young filmmakers face in Greek contexts, with special attention on impact in film practice research. Panagopoulos points to the familiar division between theoreticians with PhDs and practitioners with hands-on experience which determines filmmaking pedagogy, resulting, among others, in the lack of practice-based PhDs in Greece. The analysis of a contemporary independent filmmaker workflow in Greece reveals multiple cracks in creative freedom (and the intellectual property ownership) in the attempt to secure funding and make the filmmaking happen (often having changed the original idea to please the funder). As a result, the hope for financial gain is very faint if not illusory. The author makes an important observation that, in many cases, academic films are low-cost productions which don’t reach many other audiences beyond academia.


      Listening as Strategy for Research: Extending Sonic Thinking in Documentary by Francisco Mazza is an insightful overview of alternatives for sound strategies in non-fiction filmmaking, exploring sonic as a methodological tool. Challenging the primacy of visual (and linguistic), Mazza skilfully guides us through the meanders of the multisensory. It is also a great account into a creative practice PhD, something many contributions to this Special Issue mention. The multiplicity of ‘practices’ in practice-based projects, both in their definitions and application, are only a testimony to the ongoing confusion around the topic. Mazza addresses the challenges of institutional requirements for practice-based PhDs, and the lingering expectations set by the traditional forms of research. Often incompatible with the nature of creative practice research, these expectations need to be challenged and contested, or, at best, adapted to the nature of creative practice research. The concept of listening is explored in details as a way to approach thinking about sound in film, together with field recording and mixing. Mazza takes us through the intricacies of sound in non-fiction filmmaking, revealing a rich potential for creative exploration. The acoustic territory, the relationship between sound and place, becomes a powerful space for inquiry, including 'delocalisation' through the diffuse capacity of sound.


      Following that, we are invited to explore walking as a research strategy. Jez Hastings proposes a refreshing and inspiring journey into his fascinating projects. In his Ku Po Schon - Where are you going? The way of the photo troubadour, Hastings masterfully emanates the admiration for the analogue. This deeply meditative and beautiful proposal brings hope of an alternative for academic madness. The process of walking to the philosophy of Deep Ecology, becomes an embodied form of research. This intimate, personal statement, challenges the traditional forms of academic writing, like some other great texts in this Special Issue. A performer and ecologist, philosopher and photographer, Hastings displays an admirable sensitivity of observation, not taking any elements of his process for granted. It is the walking and photography which constitute the main ingredients of the author’s research, questioning the relationship between artist and audience and interrogating the way landscapes inform and engage. Even more importantly, Hastings explores the way the artist mediates the landscape and environmental aesthetics through the walk, before the audiences have a chance to engage with the mediations: photography and sound recordings.

      Belen Febres-Cordero and her Collaborative media writing: the making of an affective practice, explores writing as yet another practice-based method. This fascinating text looks at collaborative media writing among internal migrant women in Ecuador. She explores the disparity between data collection involvement in participatory research, and the usual exclusion from data analysis and, even more so, dissemination. This disparate power relations are often taken for granted, and the inclusion ends when data collection stage is over. Community-engaged research often challenges this status quo, demanding equal partnership in all stages of research. Affect theory which accounts for intangible forces experienced by and through the body could help achieve this ideal. Febres-Cordero explores alternative expressions of wellbeing and health. Coming from different backgrounds and identities, the participants engage in journalistic articles explaining the current dominant understandings of these two concepts. Febres-Cordero also touches upon the importance of anonymity which for some participants might be seen as a protection, while for others as an erasure of their participation.


      Frederic Dubois and his An overviews of research-creation in and with interactive media is an interesting proposal which tackles an alternative ways of research. Dubois explores the nature of research projects, referring to Geertz’s famous ‘thick description’ as a way to document creative practice. Dubois also explores the idea of mediatic research creation, before he embarks on the analysis of the interactive documentary (i-doc). He takes us on a journey to explore Field Trip, an interactive documentary made in Berlin. The author’s role as an interactive producer, carried out over the period of three years, allows Dubois to consider the societal impact of interactive documentary.


      Finally, in her Can artistic practices inform an unlearning of normative thought structures towards an ethico-onto-epistemological co-constitution with other worlds’ knowledges?, monika Jaeckel addresses the question of positionality within the framework of Western Modernity. She explores the question how can the knowledge of the ‘other’ be approached without appropriation? The author postulates co-constitution with knowledge production. Jaeckel explores artist-researcher’s potential to create noise, and its further contribution to unlearning which relate to the historical legacies of colonialism, also in the context of indigeneity – this knowledge should not, argues the author, be integrated into the dominant mode of thought and practice, but follow the rules of engaged collaborative transdisciplinarity.


      I hope this Special Issue will inspire the readers to consider the rich potential of practice-based research in creative arts. This Special Issue (as well as the upcoming book, podcast, and the book series) seek to address the questions of ontology and definitions, managing balance between the creative practice and research requirements, working across multiple disciplines, managing methodologies design, balancing theory, practice and reflective evaluations, strategies for dissemination, impact, and finally reflecting on the most optimal support system.,


      Let me conclude with the invitation to enjoy this collection of insights and testimonies, in the hope that this discussion will continue beyond this Special Issue.


      References

      • Brabazon, T (2020) The Creative PhD: Challenges, Opportunities, Reflection.

      • Candy, L. (2020) The Creative Reflective Practitioner. Research Through Making and Practice, Routledge

      • Candy, L. (2011) Research and Creative Practice. In Candy, L. and Edmonds, E.A. (eds) Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner, Libri Publishing Ltd: Faringdon, UK: 33-59.

      • Haynes, K. 2018. Autoethnography. In: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Business and Management Research Methods: Methods and Challenges, 55 City Road, London: SAGE Publications Ltd pp. 17-31. Available at: <http://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781526430236> [Accessed 26 Oct 2021]

      • Scrivener, S. (2020) Reflection in and on action and practice in creative-production doctoral projects in art and design.

      ‘Tentacular thinking’ in Creative Practice Research as a Radical Intellectual Gesture

        Updated: Oct 4, 2022

        A case study of an experimental hybrid film Wash (2022)


        DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.2022.06 | Issue 9 | October 2022

        Agnieszka Piotrowska (University of Gdansk & SODA/MMU)


        Abstract

        As a filmmaker and scholar I have been involved in the project of creating knowledge through making films, even before I did a PhD and became an academic. It has always been unclear to me why there is the curious divide between the so called ‘academic’ and creative’. All my documentaries for the broadcasters in some way I would argue were ‘practice research’ without me being quite aware of it. The paper considers the notion of what ‘knowledge’ might be for a creative research practitioner and how ‘high theory’ might be of assistance in inspiring ideas and creative strategies. I will share my most recent experience of working across disciplines with the new experimental film Wash (2022). It is a hybrid documentary with element of animation and drama dealing with serious issues of development in Zimbabwe, a country in which I have done much work over the years. The piece of work has been funded by Strategic England Research 2021 and the University of Edinburgh.


        In terms of methodology for any creative practice research work, here I suggest that casting a wide net in the search for theoretical and artistic inspirations, using what Donna Haraway would call ‘tentacular thinking’ is not only not a hindrance in the creative process but could be positively helpful. In this context I discuss here Surrealism, arguably the most influential artistic and theoretical movement, which itself began with a bold drawing from a different praxis and theory, namely psychoanalysis and the work of Sigmund Freud. Surrealism as a creative tool has of course been re-framed, re-thought and re-positioned by various cultures as demonstrated by Venice Bienale and the recent exhibition at Tate Modern in London.) In some way it has also influenced the hybrid film Wash I am presenting here, even as it deals with important issues of understanding a given community before introducing practices that might even be ‘good for them. In the film I have used a patchwork of knowledge, a patchwork of influences, drawing from Surrealism as well as other influences such as postcolonial theories and intangible local knowledge reservoirs.


        Keywords: creative practice research, Haraway, tentacular thinking, surrealism, (de)colonial studies


        Credit: Tomas Mitkus


        Preliminary Remarks

        ‘Love’, says Rimbaud, ‘has to be reinvented’ (quoted in Felman 1982: 5). Creative practice research involving making things has to be re-invented too. I argue that this historical moment in time is both our chance and a huge responsibility. ‘Our chance’ I say meaning ‘us, creative research practitioners’. Weighted by the post-pandemic depression, the climate challenges which are being ignored despite all evidence to the contrary, the wars which instead of decreasing appear to be getting closer – it is easy to begin to feel despondent, not to say to give up the project of creating a real disruption, making the difference and changing the world – even it if it is only by one millimetre through the creative practice research. Moreover, in the current atmosphere of a certain suspicion vis a vis creative practice research in higher academy, even expressing such a sentiment can be seen as dangerous and subversive on the one hand, and on the other, simply a waste of time. Why should anybody bother to change the status quo? The neo-liberal university makes academics fearful (for their jobs) and thus in some way there is a certain amount of self-censoring taking place.


        In this article I will both share my experiences of making a new work Wash (2022) and also make a broader claim that ‘tentacular thinking’ as defined by Donna Haraway (2016) is particularly useful for a creative practice researcher. A creative practice researcher more than any other researcher needs to open her mind to different ways of thinking and intellectual and artistic influences. This is a direct counter proposal to the established academic way of thinking that once you have chosen your theoretical or practical paradigm you must stick to it rigidly. This is a different idea: take what you need and use it creatively and be bold in your thinking.


        The idea to use ‘tentacular thinking’ as a deliberate ‘eclectic methodology’ might not be completely new and yet it is worth re-stating it as a gesture which celebrates diversity of approaches and a possibility of using them in one space. It is also clearly a gesture against patriarchal rigidity. In this context I will give an example of one important movement. Surrealism, as a conceptual proposition of how theory and practice can work together and fuel each other, but clearly even in the short piece like Wash I have used a variety of other paradigms and ways of thinking. However, to my mind this is no accident that it is Surrealism which has been named as the key influence in the 2022 Venice Biennale (entitled the Milk of Dreams https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022) as well as featuring in a major exhibition in Tate Modern in London the spring 2022. Linked to psychoanalysis and the unconscious, Surrealism has been a major artistic and philosophical movement celebrating a diverse and often unconscious ways of creating work and being in the world. This approach I claim can be used as a radical tool against anti-intellectualism and the neo-liberal commodification of any research in higher academy.


        Taking a cue from the way Surrealists would frame this as a manifesto, this is indeed a call for action: be free in your thinking and see where it takes you. This approach also has major pedagogical implications as encouraging students to think outside various boxes is not only demanding from the point of teaching but also institutionally almost dangerous in the current neo-liberal system. Nonetheless, it is necessary. One might recall bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) in which she suggests that the role of education is to encourage students to challenge accepted ideas, transgress boundaries and borders and be bold. In my own creative work and pedagogy I have used this approach extensively. I claim that psychoanalysis and indeed Surrealism as the main artistic movement which draws from it offers a conceptual and aesthetic language which I have found generative.


        In this context, I will review some of the creative practice research notions of my own, and the notion of ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledges’ in particular as enunciated by Donna Haraway (2016). I will present the hybrid documentary Wash which I have been working on for at least a year, in a collaboration with a scientist from the University of Edinburgh, the Professor of Immunology Francisca Mutapi. The craft in Wash is linked to Surrealism even as its main purpose is to promote health awareness in Zimbabwe and elsewhere, rather than being an exercise in creative aesthetic tools. It is important to state here clearly that without ‘tentacular thinking’ on my part, the project was near unmakeable: there was no narrative whatever, I couldn’t go to Zimbabwe because of the pandemic, the actual message was stark and simple and yet it was important that both the rural community and the wider audience would feel respected and respectable. It was important that the film used the aesthetic language that the community in Zimbabwe would appreciate and understand the concept of the film, and that the academic community internationally would find pleasing too.


        Credit: Tomas Mitkus


        Creative practice might like to see itself as a radical project in the academy, truly attempting to disrupt existing modes of scholarship, and yes, knowledge. To this effect though I suggest that the ‘anti-intellectualism’ which I have mentioned has been one of the neo-liberal postulates which we as creative researchers must resist (this also of course is repeated in its dangerous guises in the rise of political populism and utilitarianism). Anti-intellectualism is a conservative move and must never be confused with rigid ‘scholarly’ approaches. We need to be careful not to confuse vocational training or vocational practices with true creative practice research. It is great to conceded that there are overlaps between the two, it is also important not to give up on experimentation in one’s pursuit to be vocationally viable. It is here that bold ‘tentacular’ thinking is not only helpful but vital.


        Theory, and particularly ‘high theory’ can be an important and inspirational force in creating practice research and a gesture of defiance against the ‘anti-intellectualism’ of the populist movements. I use Surrealism is a key example of an artistic movement which stemmed from theory, has impacted ‘knowledge’ and history of art in ways that certainly would win a ‘world leading’ accolades in any governmental exercise, but clearly there are other ideas and theories which one can deploy as an inspiration in crafting of the creative practice research.

        Knowledge, patriarchy and the rational human

        Academics are not supposed to cite Wikipedia. Nonetheless, it is rather illuminating to do so here as at a glance one can see that philosophy as presented to the so called ordinary intelligent reader is effortlessly patriarchal; and masculine, simply because women have not been thought of as real thinkers and philosophers.


        The definition of knowledge is a matter of ongoing debate among epistemologists. The classical definition, described but not ultimately endorsed by Plato, specifies that a statement must meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it must be justified, true, and believed.
        Epistemologists today generally agree that these conditions are not sufficient, as various Gettier cases are thought to demonstrate. There are a number of alternative definitions which have been proposed, including Robert Nozick's proposal that all instances of knowledge must 'track the truth' and Simon Blackburn's proposal that those who have a justified true belief 'through a defect, flaw, or failure' fail to have knowledge. Richard Kirkham suggests that our definition of knowledge requires that the evidence for the belief necessitates its truth.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge last accessed 25th July 2022

        All the thinkers quoted above are men. The further exploration of the issue perhaps is beyond the scope of this paper but the definition of ‘knowledge’ and therefore the impact it can produce is the key issue of the current UK Research Exercise Framework governmental exercises. It is important to address the issue here because of the different registers which I have used to discuss the matter of creativity and knowledge, particularly in the arts.


        Following a solid and not at all ‘tentacular’ report by the Kings College Scholars, that is the Hewlett, Bond and Hinrichs-Krapels’ 2017 publication The Creative Role of Research: Understanding Research in the Creative and Cultural Sector one can observe a range of astute observations emerged concerning long-standing issues relating to the role and understanding of creative practice research in UK Higher Education, especially it’s social and cultural impact. This is of course not new to practitioners in H.E. but as a result of Hewlett, Bond and Hinrich-Krapel’s report we have for the first time the closest picture of what practice-based impact looks like in the creative and cultural sector: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/cultural/assets/171020-thecreativeroleofresearch-shorter-version-web-v2.pdf


        Released between the 2014 and 2021 REF exercises, the report highlights a number of on-going concerns including the inconsistency of narrative approaches to evidencing impact, approaches to successfully quantifying public benefit and the need for greater consideration of longer-term impact more suited to creative and cultural practice. However, what is of great interest here is that the analysis of the impact cases presented by King’s College Researchers in this significant report from 2017 asserted the following:


        75 per cent of the case studies that were identified in this study as being relevant to the sector came from the arts and humanities, with the remainder coming from other fields. • The academic disciplines with the greatest interaction with the creative and cultural sector in REF 2014 were: – English language and literature (15 per cent sample, 238 case studies) – history (14 per cent sample, 222 case studies) – art and design: history, practice and theory (11 per cent, 176 case studies). (ibid.: 10) (my emphasis)

        It is important to reiterate a somewhat surprising piece of information which is that the vast majority of the REF Impact cases in 2014 were from humanities: seventy-five per cent. However, only eleven percent out of that group were the practice research submissions. This is significant: despite the various governmental postulates including closing down arts and humanities departments up and down the country, it is in fact the humanities research which produces tangible and important impact. Creative practice research less so.


        Certainly, in the United Kingdom, and actually in Europe too, practice research is still a discipline which has to find ways of redefining its value. This is the landscape we need to recognise and continue to struggle for the work to be recognised.


        Wash- how did it come about

        Credit: Tomas Mitkus


        My brand-new creative research project Wash is a hybrid documentary which uses a variety of creative tools (documentary, drama, animation, paintings, Zoom recordings). It also, as already mentioned, is a small example of my own ‘tentacular thinking’ of which further down this article. The project was initiated through various conversations about Zimbabwe over many years: Professor Mutapi of the Edinburgh University saw an experimental documentary of mine Lovers in Time or How We didn’t Get Arrested in Harare at a screening in Edinburgh in 2017. That piece of creative research (an experimental documentary of a very different nature) work had been screened extensively internationally and also published in Screenworks in 2019. Francisca and I have kept in touch ever since and she was very taken by my other creative practice research which too has links to Zimbabwe (Screenworks 2021). The project I am presenting here is a result of our successful grant application to Strategic England 20 and was also supported by the University of Edinburgh.


        The hybrid film was inspired by the immunology and social studies research carried out by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Zimbabwe. Their project focused on an attempt to curb the spread of diseases through a variety of simple tools. In particular, the researchers tried to encourage the community to build toilets where they were not any. What Mutapi discovered was that there was an unexpected resistance to the project – on the part of women. It transpired that the women treated the space of a walk to the bush or the river bank where they would relieve themselves as a special space for intimate personal communications with each other, a space where men would not interfere. There was therefore a resistance in getting rid of that space.


        In the broader context of the work of the core collaborators of Professor Francisca Mutapi in Zimbabwe, that is the NGO called Uniting to Combat Against Neglected Disease and they launched the film on 16th June 2022 as a tool for advocacy. Here is the link to the press release, and the film itself is below:


        Wash (2022) – Dir. Agnieszka Piotrowska


        It was important to state and re-state that the engagement with the community with which one is working of a key importance. What was also very illuminating was to discover that Francisca Mutapi, herself originally from Zimbabwe, was not perceived as one of the community despite her ethnicity and embodiment being similar to the inhabitants of the village. We therefore wanted to explore gently the issue of the Difference which does not run across the lines of ethnicity but rather across the lines of education and class.

        ‘The knowledge’ therefore that we were exploring here was an ethical space of sharing with the perceived Other something that might even be ‘good’ for them – without understanding the context in which one works. The bigger issue we wanted to present was the notion of the necessity to understand the different communities one worked with and be respectful and understanding of their needs and desires, which may seem less important than those of the academics who turn up to work with the community. There have been furthermore issues of sharing the knowledge that the ‘outsiders’ had with the community but also being able to accept the community’s viewpoint, which was very different from that of the researchers. I have been working in Zimbabwe for some 10 years, and there is a big difference between rural communities and urban areas – of course one could say that there are big differences between the two spaces anywhere but in Africa it can be profound. The overarching research question of a lot of my theoretical and practice work including Repented published last year in Screenworks was as to how a specific artistic community could deal with the challenge of Difference - meaning cultural and bodily difference, but also differences of opportunity and privilege – in circumstances of postcolonial melancholia. Theoretically this does draw from the classic texts such as Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabba, and also the fiction work of the feminist Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangeremba who in her work too drew clearly the lines between the village and the city, but also very much between education and freedom, which one can see as a battlefield of (de)colonial modernity. However, in this context the issues were a little different – the listening as well as communicating and creating.


        Credit: Anna Dobrowodzka


        For myself, in my own practice research work I have understood for a long time that central to the de-colonial project is the question of finding a voice, understood as both a matter of language and identity. Here we were not dealing with the obvious postcolonial project, at least not on the surface – although one could argue that Francisca, coming as she did from a British university, had to work hard to get to the point in which she understood, digested and was able to communicate to me and others the knowledge which she got from the women in Murewe, the rural community about which we made the film.


        Once I understood the issues, I felt the only way forward on this particular project was to use non-literal ways of aesthetically expressing the tension between the outsiders and the community. The issue of the education for women was perceived as particularly acute in the village and elsewhere in Zimbabwe. From that point of view, I hope that the film is more than simple ‘public engagement’ important thought it is. In addition, the issue of how to put together something simple and attractive in terms of using different creative disciplines was a challenge. This is therefore a knowledge I was exploring and which I will share here for the first time. As we have only just launched the film internationally but also very much in Zimbabwe the issue of its further impact will still needs to be explored further in due course.


        I have always been interested in the problem of establishing the relationship between the experience (for example Piotrowska 2020 and 2021) and the description of it, and here the particular translation that occurs between the two, between author (and therefore the reader and the viewer) and the place and the experience described. One could argue that we are discussing here the issue of an adaptation in the broadest sense – the adaption of a story which exists as a purely factual account and translating it or adapting it into something else. This work was mostly that of a writer for me. There have been very many works on cinema and adaption (for example: Andrew 1984; Cohen 1979; Corrigan 1999; Stam 2000) and it is important to mention them – be it in passing. Here I am trying to focus in particular on the process of ‘describing’ and ‘naming’ a particular situated experience and what it might mean in terms of some kind of notion of accuracy, both historical and geographical, and epistemological truth. I am also interested in the ability of writing to describe physical experience as an enabling procedure. As we will see directly, there is controversy about the above and the question is indeed: is it true that the writing and naming enhances experience? Or does it take away from it, making it too concrete and obvious? Can the desire, conscious or otherwise, to name the experience lead to a drive to make something? Indeed, psychoanalytically this certainly is the case – for many reasons, sublimation for the desire to name the one – but also because creativity and ‘play’ has been used by psychotherapists through Donald Winnicott’s (1982) work stressing the importance of creative play in personal development and growth, but also in education.


        In this particular hybrid work, the notion of a place is also of course crucial: the main narrative takes place in a particular actual village in Zimbabwe, Murewe. But of course, in the film, the place becomes both an actual place and a mythical space. One could say that this is reminiscent of the work of the philosopher Michel de Certeau, who advocated the notion of a generative space in opposition to a fixed and stable place. Simplifying his thought somewhat, one can say that the philosopher advocated the superiority of a ‘space’ above a ‘place’: ‘Space is a practiced place’ (de Certeau 1984: 117) in which only those who use it (through walking in particular he says) give it a sense of fluidity and mobility. One could argue that, theoretically, the notions of a ‘place’ and belonging are contested ideas. In De Certeau’s ground-breaking book The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) he deals with a creation of spaces in which speech acts become sites of subjectivity. In this context, the development of a sense of place could be referred to as developing one’s own voice.


        Interestingly, in oral culture and traditions in Zimbabwe a concrete place is not more important than a parallel world of embodied artistic experience (dance for example), stories and the notion of spirits and the inner life. Something therefore which might appear quite abstract as I am writing it down here, is not abstract at all in Zimbabwe. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore in any details the issues of intangible heritage in Zimbabwe, and in particular in rural Zimbabwe but it is important to say that in terms the non-rational knowledge which has been nearly extinguished by the colonisers the research is now being carried out. It is a new project initiated by Professor Diana Jeater of the University of Liverpool, who, in collaborative work with researchers in Zimbabwe is looking into the experience of ‘spirits’ in traditional communities.


        Here, the challenge in addition is that, as we were working on the hybrid film during the global pandemic, the issue of translating the experience and the knowledge was particularly challenging in terms of finding an appropriate visual and emotional language to be able to sustain a simple message.


        The act of writing is linked to a place but becomes something different and more complicated. Many creative practice researchers, theorists and filmmakers have been reflecting on the notion of expressing one’s experiences of a place through filmmaking for example. In this very journal creative researchers Dungala-Baaka River & Catherine Gough-Brady (2021) (https://www.creativemediaresearch.org/post/the-river-and-the-filmmaker) have evoked Agnès Varda’s concept of cinécriture as providing “[…] a mechanism to view these seemingly personal and emotional experiences as mortice and tenoned to creative practice: ‘Cinécriture isn’t the scenario, it’s the ensemble of exploratory walks, the choices, the inspiration, the words one writes, the shooting, the editing: the film is the product of all of these different moments.’ (2014: 124).


        Cinécriture can be a helpful concept which in essence describes the maker’s ability to describe the surroundings and the situation through film work but it would not have been enough in this project. At times the physical walking through the place you want to recreate is not possible or is more complicated: because of the pandemic I had to rely on my memories of the place, and my actual Zimbabwean creative collaborators to carry out some of my vision as they were in the position to actually shoot some of the material in the village. We then created a separate shoot in the UK, with some dramatic reconstructions. I therefore deployed my ‘tentacular thinking’, looking for inspirations and influences from different theorists and different traditions.


        Credit: Francisca Mutapi


        ‘Knowledges’

        In my work (2014, 2017, 2019, 2021) I have heralded the importance of subjective accounts particularly for women (‘subjective’ here means simply ‘personal’ or ‘autoethnographic’). This is not a new way of thinking about knowledge and goes back to Donna Haraway’s writings about ‘situated knowledges’ (1988: 581), particularly regarding challenging knowledge claims and female authorship. In the academy this kind of approach is gaining traction but it is still considered radical. Haraway argues for


        (…) politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives. I am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity (ibid.: 589).

        Thinking about the beginning of the article, it is not just that ‘love has to be re-invented’. It appears that knowledge too has to be re-invented and reflected on. For a creative practitioner, the key thing is to resist the need to succumb to the demand – the interpellation as Louis Althusser would say – to frame one’s creative work within the so called ‘objective’ parameters for the panicked reason to be taken seriously as a researcher and not, let’s just say it, an artist. It is here that I suggest that ‘tentacular thinking’ as presented by Donna Haraway below could be not only an inspirational source of creativity for a creative practice researcher, but can in practical terms help us to be regarded seriously in the governmental exercises if we frame and position it ‘correctly’, clearly within the humanities disciplines. All that I have written above is an example of such a ‘tentacular thinking’ which here simply means drawing from different theoretical and creative paradigms in order to make something that still works as a harmonious even if disrupted and disruptable whole.


        This brings us back to Haraway who more than 30 years ago insisted on the ‘situated knowledges’. More recently (2016) she has begun to question our Anthropocene obsession with knowledge. Haraway sees this as a patriarchal move and advocates a different approach, situating a human and human knowledge within the world as a whole which we inhabit and instead advocates ‘tentacular thinking’ (ibid.: 30) which I want to appropriate as a term and invite all creative researchers to do so. Haraway, a troublemaker for decades, says she wants to ‘stay with trouble’ and goes on to say ‘[…] and the only way I know to do that is in generative joy, terror, and collective thinking’ (ibid.: 31). She invites us to consider non-human solutions to being in the world, including spiders and other creatures; '[…] nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something’ (ibid.: 31). She proposes ‘string figures’ as a theoretical model of getting at the knowledge.


        Haraway insists that this way of working, which I think will come naturally to most creative practitioners, is not only a radical gesture against the rigid and patriarchal ways of thinking but that it is also generative of new knowledge and new ideas: ‘I work with string figures as a theoretical trope, a way to think-with a host of companions in sympoietic threading, felting, tangling, tracking, and sorting. I work with and in sf as material-semiotic composting, as theory in the mud, as muddle.’ (ibid.: 31).


        Haraway insists further that thinking of the human as simply part of nature, that urging us to become more like mushrooms, octopuses and spiders is not excuse at all for giving up on thinking. One could indeed reflect that, according to one of the greatest patriarchal philosophers of them all, Descartes, thinking is the absolute core of our humanity and our existence ‘Cogito ergo sum’ ‘I think therefore I am’. Haraway insists that the process of ‘thinking’ is something we need to engage in a non-linear way, and within every activity we do, and this does connect to my reflection on knowledge and what it means for a creative researcher. Haraway evokes the moral philosopher Hannah Arendt here as read by Valerie Hartouni:


        Thinking, in Arendt’s sense, is not a process for evaluating information and argument, for being right or wrong, for judging oneself or others to be in truth or error. All of that is important, but not what Arendt had to say about the evil of thoughtlessness that I want to bring into the question of the geohistorical conjuncture being called the Anthropocene. Arendt witnessed in Eichmann not an incomprehensible monster, but something much more terrifying—she saw commonplace thoughtlessness. (ibid.: 36)

        This is most relevant to consider in this moment in time, almost more than in any time in the last as what Haraway is saying, after Arendt and Hartouni, that it is our ethical and epistemological obligation to think, meaning to ask questions about the demands that are placed by ask by society, by our line managers and by whoever happens to be in some way directing our activities or attempting to assess them or measure them.


        In her book Haraway talks about the anthropologist, feminist, cultural theorist, storyteller, and connoisseur of the tissues of heterogeneous capitalism, Anna Tsing’s work too (ibid.: 37). Anna Tsing’s project is to examine the “arts of living on a damaged planet,”21 or, in the subtitle of her book, “the possibility of life in Capitalist ruins” (Ibid.: 37). Written a few years before the COVID pandemic Haraway describes Tsing’s research as an acceptance, through story-telling, that all creatures on this planet, including us, humans, live in the age of precarity, insecurity, not knowingness what tomorrow might bring and how we can possibly be creative and ethical on this planet. So here what Haraway discusses is a knowledge of the impossibility of any real certainty. This kind of knowledge therefore I would argue is different from facts, information and technology. Haraway quotes further Anna Tsing focusing on her reflections on how mushrooms survive collaboratively in disturbance and contamination. She calls this skill the skill for living in ruins’ (ibid.:). Most of the creative practice researchers will know about collaborative work and how crucial it is. The post-pandemic work feels even more the need for developing of this skill.


        Haraway is at pains to explain her notion of non-anthropocene story-telling ‘Storying cannot any longer be put into the box of human exceptionalism.’ (ibid.: 39). Haraway engages with Bruno Latour too in terms of learning to narrate out of the box of the story of the humans, or at least for now, out of the patriarchal and rigid boxes.


        Of course, Latour is interested in environmental politics mostly but the way of thinking about the world in the tentactular way and finding ways of working and thinking creatively. His thinking is not without its challenges, with his emphasis on war, and the very patriarchal it seems to me notions of winning and losing, particularly read today, when we find ourselves in the middle of the unnecessary and already cruel war with Russia invading Ukraine. Haraway’s take on this: ‘Latour makes clear that he does not want this story, but he does not propose another. The only real possibility for peace lies in the tale of the respected enemy, the hostis, and trials of strength. “But when you are at war, it is only through the throes of the encounters that the authority you have or don’t have will be decided depending whether you win or lose' (ibid.: 43). Haraway though in her presentation of the thoughts of different thinkers seems to be encouraging the reader to be thinking of the tentacular thinking as an actual.


        Donna Haraway is an original thinker, a philosopher. The way she has been thinking for decades have been generative of many others deploying, and of course transforming her ideas so they can be used for different projects. Donna Haraway is clearly not a fiction writer, or a filmmaker; she is philosopher, although one wonders if she would how she would fare at a neoliberal university, what corrections might be asked to her work. She is not a maker but her kind of writing, and ours too, is a creative practice research as well.

        I hope that one could argue that my work Wash the hybrid documentary which I directed in a collaborative project with the University of Edinburgh and Professor Francisca Mutapi, of the Immunology Department there pushes the knowledge of working in the unknown communities by a tiny step. As stated, the ethos on the project was to begin with a simple ‘public engagement’ that is helping the message of Professor Mutapi and her colleagues to become better known. However, in terms of the ‘knowledge’ it contributed to it was both the dissemination of the message of the research team but also the ‘knowledge’ regarding different challenges in leading different creative practitioners to achieve the goal of the film – how did we overcome various practical challenges? How did it work for me to lead a team of different creative practitioners? How did we deal with the simple challenges of the distance, which in part were alleviated by technology, but in some ways technology cannot really make up for the embodied encounter? Was the stylised language of the film a choice that would have been made in non-pandemic times?


        And how is Surrealism relevant here

        Credit: Francisca Mutapi


        This association of ‘tentacular thinking’, of finding associations where they are not obvious, of accepting that a creative desire might (or perhaps must) involve a desire to take different intellectual journey, this association finally leads me to Surrealism. The movement arguably is the greatest creative practice research project ever and the impact of which can hardly compare with any other creative movement in the history of art and thinking. It is far beyond the scope of this article to explore its impact in any detail, but I will make some simple points.


        The Tate Modern’s recent Surrealist Exhibition (March 2022) points to the fact it, far from it being a narrow European tradition, surrealism has travelled globally, has been redefined, appropriated, re-thought about and has been the incredible springboard to a variety of creative outputs as our managers would say: from paintings to sculptures moving image work, theatre, literature, photography - everything. The most important artists globally over the last century defined themselves as surrealists and these include such astonishing artists as Jean Miro, Yausi Nakaji, Diego Riveira, Frida Kahlo, Eva Sulzer, Grete Stern and many others. Its invitation to liberate the artistic mind to explore new creative avenues, outside the realistic representation has become a lasting tool to subvert any established status quo.


        A few years ago I created a video essay about the links between Christopher Nolan’s Inception and the classic surrealist film Un Chien D’Andalou. The video essay made a simple point that Dali’s work still has impact on contemporary Hollywood. Watch below:


        Credit: Francisca Mutapi


        It would be hard to think of any other art historical movement which would have had such a great influence not only on the creative endeavour but also, and perhaps more importantly, on the way artist and ‘civilians’ have been thinking about the world ever since. Was it a colonisation of sorts? The notion of dissecting our experience of making work and calling it knowledge is a centuries-honoured tradition and yet, in the neo-liberal academy it is often questioned and doubted, despite the statements and meetings to the contrary: the shadow of the men of science insisting that only that which is ‘objective’ has any epistemological value throws a long shadow over the proceedings still.


        Surrealism and its far-reaching tentacles started as is well known in France officially with Andre Breton’s Manifesto for Surrealism in 1924. One can trace the origins of the movement to the poet Guillame Apollinare who a few years earlier, inspired by the new psychoanalytical thought, started using the term surrealism and called it ‘a new spirit’ (‘espirt nouveau’) that he shared with Eric Satie and the then young painter Pablo Picasso. When Andre Breton published his manifesto in 1924, he clashed with a German poet Ivan Gall who too wanted to use the term (see the exhibition’s catalogue D’Alessandro & Gale 2022:13).


        In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, the writers and curators whilst acknowledging the indisputable influence of the movement globally are perhaps less clear that Surrealism came from psychoanalysis, and in particular was inspired by Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams first published in 1900 as well as his subsequent writing. Freud proposed that the examination of the world through the examination of the conscious and stated aims and objectives only will end put producing a false picture of the world as it will not allow our often repressed and secret unconscious desire which represent themselves in our dreams. It is this idea which inspired a variety of writers, poets and artists – but these ideas took a couple of decades to really impact to the perception of the public and to those who in a particular moment in time and place were able to transform these theoretical ideas into creative work and then influence the whole world in a lasting world. The notion of ‘the tentacular thinking’ which here I have presented from the point of view of Donna Haraway’s work on the ‘string figure’ thinking - of reaching from different areas of experience in a way which in a ways is chaotic in its objective of acknowledging the unknowability of the creative process and knowledge itself. At times theory is most useful one makes creative or artistic work.


        ‘I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams’ – this is a quote from Andre Breton’s Manifesto for Surrealism (1924). In it he called for the fellow artists and filmmakers to find a language, which would correspond to the language of dreams thus tapping into their unconscious desires and their creativity. But he said more than this, he believed that the world of dreams is linked to the very core of who we are – in short it is more ‘real’ than the waking life. Whilst psychoanalysis deals with the unconscious in offering those who suffer a ‘talking cure’, surrealism was offering a freedom to discover our inner selves through accepting and entering the world of the dreams and, as Breton calls it, the irrational, the unexplained, the magical - ‘the marvelous’.


        The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in Seminar XI (1964) writes about some characteristics of a dream, namely its 'the absence of the horizon, the enclosure, of that which is contemplated in the waking state, and, also the character of emergences, of contrast, of stain, of its images, the intensification of their colours’ (– the subjects, he says, cannot see but experience one’s existence in a profound way (ibid.pp. 67-68).


        The Wash and tentacular thinking

        Without the ability to deploy a kind of tentacular thinking inspired by Surrealism in terms of a boldness of using different tools and materials, there is no question at all that Wash could not have been made. It is not a surrealist work but it does draw from its visual freedom, some aesthetic solutions and from the invitation to combine very different elements in one place. It’s contribution to knowledge is to demonstrate how this can be possible in an exploration of a scientific project as well as the notion of different disciplines working together under challenging circumstances of COVID 19. The practical difficulties seemed almost insurmountable: there was a global pandemic which made it impossible for anybody to travel, the budget was very low for such a complicated project with a variety of visual language challenges. The sub-story of the young woman who gets pregnant as a teenager, drops out of school and dreams of being funded to go to a big city to study was also a difficult narrative to present because the anonymity of different girls was important. In the event the documentary shoot in the village in Zimbabwe was directed by me remotely from the UK and my long-term collaborator in Zimbabwe, Joe Njagu, who led the crew working with Professor Francisca Mutapi’s colleagues from the University of Zimbabwe. We then gathered as many stories as possible for me to construct the figure of Tsitsi who was then played by Glencia Samuel, a graduate of the performing arts course at the University for the Creative Arts (where I was the Head of School for Film, Media and Creative Arts) and we shot the whole thing in a countryside in Surrey. I worked with Glen on her script but let her add various elements to it too so her contribution to the final character was substantial. Glenn is not an African (she comes from the Caribbean) which has presented an issue regarding her accent but we simply ran out of options so we had to go with it.


        One of the reasons I wanted to introduce the idea of animation to underscore the fact that the piece was a stylized experimental film and not a pure documentary. It is here yet again that the tool of ‘tentacular thinking’ was deployed – we did not just do a ‘dramatic reconstruction’. We tried to inhabit and understand a person like Tsitsi who is both loving and lovable but also angry that the educated researchers offer the community toilets and what she desires is education. We had a big problem in terms of presenting her needs in a way which would touch upon the issues of a post-colonial country without making a heavy-handed statement in a piece which was meant to be seen by children in the community. Another issue was the presentation of physical love in the film. It is here that I have had the biggest discussions with Francisca who in the end insisted these animations were removed in their entirety. In this article we include the initial trailer for the film with the animations evoking sex. They were but a second long and were reprised only once later in the film. I felt it was important to show something which would approach the issue of sex head on as the problem of teenage pregnancy is a big issue in rural communities in Zimbabwe. However, Francisca insisted that this would make the work less viewable and less accessible. We then considered having two versions – and this of course is still a possibility – but in the end the version without the ‘sex animation’ is the official version of the film.


        Animations were driven but the voice over and so conceptually I wanted different artists working on these sequences in different ways as to create a sense of a composite character, and even a composite village – the special metaphorical space which I have mentioned at the outset. Different animators have chosen different modes of expression from traditional drawn animation through computer drawing and rotoscoping. These were then edited in the final montage. The animations and the music as well as the editing attempted to evoke different emotions rather than illustrating those. The aesthetic and the language were at times quite a long way from the reality of the situation – using indeed some ‘tentacular’ and surrealist solutions. We needed to use some recognizable images in the piece which would be of significance to the community as well as Western funders and researchers: we looked at different images for waters, the closeness of animals, the sense of movement from women. Francisca Mutapi, as well as being the executive producer and chief research consultant on the film, and the scientific interviewee, offered some painting of her own which we included in the film too. I very much liked the idea Professor of Immunology is an artist too. The film editor Anna Dobrowodzka is my long-term creative collaborator and she too contributed some of the animations as well as being the editor for the whole piece. Unfortunately, some of her drawn animations of love making were edited out as requested by Francisca. The musical score for the film is important and has 3 different composers and musicians working on the film with us, using some voice recordings too from some other work of my own which I did in Zimbabwe previously. That work was quite laborious as we wanted the score to be both recognisably African but also in some way Western and slightly strange. It feels a little unfair to be so very brief in the description that work as it involved of hours of discussions as well as looking through different iterations of Zimbabwean music, as well as kind of non-specific melodic and choral work which could work with the narrative and the main themes of the piece.


        To my mind the surrealist inspired tentacular notion that it is not only possible to use different creative tools in one piece but in fact desirable in order to arrive at a richer texture onto which the viewer can also pain their own narrative worked well in this piece.


        Because of the main interviews with Francisca being recorded on Zoom, there is a distortion on some of the sound recording and we are currently wondering whether it would be a good idea to find a way in which one could replace some of the distortions. It may be possible. On the other hand, I feel that perhaps it is important to hold onto the traces of the real challenges we had to overcome through the pandemic, and curiously I started feeling that perhaps re-recording the interviews would be a sort of a cheat. This of course makes no sense in a piece of work which is semi-fictionalised but it feels right that the documentary material should be just that, documentary and of the moment. I am leaving this decision open – as something we may want to revisit yet in future.


        There are very many ways of thinking about creative practice research. For me, it is always an adventure and space (again citing de Certeau) of mobility and fluidity. I hope that some readers might find my notion of deploying our intellectual as well as artistic ‘tentacular thinking’ inspirational or at least helpful.


        This of course is but my view but for me, in any creative endeavor, it is important to give oneself a permission to draw from different theoretical and creative paradigms to allow for our creative minds to work freely. In the work it is good to be fair and ethical, as personal as is justifiable, and visually engaged and bold at the same time, hoping that the ‘knowledges’ that will be produced through such creative practice research might be able of contribute to our understanding of different communities and different multi-media work.


        Finally, the initial feedback to the work has been excellent from those whom we wanted to reach the most: the community itself. The conversation about education, communication and female empowerment has begun, and the compromises regarding toilets and other ways of creating important spaces for dialogues have been initiated by our film in ways which was not quite possible previously.


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