Questioning Creative Practice Human Research Ethics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.2022.07 | Issue 9 | Oct 2022

Catherine Gough-Brady (JMC Academy)

Abstract

One of my first tasks at the creative arts tertiary institution where I work was to examine the existing ethics processes and policy. As a result, I delved into the growing literature on creative practice research ethics to examine the ways in which academic ethics and creative practice research interact. A particular focus of this research became the human research ethics process, with its underlying principle of reduction of harm by the researcher on the individual researched person. This article examines that process and the tensions that arise between the underlying assumptions of university ethics, the realities of creative practice research, and existing industry moral codes. In particular, I explore whether ethics can be discipline specific, the effect of participant anonymity, using a rolling consent process, who the consent is between, and self-care of the researcher. I investigate these topics by reflecting on the experiences of researchers, including my experience. As a result of the discussion, I am led to the point where I challenge existing institutional research practices as pushing researchers into a colonial relationship with the researched.

The matters we think with

According the Donna Haraway “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with” (2016, 12). I use Haraway here to highlight that the method of research used and the accompanying morals and values inform what we come to know and understand. Haraway borrowed this concept from social anthropologist Marilyn Strathern, and a similar idea has been expressed in various forms across a number of disciplines. Feminist theorist Karan Barad articulates this approach when she states that it “matters which cuts are enacted: different cuts enact different materialized becomings”(2007, 361). Sociologist Norman K Denzin expresses this idea as an embodied and time/spatial contextualisation of the researcher who is “historically and locally situated within the very processes being studied. A gendered, historical self is brought to this process” (2018, 15). Denzin challenges notions of positivist research when he states that there “is no possibility of theory- or value-free knowledge” (2018, 15). Decolonising scholar, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, notices these same power conditions, “research is not an innocent or distant academic exercise but an activity that has something at stake and that occurs in a set of political and social conditions” (2012, 5). Who we are, when we are, where we are, and what we do all inform how we know our world. What is also implied in this approach, for it is itself an approach, is a relational quality to research: the researcher has a relationship with their own identity, with the research, with their time, and people involved in the research. They even have a relationship with the equipment they work with in documenting that research. All these relationships bring with them underlying moral values and ways of knowing which can be seen as being situational. Some of these underlying morals can conflict, and a tension arises when industry-led ways of knowing (and morals) conflict with academic ways of knowing (and morals).

Given that the situated nature of the researcher ‘matters’, I will reveal my own identity. I am a creative practice researcher, and my primary practice has been broadcast documentaries. I have pale skin, I present as a woman, I live in Australia, I am middle-class, I am an artist, feminist, socialist, and posthumanist. As a creative practice researcher, I can see that I am situated at the margins of academic power, especially the moral power of academic institutions. I have spent most of my career at these margins of power, and I have noticed that centres of power rarely work in my favour. I realise that being privileged has assisted my choices as I have frequently opted out, rather than necessarily been excluded, from centres of power. As Trinh T Minh-ha points out, I have been able to move “between the center and the margin” and navigate pathways in both these spaces (1991, 17). I agree with Trinh that this co-existence in both the centre and margins, of both experiencing being othered and being at the centre of power, has influenced the way I perceive the world, including how I make moral decisions and how I create academic narratives.

Because I have spent most of my adult life as a documentary filmmaker, 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. This approach influences the construction of this paper which, rather than providing a singular argument, is a piece that listens to various opinions, including my own. The Gay’wu Group of Women talk about a narrative structure in which “not everyone is saying the exact same words. We are drawing a picture, collaboratively.” (Gay’Wu Group of Women 2019, 109) and “together we make it come alive.”(Gay’Wu Group of Women 2019, 110). In this paper I am attempting to bring this ethics discussion to life, not to resolve it.

I brought with me to academia a set of industry ethical values that I naively felt were solid and complete. Postgraduate study opened my eyes to the dire ethical situation in my industry, and in most of the creative industries. As a documentarian, my ethical focus was on those on the other side of my lens, and I adhered to that adage of ‘do no harm’ that Patricia Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi, and Mridu Chandra found is common among documentary filmmakers (2009). While spouting this adage, at the same time I looked for drama in people’s lives to help me create engaging stories, a seemingly contradictory positioning.

In the process of filmmaking, I did not consider myself, co-workers, or the fundamental organisational structure of my industry in this ethical debate. I began to read research in which the insecurity of work within the industry and the “unpredictability of project-based work” leads to situations where creative workers “experience considerable distress and anxiety" (Rowlands and Handy 2012, 658). I recognised this anxiety in myself. I also encountered research on the “negative impact of poor management practices particularly on the freelance staff” (van Raalte, Wallis, and Pekalski 2021, 5). I realised that I too am a manager who privileges the project over the workers. My argument here is that the creative industries cannot claim the moral high ground, we who work in it are blind to or complicit in so many normalised unethical practices. Industry-based ethics can, and should, be examined. Having said that, ethical ideas have been developing in the industries, and to ignore them is just as problematic as reproducing them wholesale. Sue Joseph, a journalist and academic, documented her unsuccessful process of seeking a profession-based human research ethics framework at the University of Technology Sydney (2014). She proposed that the professions have unique ethical and relational frameworks, and require their ethical positions to be measured against these unique frameworks, rather than against the fundamental of harm against the individual.

Profession or discipline-based ethics?

Joseph points out that while most ethics processes are about minimising harm that “it is often the remit of the investigative journalists to cause harm in the public's interest” (2014, 101). Public interest carries great ethical weight in journalism. The MEAA code of ethics (the code for journalists in Australia), includes a guidance clause which can be used to override all of the ethical statements in the code, and it reads “only substantial advancement of the public interest or risk of substantial harm to people allows any standard to be overridden“ (MEAA, np). For journalists, public interest or public harm overrides all other ethical or harm concerns. The conflict between this somewhat utilitarian approach and university ethics is clear, underlying university ethics is the Nuremberg Code and a reaction to Nazi medical experiments. University ethics derives from a code where harm to the individual is paramount. For Joseph, and the journalism profession, harm to the individual can be considered lesser than harm to a group of people. While the journalist’s code might seem to be exactly the ethical positioning that the Nuremberg Code was trying to avoid, the nature of the harm needs to be considered: the harm that journalism causes is rarely harm that directly results in death.

For instance, causing ‘reputational harm’ to an individual (or organisation) in the process of exposing physical harm they are perpetrating on others can be justified under the MEAA code, and journalism has often caused, and exposed, this very harm. Imagine if we allowed sexual predation by clerics to go unreported because of the reputational harm it might cause the priests or the church? Or, the treatment of animals by abattoirs to go unreported because of the harm to live exports? In journalism, harm caused can lead to financial, mental and physical harm of the individual or organisation, but, ethical journalists are not experimenting on humans in a way that can kill them in the process. It may feel extreme to compare journalism to Nazi medical experiments, I do this because those medical experiments form the underlying reason for the moral code that universities use. Sue Joseph has a point that university ethics committees should consider the harm that a profession or discipline causes and create ethics policies accordingly, as they can be so different. This is not just about balancing risks and benefits in a high-risk ethics projects. To recognise that ethics is situational and particular to disciplines is to challenge that individual harm is the fundamental measure of ethical conduct by all researchers. Putting reporting in the same ethical basket as medical experiments ignores that the potential harm caused is dependent upon the profession, or more precisely, the epistemological position of the researcher. To return to Haraway, “It matters what matters we use” (12 2016), these influence what we do, how we do it, and the ethics that is needed in that situation.

The fundamentals of Joseph’s challenge to universality of ethical measures can be seen in the work of cognitive scientist Francisco Varela. He suggests that there “cannot be any social order or moral order that is objectively desirable" (1999, 64). Varela promotes the idea that ethical behaviour is “in harmony with the texture of the situation at hand, not in accordance with a set of rules or procedures” (1999, 31). A university system, and even an industry system, is unlikely to ever be agile enough to do away with ethical codes and become entirely situational, but it can be agile enough to adapt codes to particular situations or disciplines and recognise that ethical frameworks and the type of harm that can be expected can be affected by the situation. That these situations will be influenced by the epistemology of the researcher: are they knowing their world through intrusive medical experiments or are they knowing it through talking to people? Both are legitimate ways of knowing, but they are different enough that to conflate the ethics of the situation can result in unethical unintended consequences. For instance, the existing assumptions about harm reduction, such as the need for anonymity in medical experiments, may in fact have a harmful effect when used in creative practice research.

Author-owner

The university preference for anonymity of research subjects as a means of reducing harm is not derived from the Nuremberg Code. At some point it has become the norm. Feminist and decolonising researchers are challenging the “a priori association of anonymity with protection, and naming with harm” (Moore 2012, 332). Niamh Moore states that:

For much of history anonymity did not protect the vulnerable, but excluded women and others from authorship and ownership of their own words, erasing them from the archive, even from history, and in the process creating vulnerability through rendering people nameless. (Moore 2012, 332)

Linda Tuhiwai Smith notes that the idea of the researcher as owner whose name is associated with the research and the ‘subject’ who remains anonymous creates disparity where the subject’s “knowledge has been rendered entirely invisible” (Smith 2012, 86). Anonymity of the subjects in a research project maintains power relations in which the researcher becomes the owner of the subject’s knowledge. The Gay’wu Group of Women clearly state to the reader in their work on song spirals: “You can talk about it, but don’t think you can become the authority on it” (2019, xxv). This is in reaction to years of being researched and finding that they, and their knowledge, had been misrepresented and an outsider researcher has become the ‘authority’.

Lily Hibberd explores the interface of university ethics with her own visual arts practice. For several years, and prior to becoming a researcher, she had been working on a collaborative arts project with women who were inmates of the child welfare institution known by various names, including Parramatta Girls Home. Hibberd collaborates with those who are part of the research and she feels “it was vital to find a means to redress the imbalance of my status as an established practitioner and to give support and primary consideration to the women’s need for acknowledgement and identity” (2019, 71). For Hibberd sharing acknowledgement and ownership is important because to avoid this obligation “would reinforce the subjugation of the women as material for ‘experts’ to examine” and this would highlight “the boundaries of exclusion and marginalisation that these women already face" (2019, 73).

Hibberd developed a relationship with the women from Parramatta Girls Home over a number of years where these women are “primary authors in the production of both art and knowledge emerging from the project” (2019, 71). This relationship was established prior to her needing to apply for human research ethics approval for further stages of the project. Hibberd noticed that her established arts industry approach ran counter to university ethics in which these women became ‘subjects’ or ‘interviewees’. If she treated the women as ‘co-authors’ she found that this act devalued her research in the eyes of the university where the current “structure maintains the hierarchy of the institution over the research subject” by preferencing the single academic author (2019, 82). Coupled with this, Hibberd found that her existing ethical practice was in conflict with the ethical practice of the university where she was being asked to be a researcher who is “set apart from the collaborators” (2019, 82). Hibberd challenges the asymmetrical quality of the power relations established in academic research and notions of independence through a discredited notion of objectivity (Denzin 2018, 15). She found that the underlying principle of do no harm expressed through anonymity of her participants, was having the opposite effect than intended, it was re-enforcing the idea these women had no control over their lives. It was silencing them.

Those who write about the clash of creative practice ethics and university ethics are often collaborating with people who exist on Trinh’s ‘margins’ of power. This is because for these creative practice researchers, like Hibberd, the ethical clash is most noticeable. In their work at Re•Vision, Carla Rice, Andrea LaMarre and Roxanne Mykitiuk fond that “protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality contravene participants’ desire for recognition as artists” (2018, 258). They collaborated with people, some of them artists, who have histories of being hidden away due to their disabilities. Rice, LaMarre and Mykitiuk used a ‘cripping ethics’ framework that includes “opening the field of decision-making in research” (2018, 258), and like Hibberd, they found themselves wanting to share knowledge and power in a way that contravened university ethical approaches that require participant anonymity and researcher independence. Requiring participant anonymity formed a silencing and harmful effect, rather than harm reduction, as the participants wanted to be able to claim and be recognised for their creative input. For Rice, LaMarre and Mykitiuk their ethics approach became embodied with “visible and invisible mind-body attributes” that pushed against ableist preconceptions. They sought to become entangled, in respectful ways, with the participants involved in the research, just as the participants sought to also become entangled. Disabled people have extensive experience of a form of discrimination where they are told what is best for them rather than heard, and an ethical approach that set the researcher apart as an authority could itself be unethical. As Smith notes “To be able to share, to have something worth sharing, gives dignity to the giver” (2012, 110). Enforced anonymity and disentangled researchers can be an undignified response to the participant’s willingness to share. Allowing entanglement in research opens a set of complex ethical relationships and creative practice researchers that I explore further below.

The Individual?

Researcher Jacqueline Lovell developed interesting ways of navigating anonymity when she created videos with people experiencing multiple levels of discrimination. She noticed that the participants had different attitudes to anonymity. Some participants shared their resulting videos on social media, some only wanted those in their close friendship circle to be able to see the works, and one person wanted to remain completely anonymous. Lovell rejected the idea of “one-size-fits-all approach” instead, she created agreements with the participants where the document catered for “the wishes of each participating member” (Lovell and Akhurst 2018, 377). By doing this she was asking the participants what they wanted, rather than imposing upon them an abstracted notion of harm. The ethics were being tailored to suit the different needs of the participants. While university ethics has an underpinning of harm reduction on the individual, the nature of this harm reduction is rarely tailored to the individual, instead a single option for all participants is generally imposed upon each of them. Ethically, they are in fact treated as a de facto group. Creative practice researchers are seeking to break down this one size fits all approach, and often that is helped by them being entangled in the research in a way where they can enter into meta-dialogues with participants, individually or as a group, about matters such as ethics.

Decolonising researchers challenge the very idea of the ‘individual’ in relation to ethics. Smith states that “Indigenous groups argue that legal definitions of ethics are framed in ways which contain the Western sense of the individual and of individualized property” (2012, 123). The pervading idea of the individual means that, despite each individual being treated as part of a de facto group, each individual must sign for themselves, rather than the community communally agree for the community. Decolonising researchers propose that consent may be sought from a community rather than from each of the individuals in that community.

The idea of who consents, and what they consent to, can be open to the particular situation of the research. Does consent look different for each participant? Is consent given by individuals or by the group?

Entangled researchers

To continue with ideas raised by decolonising studies, in reaction to perception that researchers are “simply intent on taking or ‘stealing’ knowledge in a non-reciprocal and often underhanded way” (2012, 178) Smith identifies a set of questions a cross-cultural researcher should ask themselves, which includes “To whom is the researcher accountable?” (2012, 175). Being accountable to someone, and not harming them, are different. Being accountable opens a larger set of ethical questions than the narrow scope of harm, being accountable is part of being entangled.

Being accountable to participants, as well as to academia and its institutions, includes the nature of how the researcher will relate to participants. As Rosi Braidotti points out: "Neither unitary, nor autonomous, subjects are embodied and embedded, relational and affective collaborative entities, activated by relational ethics" (2019, 46). The collaborative process and sharing of authorship recognises the knowledge of the participants, and it recognises that the researcher does not need to control this knowledge. The researcher can be implicated and entangled in their research and answerable to those who are collaborating on the research. What this ethical position also assumes is that the relationship between the participant and the research is via the researcher, not via the abstracted notion of the project. While this seems like a semantic shift, it in fact reveals a seismic shift in how the ethics functions. Smith explains that for Māori “Consent is not so much given for a project or specific set of questions, but for a person, for their credibility” (2012, 137), this means that trust can be formed between the people, not the participant and the project. Just as anonymity of the participants can be challenged in ethical research, a sense of being set apart or a disembodiment researcher is also challenged by making the researcher, as a person, central to the ethical relationship.

While this article is focused on human research, this practice of inclusivity can extend to the non-human. The Gay’wu Group of Women require “Country acknowledged as the lead author, rather than just people, to show the way Country shapes, teaches and guides us” (2019, 170). Here the idea of the independent researcher is entangled in the net of not only participants, but the world itself. The researcher is, as Denzin claims, ‘situated’, and being ethical is frequently about being actively aware of the situatedness. Inspired by the Gay’wu approach, I wrote a paper in which the lead author is a river system (Dungala-Baaka River and Gough-Brady 2021). But I admit that my awareness is emerging, and this is evidenced by how I frequently talk about giving the river first authorship, as if it is mine to give. It could even be argued that my lack of deep understanding of the underlying principals makes this act a form of appropriation rather than genuine acknowledgement. What this suggest is that ethics is not a complete act, but often it is an ever evolving (often social) interaction. Ethical researchers are constantly becoming aware of the potentially unethical norms, and approaches, that they use. Researchers are beings entangled in this fluid space of enquiry.

Rolling consent and changing relationships

The current ethics system regularly requires that consent is a binary that can be given once, or withdrawn once. This certitude relies upon there being a project that is predetermined at the outset. As autoethnographers Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner point out, "many unanticipated questions and ethical dilemmas emerge only when we are deep into the research process, engaged in day-to-day interactions and in the process of forming relationships with participants" (2016, 140). With creative practice projects there are not always pre-determined outcomes where the likely effect on the participants is known in advance. Added to this is that participants are complex beings who can change, and their world can change. In recognition of this, filmmaker and academic, Steve Thomas, operates “on the basis that consent is a continuous process of negotiation” (2019, 55). This establishes consent as a negotiation that occurs throughout the lifecycle of the research. It allows for discussion over what can be included in the research and for the participant to set and change boundaries of what is permissible. It recognises that the participant’s understanding of the research (and the researcher’s understanding) will change and develop over the course of the project. Instead of only offering the option to withdraw, with rolling consent the participant has the right to renegotiate how that consent will operate. Underpinning the idea of rolling consent is that participants and researchers have “a set of shifting identities” (Denzin 2018, 15) that change over time. Not only is the creative practice project open to change, but the people involved and how they relate will change.

It should be added that the identity of the researcher, or the participant, does not necessarily form a unified self, different aspects of the self can become dominant at various times in the research relationships. Thomas notes that “I am revealed from the beginning [of the film], not just as the filmmaker and interviewer (who will soon also be identified as the narrator), but also as a participant in the film" (2019, 57). Researchers and participants take on a variety of roles that shift and change through the process of the research. In their research project on disability arts, Rice, LaMarre and Mykitiuk created an ethics process that is open to that change: “Every time participants alerted us to the discomfort they felt with participating in research as prescribed, we learnt new ways of approaching the ethics process” (2018, 265) thus allowing a space in which participants can have some influence over how “they would prefer to imagine themselves” (2018, 260). Jacqueline Lovell also used rolling ethics in her research on the social enterprise organisation dp, where she was “co-developing new methods that would facilitate equitable and meaningful engagement” (Lovell and Akhurst 2018, 382).

The bedrock of these shifting relationships is that knowledge sharing in creative practice research projects is a two-way relationship. Thomas noticed “the camera is still rolling as Jim [a customer] enters and Mustafa turns to me (I am off camera) and says: ‘Do you want to cut for a bit, I’ll just ask for permission’” (2019, 57). The participant had become aware of the researcher’s ethics just as the researcher adapts their ethics to one which accommodates the participant. The identities of each shift as they accommodate the other and the relationship develops as knowledge sharing grows. An ethical process can accommodate the fluidity of the relational nature of these ethics. The growing awareness, and even friendship, between the researcher and researched can create greater understanding but also complicate the ethics of the relationship.

The reverse can also be true, friends can become participants. Nicole Brown uses participatory research methods and she has spoken about how her arts-based projects can emerge from pre-existing relationships rather than be set endeavours with clear start-dates: “Ethics are really difficult to navigate with this type of work because most often you are already half way into a project when you realise you’ve actually got one” (2021b, 37 mins). Smith talks about her own transitioning from being a friend to an ‘insider’ researcher:

What really struck me when I visited the women in their homes as a researcher, having done so on many previous occasions as a mother, were the formal cultural practices which the women observed. (2012, 139)

The shift in behaviour occurs in both the researcher and the participants in response to the formality of the relationship that is encompassed by the research methods, such as an interview. There is a recognition by both parties that the researching dynamic is different than the friend or colleague dynamic, in part because the participant (and researcher) is becoming self-reflexive as a result of the research. In Smith’s case the women she researched cleaned their houses, took extra care with the clothing their children wore. They performed a self that best reflected how they wanted to be documented. While Nicole Brown talks about projects emerging and then reaching a point where she recognises them, there is always that point at which the ethical and social relationship will shift as it becomes one enmeshed in research. Smith reflects that is no one right way to be an insider researcher, but “insiders have to live with the consequences of their processes on a day-to-day basis for ever more, and so do their families and communities” (2012, 138). The consequences of any actions taken by the researcher are greater for insiders. Navigating the research when entangled has the potential to lead to an increased awareness of those consequences for the participants.

Effect of the research?

Researchers can be affected by their research. Filmmaker and researcher Kym Melzer found that her time spent with participants was distressing her: “After this interview, I climbed into my car and sobbed uncontrollably. It had required considerable work to supress my emotional response to the story Liz recounted” (Melzer 2019, 44). Underlying Melzer’s distress is a realisation that her research may not benefit the people being researched: “I was acutely aware of the inadequacy of my films to change lives in a positive way. My aims and hopes for the creative project seemed naïve and empty” (Melzer 2019, 44). Melzer was concerned about the harm she was doing by asking an interviewee to discuss their traumatic experiences, and if this interview was justified.

Nicole Brown has noticed that creative practice researchers, like participatory researchers, tend to be interested in political agendas, and notions of creating positive change (2021a). Creating positive change can establish a focus on social change rather than change for the individuals involved. This leads to a tension in creative practice research where the primary aim might not be to be of benefit to the individuals who are the participants (think of the journalists discussed earlier). As Denzin points out, research can turn “researchers and subjects into co-participants in a common moral project” where that morality is seen as “civic” rather than individual in nature (2018, 18).

The participant, Liz, who Melzer reacted strongly to, had stated the ‘outcome’ she wanted for the research as being “policy change, not sympathy” (2019, 44). Here, the participant saw the outcome of the research as being civic rather than personal. That places pressure on Melzer, over and above her emotional reaction to Liz’s story. Liz is staking a claim for an expected outcome of the research that is most likely not an outcome in the consent form, instead it is spoken, and represents attitudes of the participants and their needs. Part of the ethical process is navigating those spoken desires and reasons for participation, that may not be part of written agreements. Melzer questions if she can achieve Liz’s agenda, which she most likely cannot. This adds to Melzer’s stress levels as she questions if she has the right to conduct the research if she cannot meet Liz’s desired outcome. Participants use researchers for their agendas as much as researchers use participants, and ethically it is important to manage those expectations, on both sides.

Melzer’s reaction reminds us that the researcher is affected. In Smith’s set of questions that a researcher should ask themselves, the final question is “What processes are in place to support the research, the researched and the researcher?” (2012, 175). Smith recognises that all parties will need support at various points in the research process. Current systems are set up for participants in interviews to be able to opt out of questions or change their mind about being involved in the research. What systems are in place for the researcher to opt out, without it having dire consequences on their study or career? Geographer Christine Eriksen discusses this very problem with regards to her research on the effect bushfires in Australia. She notes that there is a fear by the researcher that if they disclose “research-related emotional distress to an employer” that the employer “has the power to prevent the researcher from continuing work on a particular project” (2017, 275-6). Eriksen points out that geography researchers have little knowledge (and the same can be said of creative practice researchers) of how to recognise vicarious trauma, and what can done to address it. Eriksen found that her “journey towards recognising vicarious trauma amongst disaster researchers started with an observation of a growing personal inability to manage seemingly inconsequential tasks in professional and private life” (2017, 275). While some institutions are becoming aware of the need to support researchers and the importance of self-care, it is often ad hoc and by no means universal. Melzer’s and Eriksen’s work is part of a growing body of literature where researchers talk about their experiences of vicarious trauma. This trauma and stress can be brought about by the stories being experienced as well as by the expectations of the participants, and desires by the researcher, that civic change will result from participating.

Conclusion

Industry ethical codes have been developed over several years and can differ markedly from university ethical codes. Neither code is necessarily right nor wrong, both industry and academic codes have flaws, blind spots, and spaces where they create unintended harm. By seeing ethics as being inclusive of situational elements, it can become flexible to the needs of the participants and the researcher. Ethics can be polyphonic and open to the fluidity of the project, the knowledge gathered, and those involved. Underlying systemic biases and norms can be challenged to create fairer and more respectful research practices. Ethical practices need not be the same for all researchers, and universities could put practices in place that recognise this.

Through this process some core ideas about the way we practice research are challenged, for instance that individual harm is the fundamental of the ethical relationship. In part, this is about how we treat participants: as unique individuals, a group of individuals or even a community. Recognising multiple levels of accountability in ethical relationships can widen the scope beyond harm, and behaving ethically can include a range of respectful behaviour, including the sharing of authorship. This has the effect of challenging the right of the researcher to claim sole authorship, to be considered separate from the researched, and that the participants remain anonymous. A further effect is that it raises the ethical problem that the university system encourages colonisation of participants through auditing academic research via a preference for the sole and first author. Underlying this discussion of being an ethical researcher is that universities, as institutions, should rethink how they document and value the work of researchers given their aim is to encourage ethical human research practices.

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Artist-researchers on the Margins: Communities of Practice Beyond the PhD

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.2022.08 | Issue 9 | Oct 2022

Josephine Coleman (Brunel University) and Sophie Hope (Birkbeck)

Abstract

This article considers the reflections of fourteen arts/creative media practice-based PhD graduates, interviewed as part of ongoing research into the field. The recorded conversations were shared as a podcast series entitled Corkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhD. We look at meanings of practice as research, ways in which practitioners value the intellectual rigour of doing a PhD and how this affects their relationship to their practice moving forwards. Using the theoretical concepts of “communities of practice” (Wenger 1999), “social site of practice” (Schatzki 2002) and “third-spaces of hybridity” (as developed by Lam 2018), we ask: what impact does doing an artistic/creative practice-based PhD have on when, where, and how practitioners identify as academics and vice versa; and what support structures and resources are needed (or lacking) which enable them to practise as both at once?

Introduction

Practice-based PhDs are often an uncomfortable fit in academic institutions and can lead to non-academic or near-academic career trajectories. More research on graduate experiences post-award is required, especially in the UK, although rich seams of research are emanating from Australia and the USA on the transformations that arts practice-based doctoral students experience whilst at university. Beverley Simmons and Allyson Holbrook explore the “rupture” encountered (Simmons and Holbrook 2012, 204), and how artists adjust to epistemological transitions as they acclimatise to the new “landscape” of academia (ibid., 210). Judith Stevens-Long et. al. apply concepts of transformative learning, finding that “doctoral students can experience a wide array of learning outcomes, beyond the traditional emphasis on intellectual development … [which] include advanced stages of cognitive development, new capacity for emotional experience and conceptions of self, and more reflective professional practice” (Stevens-Long et. al. 2012, 192).

Jeri Kroll (2004), Jen Webb (2012) and Jenny Wilson (2011) have written on the issues facing artist- and author-academics in Australian universities. Kroll points to the paradox of working on a creative writing PhD: the complex identity work involved in producing a hybrid thesis with both a “creative and critical component” (Kroll 2004, 90-91). Webb takes Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus to explore how artists might feel “like a fish out of water” in an academic context but can also feel out of place in art contexts when they develop an academic identity (Webb 2009, 8). This occurs because each field works according to a different logic (ibid.). Both Kroll and Webb see potential to overcome these challenges. For Webb, this involves becoming “a new kind of academic who is simultaneously a new kind of artist, making a new kind of object in a reconceptualised field” (Webb 2009, 14). For Kroll, “author-critics” are developing a “theory of praxis” and a new epistemology, “encouraged by interdisciplinarity, which will reach out to communities beyond the university” (Kroll 2004, 100). There remains a need, however, for creative arts research methods, outputs and values to be “seen as valid scholarly approaches in their own right” (Wilson 2011, 75). Wilson calls for parity for artist-academics in terms of research funding and improved administrative environments, highlighting the “loss of agency” that artist-academics face (ibid., 73). Looking beyond the university experience, Cally Guerin’s study of Humanities and Social Science graduates argues that PhD candidates “should be encouraged from the outset to seriously consider their doctorate as preparation for careers beyond academia; rather than being ‘failed academics,’ these graduates succeed as high-level knowledge workers” (Guerin 2020, 304).

There is a related body of literature exploring broader post-PhD careers in the UK, but not much focus on practice-based qualifications. A recent study of STEM-subject PhD graduates working in industry contexts points out that while their numbers have increased markedly in OECD countries, this contrasts with “little growth in the number of available academic positions for which these graduates are traditionally trained” leading to more of them “searching for jobs outside academia” (Germain-Alamartine et al. 2021, 2680). The findings suggest that networks play an important role in “increasing the quality of non-academic employment after graduation” but that these are often reliant on the students’ own networks rather than the supervisors (ibid., 2681). Skakni et al. (2021) also focus on the transition from academic to non-academic workplaces and culture shock. They too flag up the disparity between getting a PhD and securing a job in academia, pointing to the work of Vitae, a non-profit organization which supports and monitors doctoral graduate career prospects.

Our article aims to complement the existing body of literature on academic and non-academic career trajectories, focusing on the practice-based PhD graduate in the UK. Following an introduction to our methodology and theoretical framework the findings are presented in three sections. The first looks at how our interviewees explain the impact that doing a PhD has had on their practice and how their understandings of knowledge production have developed. We reflect on the role communities of practice (might) play in the PhD journey and the immediate aftermath before moving on to the second section of the paper which focuses on the crossing of knowledge boundaries upon completion. We explore both the enriching and time-wasting aspects of this liminal work. The next section identifies how, why, and when practitioners with PhDs create third spaces to develop hybridized identities both inside and outside of academia. We finish by flagging the structural barriers and missing communities of practice preventing those hybridized identities from flourishing or ever forming in the first place.

Methodology

As reflexive, practice-based researchers working in academia, we are exploring the subjective experiences and lived realities of other practice-researchers. The need to create transparent, supportive, peer-led platforms for sharing work in progress during the PhD is well-recognized (e.g., through AHRC Doctoral Training Partnerships such as CHASE, Technē or LAHP and institution-specific centres such as CREAM at University of Westminster or CORKSCREW at Birkbeck). Research finds that doctoral candidates should be “better informed about existing non-academic careers” and “supported in preparing for these types of careers” (Skakni et al. 2021, 1272). Hence, we are interested in what support structures might be required by practice-based researchers beyond the PhD for professional development. We acknowledge that specific practices vary, yet there is a shared experience of being on the margins of academia as well as sometimes misunderstood in practitioner contexts. Our research highlights how there is more to be done collectively to hold a third space for developing the hybridized work of the practitioner-academic.

Our repurposing of recorded research interviews as podcasts demonstrates the potential of podcasting as a publicly-engaged research method. We can do more than just create artefacts or disseminate findings; we can develop research conversations in public with peers. Our research methodology is therefore not just about finding the best way to research other people’s careers but experimenting with formats and methods for collective inquiry. The format of our podcast, while not perfect, is an attempt at making more transparent the ways in which practice-based PhDs are conducted and the realities of life afterwards. Our approach aligns with the rapidly-growing trend for academic podcasting, particularly where this is developing as a practice-based methodology for rethinking how podcasting itself is researched and practised (Kinkaid et al. 2020). What we have found invaluable are the opportunities for self-reflexivity afforded during the interviewing, listening back, audio-editing and transcribing stages; the process is just as important as “the quality of the final product” (Jorgensen and Lindgren 2022, 57).

As non-positivist, practice-based researchers, we are interested in the ways knowledge is embedded in experience; reflexively acknowledging our own partiality and subjectivities are part of this (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). We developed a way to analyse the material which acknowledges an “abductive” approach (Peirce 1955; Shepherd and Sutcliffe 2011). Guided by a set of initial research questions, we listened back to the interviews and read through the transcripts, identifying extracts which we tabulated under subheadings. After further reflection and discussion with each other, and more sifting through the extracts, connections and salient points were foregrounded. Circling back then to the theoretical concepts, three broad themes emerged around which we have structured this article.

Our interviewees completed their PhDs between 1992 and 2020 from universities across England in a range of arts and humanities disciplines, such as creative writing, community media, contemporary art practice, performance and sound art. Of the fourteen interviewees drawn on for this article, nine did not have permanent academic jobs at the time (although many of them were teaching): Rob Watson is from a community media background and having been made redundant from his academic post as he finished his PhD has set up his own company; Libro Levi Bridgeman and Olumide Popoola are creative writers, working freelance and often teaching; Sunshine Wong is a practitioner who did a theory-based PhD and now works as a curator at Bloc Projects in Sheffield; Lucy Lyons works as a freelance medical illustrator and also teaches; Nina Perry continues to work as a freelance sound artist and audio producer and is also a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University; Cara Davies has a performing arts background and works with a research collective, Tracing the Pathway, as well as carrying out teaching contracts and working as a document controller for construction companies; Lucy Wright and Harold Offeh are visual arts – Lucy left a period of short-term academic contracts to work part time for arts organization, Axis, and Harold was in the process of moving on from a university post. Of the five who were at the time employed in academia: Rachel Hann has a theatre and scenography practice and works full time as a senior lecturer; Anne Douglas, from visual arts backgrounds, was a full-time professor; Becky Shaw is a full time Reader and Lizzie Lloyd and Katy Beinart are part-time senior lecturers. As the conversations we had are all available publicly on the podcast, we refer to the interviewees by name when we quote them. We would like to thank them all for their time and generosity and honesty in sharing their experiences with us.

Theoretical framework

Notwithstanding the useful concepts mentioned above relating to transformation and culture shock, we feel that a context-sensitive community of practice framing is appropriate for developing a holistic understanding of the challenges facing creative practice-based PhD graduates in the workplace. Before we discuss the factors which supposedly bind practitioners together into a community around a shared interest and pursuit, we should first acknowledge what “practice” is and how we can apply the abstraction to reality. Practice theorist Theodore Schatzki has drawn on the ideas of renowned philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Foucault, and Bourdieu to devise a concept for understanding “bodily doings and sayings” (Schatzki 2002, 72) as social orders in particular locales. The notion of there being a “social site” represents not only the spaces where a practice takes place, but a set of arrangements created by that practice: “a mesh of practices and orders: a contingently and differentially evolving configuration of organized activities and arrangements” (Schatzki 2002, xii). There are four interlinking aspects: the people involved share a common understanding as to what the practice is and what it entails; they know how to carry out the requisite actions and activities; they experience and respond to its teleoaffective structure (being the generally accepted and emotionally-affecting means and ends); and are aware of and respond to a set of rules and guidelines specific to that practice (Schatzki 2002, 87). Any agency involved in the carrying out of activities associated with a practice is affected by shifting interrelationships between practitioners, beings and objects as well as by the dynamic structural contexts within which they act.

Continuing with this line of thought to consider how practitioners become immersed in a field of practice, embodying certain attitudes, and developing appropriate aptitudes in order to assume an identity aligning them with a particular community, we can turn now to organizational theory. Etienne Wenger’s work on learning has become popular since he wrote about communities of practice with Jean Lave in 1991. They developed the notion of “legitimate peripheral participation” which provides a way to speak about the “process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991, 29). Like Schatzki, Wenger sees the importance of “meaningful interactions with others in the production of artifacts” and these can be in physical or conceptual form from words and concepts to documents and various tools which “reflect our shared experience and around which we organize our participation” (Wenger 2010, 1). Wenger perceives a practice as having “a life of its own” that actively responds to and negotiates with institutions and other practices: “It is in this sense that learning produces a social system and that a practice can be said to be the property of a community” (ibid., 2). This helps us understand practitioners doing PhDs and their subsequent careers as “involved not only in practising the profession, but also in research, teaching, management, regulation, professional associations, and many other contexts…” (Wenger 2010, 4).

As a social learning system, “the production of practice creates boundaries, not because participants are trying to exclude others (though this can be the case) but because sharing a history of learning ends up distinguishing those who were involved from those who were not” (Wenger 2010, 3). As with Schatzki, this helps us understand the relational aspects of how practices are developed at the edges of these sites and communities. For Wenger, boundaries are where “meetings of perspectives can be rich in new insights and radical innovations…the innovation potential is greater, but so is the risk of wasting time or getting lost. In every practice, boundary processes require careful management of time and attention” (Wenger 2010, 4).

Alice Lam has written about the identity work of artists and creatives in academia in the UK. Basing her findings on “interviews with 32 artist-academics in drama, music, media arts and design from three research universities in the London area”, she identifies three types: “academic-practitioners” (who seem to easily switch between roles); artists-in-academia or “pracademics” (who have made a career transition from practitioner to academic), and “practitioners-in-academia” (those who joined academia late in their careers and see themselves primarily as “practitioners”). Lam analyses how knowledge boundaries are disrupted (Lam 2020, 846), finding that it is the “ambivalent hybrid” pracademics who risk most in terms of threat to a coherent identity, but “also undertook the most disruptive boundary work: they contested the established knowledge practices and hierarchies and promoted alternative ways of knowing” (Lam 2020, 857). This relates to Webb’s practice-theory-informed call for artist-academics to become “a new kind of academic … in a reconceptualised field” (Webb 2012, 14) and Kroll’s new interdisciplinary epistemology (Kroll 2004, 100). For Lam, the academic-practitioners, because of their ability to hold these distinct roles of artist and academic, “seemed much less disruptive: they blurred the knowledge boundaries but did not explicitly challenge them” (Lam 2020, 857).

Lam notes that the relationship between professional arts and academia has been uneasy because the two communities value different types of knowledge, especially where the value of non-textual knowledge is concerned. She refers to how all types of artist-academics “work at the interface of two contradistinctive knowledge communities and their experience reveals the identity work undertaken to reconcile the tensions” (Lam 2020, 843). There is a growing body of literature that distinguishes practice-based approaches from “traditional norms about research, new knowledge and how it is generated” (Candy and Edmonds 2018, 68). It has been deemed ontologically distinct (Andersson 2009), post-paradigmatic (Rolling 2010) or indeed an entirely new paradigm (Haseman 2006). There is significant risk involved to one’s “habitus” for artists undertaking the “transformational journey” as they “struggle to adapt to the unfamiliar terrain of research, and to integrate it with their creative practice” (Allen-Collinson 2005, 725).

Similarly for Webb, structural differences between the fields of art and academia mean that they “operate according to different rules; they use different tools, discourses and methods; their rewards are different, as are their audiences; and they must satisfy different gatekeepers” (Webb 2012, 8). She explores how artist-academics often “attempt to conflate their two fields: to make art work count in and for the academy and, to a lesser extent, to transport academic products into the field of art” (ibid.), but this means they are “continually switching codes as they move between those two ‘home’ fields, and what they gain in one field can be lost in the other” (ibid., 9). To understand “where career actors construct hybrid role identities and undertake knowledge brokering”, Lam explores Homi Bhabha’s ideas of hybridity and the dynamic “third space” where cultural differences are encountered and negotiated (Lam 2018, 1718). For Lam, an artist-academic finds themselves in “a site of articulation, contestation and transformation between two cultural systems” (ibid.). Her respondents must reconcile the tensions of “boundary work” (Lam 2020, 857). Their agency and power lie in the ability to “assert control over the definition of legitimate knowledge in the host academic context so as to create a more conducive work environment for their hybrid selves” (Lam 2018, 1735).

Schatzki, Lave, Wenger and Lam all point to the significance of practices forming, taking shape through engagement within and across communities of practice. Our analysis illuminates how difficult and unsatisfactory this boundary crossing can be, especially when there is no conceptual third space in which to develop a hybrid identity. As stated earlier, there is scope for more research on post-PhD experiences, indeed Lam, whose respondents were mid- or late-career academics in senior positions, points out that “a study on those who have moved out of academia into the practitioner world could also be illuminating” (Lam 2018, 1738). Our research attempts this and although it involves a relatively small sample there is a wider geographical spread across England, and over half our interviewees did not hold senior academic positions at the time. Not only do the interviewees describe post-PhD career trajectories outside of academia, but they also hold differing opinions on how to articulate the relationship between their artistic practice and research. Amongst them, understandings of the relationship between practice and research varies as influenced by their everyday experiences in terms of what has worked for them and what is/was expected or considered acceptable by their work environments. How graduates navigate and articulate the relationships their practices have to research is significant, as we will outline in the next section.

Impact of undertaking the PhD

In this section we explore the impact that conducting a PhD has had on our interviewees during and directly after completing their doctorates. Their individual experiences are varied as are the unique contexts of their engagement in communities of practice, even down to how they term their practice approach. Sophie Hope (2016) provides a means of accommodating different understandings of practice-based, -led and -related academic research using the metaphor of the artists’ colour wheel. The gradations of colour allow for blurring and our interviewees use the terms interchangeably, with some preferring the term artistic research, and one person rejecting any separation, saying all research is practice. The podcast conversations reflect Kroll (2004), Wilson (2011), Webb (2012) and Lam’s (2018 and 2020) findings in that there is a constant tussle between the postgraduates’ practice (and identities) as artists and as academic researchers. This type of PhD involves learning how to be an artistic or creative practice-based researcher: being acculturated to specialist ways of doing and saying things. But how vibrant and welcoming are the fields into which postgraduate students hope to develop a career (in academia or not)? Entering the world of academia during a PhD can involve manoeuvring from one community of practice and assimilating into another. Stevens-Long et al., for example, refer to one of their participants who wrote: “I have not been the same since, more appreciative, more observant, more willing to listen” (Stevens-Long et al. 2012, 190). One of our interviewees, Shaw, also reflected on this challenge. She refers to “hiatuses” and “sharp moments,” such as the ethics review and project planning process, which echo the transitional types of third space where artistic and academic conventions collide. These can be, according to Shaw, “incredibly difficult, because they go right to the deep root of what it is, of conventions and expectations, assumptions about art practice” (Shaw 2018). She suggests that any artists thinking about doing practice-based research should think about “what that disruption is for and whether you’re really up for it” (ibid.).

The disruption for Wright and Watson came from being more familiar with research and academic expectations and then developing their artistic/creative practice through doing the PhD: Wright as an ethnographer and Watson as an engineering and digital technologies teacher in a university. As Wright describes: “Everything that I do [now], as an artist, is informed by some element of a research problem or question” (Wright 2021). Similarly for community media activist Watson, doing the PhD meant he had “crossed over from being an academic, somebody [who] just talks about this in the classroom to actually being a practitioner… [exploring] how we communicate with people on that inter-subjective level” (Watson 2021). He found that developing academic research expertise led to asking more critical questions of the field he was exploring: “[Our task] as academics or researchers is not to advocate for a model, but to test the model and to ask the questions of, well, what drives this?” (ibid.). Doing the PhD helped him recognize alternatives to professionalized, corporate media such as the potential for creative community engagement.

Bridgeman also found their own critical thinking improved which impacted on their writing: “It’s given me more confidence really to tackle things like verbatim theatre…and not feel nervous about subject matters that you think might be a bit more specialized” (Bridgeman 2018). The process has a particular impact on ways of knowing. Researching through questioning their practice and collapsing the divide between theory and practice enabled experimentation. Other respondents also enjoyed feeling that “the research space could open up the opportunity to ask questions that you couldn’t ask elsewhere…to rethink, to reflect, to work experimentally in a way that…[is] very difficult to do in the professional space” (Douglas 2018).

Of those already practising as artists or creatives who then embarked on a PhD, some found it was the experience of entering academia that was jarring. They experienced culture shock similar to what Skakni et al. found in their respondents entering non-academic work contexts after graduating (Skakni et al. 2021). There was a sense of uncertainty or of not fitting in, a feeling that they were having to do things differently. Visual artist Offeh said he found “the scariest thing was writing” (Offeh 2021). Composer Perry felt it “was very much using a different part of me, like I wasn’t used to sitting and writing all day...it’s quite an alien way of being” (Perry 2021). Lloyd felt that she did not “fit in”. Doing her practice-based PhD in an Art History department: “For a long time, I was kind of wondering what on earth I was doing, as most people do through their PhDs” (Beinart and Lloyd 2021). Wong also experienced “imposter syndrome” and felt “disengaged” and “detached” from her existing community of practice for at least the first year or two (Wong 2021). This was necessary to focus on the PhD. Since she was studying in a different city to where she was living, she was not meeting people and felt very isolated. “I’m in my room, and I’ve got my post-its and you know, my breathing exercises, and I’m gonna write this damn thing…” (Wong 2021). Wong’s experience of this loss or lack of community of practice was mirrored in her being told that she “wrote very subjectively” and was directed to “clean out all the I’s” (Wong 2021). It was not until after the PhD that Wong could re-engage with her practice. While Wong produced a theoretical PhD to be proud of, her artistic activities were side-lined.

For those practitioners working with their practice in some way through the PhD, there were also positive stories of the benefits. For example, Hann had the confidence and support to value the process of “creating documents, which are legible as the thing rather than a kind of interpretation of the thing…that recording of the performance becomes another kind of artifact that’s critically distinct or ontologically distinct from the performance itself” (Hann 2021). Similarly, Beinart described the collaboration with Lloyd as “writing through or…making through and…that…is generating the knowledge rather than knowledge being generated secondarily to the practice” (Beinart and Lloyd 2021). Lloyd referred to how they keep “thinking and doing really enmeshed…It’s kind of messy and frayed at the edges but it also makes things difficult to negotiate and difficult to complete” (ibid.). This third space afforded to some through the process of the practice-based PhD, to play around with relationships between theory and practice, might allow practice-based researchers to move away from binary distinctions or hierarchies between, for example, theoretical and tacit knowledge. For Lyons these “don’t negate each other and they shouldn’t” (Lyons 2018). Perry declared that, for her: “the research has always been a significant part of my practice and artistic inquiry, whether I’ve been situated within academia or not” (Perry 2021).

For the creative writers, binaries between artistic and academic knowledge remain useful. Bridgeman suggested, for example, that “academic writing is a counterpoint to creative writing. They don’t necessarily sit side by side very well…they seem to occupy different areas of the brain. Sometimes if I’m working in imagined worlds and creative worlds, it won’t necessarily correlate with critical thinking and academic writing” (Bridgeman 2018). This perhaps sets up an “academic-practitioner” position where the worlds of art and research will retain some distance. According to Lam, “academic-practitioners” or “embedded knowledge brokers” operate in overlapping spaces between arts and academia, “where they internalize the cognitive-relational distance between them” (Lam 2018, 1718). The academic-practitioner is not necessarily going to challenge knowledge boundaries, rather they can reinforce them, for example by retaining a distinct space for fiction which they do not want to be subsumed or articulated as research. This links back to Wilson’s provocation that “[a]rtistic work needs to be encouraged without compromising the essential development of artistic technique if Australian higher education is to avoid producing a nation of art critics and commentators rather than artists” (Wilson 2011, 74).

Since this type of specialized training takes place within the academic field, many of our participants were already engaged in lecturing and described how doing a PhD improved their teaching. For some, however, the process was not without tension. Douglas recognized “the PhD can be a kind of intervention…and also, potentially, a threat to when people have gone through a career trajectory in which…you became a practising artist and you taught as part of that practice. I think the PhD has unnerved that in some ways” (Douglas 2018). Offeh was already teaching undergraduates at Leeds before doing his PhD on performance and re-enactments. He said the process inspired him to refresh the content in his lectures. Completing it was just the beginning: “It’s a lifetime project…there’s that sense in which those lines of inquiry kind of continue...I feel, like, equipped with a set of…transferable skills, I think, that are useful for teaching. I think I’m a better teacher as a result of having to do this thing…in terms of just that depth of reading that I’ve had to do” (Offeh 2021).

But achieving the PhD does not necessarily lead to a teaching post within academia and it is this parting of the ways that poses challenges. Novelist Popoola enjoys teaching very much, but said she particularly appreciates being able to put her own stamp on it, so despite doing some hourly-paid and visiting lecturer work, she is mostly teaching her own courses. She explained: “If you’re not teaching, you still need to think about how you’re going to make your money” (Popoola 2021). She runs workshops in creative writing for emerging LGBTQ+ writers called “The Future is Back,” funded by the Arts Council and aims to convey the same mindset to her participants: “I want them to creatively develop. And I also want to be very practical: how can we actually ensure our income and also be writers?” (Popoola 2021). Popoola advocates instead of asking students to simply read about an issue such as intersectionality, even critical texts, the important thing is to encourage them to talk about it as a lived experience. Thus, the gap between theory and practice is bridged: “In society, we need to sort of learn to be unsettled, and to being undone. But this undoing is important for us to arrive at…a new understanding, new meanings, new connections in life, and therefore also, maybe better places” (Popoola 2021).

Several interviewees reflected on the need for time and space straight after the PhD, for their (awkwardly) nurtured, new hybridized identity to settle before thinking about what to do next. Some, like Lloyd, described the relief of it being over, but for others it felt more like being “left out in the wild” (Wong 2021). Post-PhD, our respondents reported feeling as if they fell into a different category from before and, as Lyons put it, needed to “move into a different circle” where they would be valued for “how you share your views of the world via your work” (Lyons 2018). Wright described being a precarious academic as “a kind of a hustle” since “you’re always having to try and work out how to sell yourself the next time” (Wright 2021). She referred to how she might downplay her “actual approach” as an artistic researcher in interviews, in the “hope that I can squeeze it in on the side, when I’ve actually got the job, but at the time you try and be what they want you to be” (Wright 2021). This tallies with Webb’s reference to “switching codes” in different fields (Webb 2012, 9), and Kroll’s reflections on how author-academics must “don several masks in a university context” and how they might “suffer from multiple personality disorder, in a healthy way, and only the context determines which personalities have their say” (Kroll 2004, 100). Not only do PhD graduates experience a sense of culture shock when going from academic to non-academic work contexts but practice-based researchers are also experiencing unease both in the academy and outside, as creative arts research remains largely misunderstood.

Germain-Alamartine et al. (2021) and Guerin (2020) also found that outside the academic community of practice, the PhD carries differing currency and is not always recognized as useful. Bridgeman, for instance, recalled being asked by their agent to remove the PhD from their website biography as it made them look too academic. Douglas described finishing her PhD and suddenly becoming “neither fish nor fowl.” She remembered going for teaching jobs, “where people didn’t know really what to do with me” and how perhaps this was because they “felt quite threatened by the presence of a PhD” (Douglas 2018). She described this feeling as “you’ve abandoned being just an artist and you’re suddenly not, kind of, one of that community anymore.” (ibid.) This echoes Webb’s findings that artist-academics are often “misfits” who “risk remaining frustrated near-outsiders”; “…not fully at home in both art and the academic fields. One must dominate; and this means there is always a loss, and always a cost” (Webb 2012, 9).

For some, finding work in a completely new community of practice outside academia and their art making was the answer. Davies feels there is a lot of pressure on PhD students to have made the decision before they finish the PhD on what they are doing next. For her, it has been “a very refreshing experience” to work in a different industry: “I’m now feeling much more revitalized to translate that back into my practice, and to have some time to assimilate that” (Davies 2018). For many, however, such time and space to readjust is not feasible, either inside the academy due to workloads or outside. Negotiating the relationship between academic and practitioner selves continues into post-PhD career progression as a core element of what constitutes the social site of this specialized community of practice.

Crossing knowledge boundaries

Our interviewees are crossing professional knowledge boundaries on a regular basis post-PhD, and this influences their identity formation, cohesion, and career progression. Wenger states how “remaining on a learning edge takes a delicate balancing act between honoring the history of the practice and shaking free from it. This is often only possible when communities interact with and explore other perspectives beyond their boundaries” (Wenger 2010, 3). Lam (2018) focuses on the positive attributes of this boundary crossing work, such as ways it can challenge the construction and communication of knowledge. This was echoed by Hann who stated how important it is that practice-researchers do not “create a culture of silo-ing ourselves and seeing ourselves as distinct” (Hann 2021). Hann thinks practice researchers need to talk more “about how they do practice research, but also communicating the vitality and importance of practice research within their own disciplines” (ibid.). Douglas also refers to the potential for “shifting the university from being a kind of silo of knowledge” to a more relational model “where the university is simply part of a much bigger community of knowledge” (Douglas 2018). She sees a role for practice led research in “this opening up of the arts to public life” (ibid.). Beinart also stated that it is important to not “just get siloed into communicating within academia, and that you keep communicating within other worlds as well” including artistic circles (Beinart and Lloyd 2021). This was echoed by Popoola who remarked that during her year working at Goldsmiths as maternity cover, she enjoyed having colleagues to exchange with, “even though I wouldn’t call myself a researcher, I’m definitely a thinker and enjoy an environment where I can, you know, bounce certain ideas off, also learn from others, see what they’re doing” (Popoola 2021).

We heard many stories of boundary crossing post-PhD from our interviewees. Having both recently completed their PhDs, Beinart and Lloyd, for example, were collaborating on a project called “Acts of Transfer” which Beinart described as an interesting way of “continuing to research but taking me outside what I know and testing my own kind of comfort zones” (Beinart and Lloyd 2021). We also heard evidence that practice based academic research changed minds in specialist fields, as in the case for Lyons whose research has had an impact on clinicians working on evidence of ossification. She describes practice-based researchers as “canaries down the mine…we’ll go down into dangerous places, and we’re quite willing to do it…We are subversive, and we’re interventionists and I think we must use that” (Lyons 2018). She uses her fine art practices as methodologies in sciences and medicine contexts, which she feels is a strength, adding: “But it can be very isolating as well” (ibid.).

Boundary crossing as an application of transferable skills and transformative learning beyond intellectual development to include more reflective professional practice (Stevens-Long et al. 2012, 191), is demonstrated by Davies’ story of finding work outside the university where her archiving expertise and PhD background was considered valuable especially for interpreting and applying data protection and the changes in EU policy and regulations: “It’s a very different field, but actually [I’m] using quite a lot of the fundamental, interpretive deep reading skills that have been brought up through the PhD” (Davies 2018). After her PhD, Wright worked as a research associate at the Centre of Enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University. Even though it was not her field, she describes how it was like a training ground and that there was time to develop her own interests, allowing her to work out what her role was going to be in the future. For Shaw, when she finished her PhD in 1998, she returned to working as an artist in social commissioning context for about eight years before getting a job in academia, whilst also continuing her art practice. She said she felt that the “type of thinking and practices were completely commensurate” with the way she had worked on her PhD: “I wasn’t situating it in a practice-based research context, but I was using all the same methods and headspace” (Shaw 2018).

These examples, albeit inadvertently, might have cracked open that “third space” to develop hybridized identities post-PhD that draw on different skills and practices learnt through the PhD process. They also illustrate positive ways in which boundary crossing can be productive as communities of practice overlap. This brings us back to Wenger’s metaphor of a landscape through which we have various relationships to the practices we encounter. If the journey through this landscape could be considered a career, as he points out, “some communities may welcome us, but others may reject us” (Wenger 2010, 6). This came through in the conversation with Lyons who used the metaphor of being invited to a party to describe a sense of belonging in a different discipline. She recommends: “If someone invites you to their party, and even if they seem a bit odd or outside your own practice, go, because that’s where you’re wanted…go to your tribe, don’t fight it. Because you’ll be far more comfortable and supported with them” (Lyons 2018).

Boundary crossing also came in the form of a commitment many of our interviewees had to involve or reach audiences beyond academia. For example, achieving her PhD through publication, Perry’s practice-research was in producing audio material for public broadcast which is also being used in teaching. Through the creation of such content, Perry can “bridge the audiences”: Radio Four listeners as well as a community of academics. Similarly, Beinart and Lloyd have created an exhibition and publication communicating their findings in a non-academic forum for different kinds of audiences to view. For Popoola, it was important that the novel which emerged from her PhD needed to be “a lot more accessible than reading a peer reviewed journal article” (Popoola 2021). An ongoing question for her is how to ensure academically informed knowledge can be widely available but also fun: “I’m interested in breaking form and thinking about how knowledge and research can be presented differently” (ibid.). Kroll (2004) also points to the potential for creative writers in the academy to reach communities beyond the university, in part due to the multiple identities of creative, critic and scholar and the different audiences their work must address.

Our conversations have also illuminated how difficult and unsatisfactory this boundary crossing can be, especially if there is no conceptual third space to develop a hybrid identity. As Wenger reminds us, boundary crossing can be a “waste of time and effort” if it turns out the engagement is not worthwhile, and it takes us away from our core practice (Wenger 2010, 4). We found that the boundary crossing that many are required to do post-PhD to make a living can be tiresome work if one’s position as practice-based researcher is consistently misunderstood, rejected, or ignored. Wright refers to her work as “too weird” so “it never really got anywhere” and that while she found the practice-led aspects of her work “made her stand out” and were seen as the “icing on the cake”, once she was in role “it kind of wasn’t what they wanted” (Wright 2021). Trying to apply a newly-formed hybridized identity to the world of work can also involve a wrench away from an academic identity nurtured during the PhD. Webb refers to the paradox that “those who are not credible artists will also lose credibility as academics employed within a creative discipline; but the investment required to maintain that artistic credibility eats into what they have available to invest in their academic identity” (Webb 2012, 9). Davies for example, when we interviewed her, was managing multiple roles as a document controller for construction companies, a guest lecturer and running a research collective. She reflected upon how it felt to leave education having been a perpetual student:

[It’s] like I’m leaving part of who I am and who my identity is…I very much would like to think that I’m still an academic, but the reality of trying to maintain an academic profile in keeping up with publishing, the pressure of going to conferences, but not having the funding or an institutional affiliation becomes a lot harder. Especially when you might be in a similar situation to myself, where you’re interdisciplinary, you’re freelancing, you’re working across different industries, something’s got to give. (Davies 2018)

While a third space might allow a liberatory environment in which to develop, negotiate and play with a hybridized identity, the realities of fixed-term teaching and/or research contracts in academia means this is a precious, privileged space that is not available or desirable to everyone. Following her PhD, Wright, for example, carried out a “string of short-term academic contracts.” She was on a treadmill of applying for posts: “there was always that little promise of like, well, maybe if you do this, then the powers that be will think you’re worth keeping on, and it never happens…” (Wright 2021). This precarious academic job market of fixed term contracts, overwork and exploitation led to Wright making the decision to leave academia. Lyons has also taught in many different places and has written programmes and courses, but these had become zero-hour contracts. Perry is a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University and her work is submitted to the REF. She found that “those practice outputs [for REF] were part of my practice, as an artist and as a producer. So, I think I’ve found a formula that enables me to use a lot of what I create as research, but not probably as much as I’d like there to be” (Perry 2021). Perry finds herself “in a slightly odd place with academia” in that she is technically an early career researcher but very established in her career as a practitioner. She remarked that it is about “not just being paid by an institution to do research. It’s also having the framework of support” (ibid.).

Finding a third space

Some of our interviewees managed to crack open third spaces to develop their own and others’ hybridized identities as artists and researchers in the context of academia. Lam describes the artists-in-academia or “pracademics” as “transformative knowledge brokers” who operate in transitional spaces. As intentional hybrids, they “make conscious efforts to bridge two discrete work domains by creating a separate transitional space” (Lam 2018, 1718). They both “internalize as well as challenge the knowledge practices of the host context. Their knowledge brokering activities are instrumental in transforming both themselves and their work context” (ibid.). Several of our interviewees at various times and when conditions were right, occupied this position. For example, Douglas settled at Gray’s School of Art where she felt that “the practice of arts and the research through the practice of arts...has become very much part of me” (Douglas 2018). She felt the PhD had given her a career “without doubt” and thinks this was largely due to “the insight and huge work that Carole Gray [former Professor there] put into trying to establish a research culture” (Douglas 2018). As another established “pracademic,” Hann acknowledges the significance of how communities of practice are shaped over time, referring to the influence of one of the “key figureheads,” Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, in her field with whom she was able to share an office and learn from.

Douglas and Hann are examples of established, artists in academia; they have been contributing to the development and understanding of practice-research, whilst continuing their own practice-research. They are enacting Lam’s hybridization strategy by acting as “bridges” between “the two worlds…brokering roles to facilitate interaction and knowledge co-creation between their academic and practitioner colleagues” (Lam 2018, 1734). Early career researchers are also managing to crack open these spaces in academia. Offeh, for example, took on a leadership role in which he contributed to research culture activities for other PhD students and Davies set up sessions on embodied knowledge and the integration of archival and documentation within dance. Even for potential artists-in-academia who are setting up transitional, third spaces, however, this work is often precarious and unsustainable, as Davies found when she had to get a temporary job to supplement her income.

These are examples of practice-researchers post-PhD contributing to and generating communities of practice in the context of academia. For others, the context of academia has been too pressurized and unsupportive leading them to leave or disengage from academia and find ways of developing their practice- or artistic-researcher careers outside the academy. In some cases, our participants have found that doing a practice-based PhD has changed their understanding of the relationship between creative practice and academic research and that the academy is not conducive to pursuing their own creativity.

Following twenty years of teaching in academia, Watson was made redundant after finishing his PhD. He found working in academia did not afford him the time to publish because “you’re constantly working at the grindstone to get stuff done” (Watson 2021). He has set up a limited company and finds that while it offers “flexibility and freedom” it also comes with financial risks. This is echoed by Lyons who likes operating in spaces outside universities because they “give much, much more and allow much more” (Lyons 2018). Similarly, Bridgeman sees universities as “bureaucratic and frustrating, and not helpful for the creative spirit in many ways” (Bridgeman 2018). This kind of third space is protected by not being in academia: “I’m pinging around from university to university now…I’m not desirous of having that locked-in academic full-time position. You have to be quite flexible and not lose your nerve when you’re taking short term contracts, but it kind of works for me” (Bridgeman 2018).

Wong has found that research positions and opportunities requiring doctoral research skill sets are limited both inside and outside academia. She said: “There are so many more PhDs than there are those jobs…my initial sort of instinct is to kind of jump away from that bottle necking” (Wong 2021). Consequently, she started a slow reading group, TLDR, as an excuse to bring people together to “do a little bit of research, but in a much more kind of slower and communal way” (ibid.). The realities of childcare and needing to work near where she lived meant she looked for jobs in the art world: “It’s just territory that I felt…I could more readily find a paying job sooner than I could in academia” (Wong 2021). Now working in a small organization, Bloc, she said: “A lot of the thinking I’ve done in my PhD has really infiltrated, like sort of infused…for instance, one of the main themes that we have for this year is critical care…which came out of my third chapter” (ibid.) After Popoola’s fixed term maternity cover contract was over, she then had a baby herself. Being freelance again gave her the flexibility to “do my own thing where I was calling most of the shots. It definitely suited me not to be part of the deadlines, like, you know, marking” (Popoola 2021). Like Popoola, when Shaw had her first child, it made more sense for her “to be earning more money from my teaching” rather than the art commissions which took her away from home for three months at a time (Shaw 2018).

While there are positive aspects to flexible, academic-practitioner careers, for some people a more secure contract is desirable and a necessity. For Wright, this came in the form of a permanent, part-time position with the arts organization Axis. This was her first permanent job: “It was fantastic…it was just a weight lifted off my mind to suddenly, you know, not have to be always worrying” (Wright 2021). Beinart, who works part-time (0.7 FTE) at the University of Brighton in the School of Architecture, was on a six-month sabbatical when we spoke: “I think, as we all know, the amount of time you get for research normally isn’t very large. So, the sabbaticals are a really good opportunity for me to try and focus on the research” (Beinart and Lloyd 2021). Lloyd was recently moved onto a permanent 0.5 role as a senior lecturer in University of West of England: “So that has meant I don’t have to teach in lots of different places and kind of scramble around for work all the time. It also will give me some extra, I mean, a small amount of research time within that contract” (ibid.).

Working in academia can be constraining and working outside can offer certain freedoms, but at the cost of security of a permanent salary. Whatever the type of contract, finding the time and space for developing, negotiating, and maintaining a hybrid identity in which practitioner-researcher identities are recognized is not easy. These are the realities for many in this specialized field of practice for whom part-time, short-term teaching contracts or work that offers some security helps to balance family commitments and/or the needs of their practice.

Conclusions

Schatzki’s social site framing primes us to expect doctoral students to be purposefully and emotionally committed to carrying out distinct tasks and routines following existing conventions according to shared general understandings and know-how appropriate to their particular field. However, there seems to be a lack of fixity in what form and where these assumed practitioner contexts are to be found post-PhD. Using Wenger’s communities of practice lens, we recognize that a practice-based PhD graduate can also be identified as a learner in a particular social system which currently lacks the third space between or spanning knowledge boundaries. When newly qualified practitioners traverse a field boundary to become peripheral in academia, they can feel neither one thing nor the other. To feel both academic and practitioner in sync seems quite rare.

These examples show how the formative experience of the PhD involves identity ‘crises’ or at least a reshaping as researcher and practitioner identities coalesce. How these hybrid identities continue to be formed post-PhD is what we are beginning to explore further with this research. Even for those practitioners who do not have permanent positions in academia, we argue, there is still academic identity-work occurring due to carrying out a PhD. It can disrupt the way they understand themselves and their community of practice. Having been moulded to some extent into having academic identity through the process of doing a PhD, it is perhaps surprising for this to then be suppressed or ignored, particularly given the time, money and energies gone into it. For some practitioners trying to make a living outside academia, however, having a PhD is not that relevant. Deciding when research is and is not practice and vice versa also seems important. Webb, for example, calls for artist-academics to “apply a reflexive dimension to their creative and practical knowledge” which includes “being explicit about the difference between professional, aesthetic and research practice” (Webb 2012, 14).

Our findings suggest that although the respondents imagined that doing an artistic/creative practice PhD meant they were becoming part of an identifiable community of practice-based researchers in their institution and/or field of practice, they emerged into a different, amorphous reality. Such is the multiplicity of experience involving the “countless other[s]” (Wenger 2010, 5) in different contexts requiring many variations of “alignment”, the field as boundaried entity is difficult to pin down. Drawing on Schatzki’s social site of practice, we discern that the “evolving configuration of organized activities and arrangements” (Schatzki 2002, xii) feels unmoored. We suggest that the community of practice for practice-researchers during and beyond the PhD is not yet fully formed, as evidenced by our interviewees’ narratives of their PhD journeys and careers so far. This is perhaps only to be expected because we are internally motivated and externally encouraged to be innovative or even rebellious in our “academicized” acts of creativity. The goalposts shift, personal situations and intentions evolve, but belonging to a community that is better assured of its value to academia and non-academic sectors might enable practitioners to explore, flourish and produce new knowledge with less precarity. Arguably, there remain legitimacy issues in the academy and the wider material structures around this academic (set of) practices require strengthening. Developing more ways for practice-researchers post-PhD to share career hopes and fears might be a step towards this.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our anonymous reviewer(s) for their valuable insights and all our podcast guests for sharing their experiences.

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What Does the Student Need to Know in Order to Make a Documentary?

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.2022.09 | Issue 7 | Oct 2021

Michael Chanan (University of Roehampton)

Trouble with knowledge

Documentary pedagogy is troublesome, because documentary is perennially troublesome, in ways it might be argued that fiction is not (doubtless the reverse is also true, but this is about documentary). Nor can the trouble be quelled by theoretical inquiry, which always come after the fact, not before, which means there is always a tension between theory and practice, and the latter proceeds according to its own intuitions about how to picture the phenomenal world the documentarist seeks to represent. Consider, then, the observation once made by the Brazilian film critic José Carlos Avellar that in documentary, reality is the co-author and the camera is also an actor. (Avellar 2009.) Two elements which interact. First, the real, which is unscripted; I use the word ‘real’ here in its general sense, aware that reality isn’t transparent, but complicated, multilayered and in certain ways deceptive. Second, the camera which captures its fleeting appearance. My question is: How can the student be prepared for this encounter? What does the student need to know in order to make a documentary?

Take the question of the camera first. Avellar’s claim has certain theoretical implications, suggesting a difference between a camera that observes a profilmic scene that’s been scripted and rehearsed and can be repeated to bring it to perfection, and a camera that enters a space to interact with a scene that even if it’s set-up is unscripted, unrehearsed, and unrepeatable. From this point of view, there is no such thing in documentary filming as a second take, and the encounter requires more than technical proficiency and photographic judgement, but agility, speed of response, the skill of seeing through each eye separately and perceiving what’s going on outside the frame in the periphery of your vision. When I first taught filmmaking in the 1970s, I was teamed up with an old hand who had learnt his trade in the BBC. We had fun arguing in front of the class about when to use a tripod. Always put the camera on a tripod unless there’s a good reason to take it off, said he. Said I, don’t use a tripod unless you really need it (but I added, if you want to be a good documentary cameraperson, keep fit and learn how to move and breathe like a dancer). Some of the students thought that we were saying the same thing from opposite angles, others concluded that documentary called for something different from fiction: instead of meticulous preparation, learning to think on your feet. Those were the days of 16mm. Today’s video cameras are very different, more compact and manoeuvrable, equipped with automatic circuitry, you don’t need a tripod to keep the shot steady, and it’s no longer true that as my former BBC colleague put it, you can’t shoot a black cat in a coal hole. Documentary has changed in consequence, in ways that have been widely discussed by scholars and critics. One reason documentary is troublesome is that the craft is constantly modified by its ever changing means – and mode – of production. Digital video has modified the creative process, partly by disrupting the traditional division of labour in the film crew, like the distinction between director and photographer; a change which isn’t easy to handle in an academic setting where the student is being introduced to the different functions that the jobs correspond to. But the new technical facility doesn’t mean it’s become any easier, because if handling the camera needs skill and practice, how to meet an unpredictable reality that remains in part inevitably elusive is another matter. The encounter with the real needs a different kind of intelligence, which sees behind the surface. For this, the documentarist needs to do what is loosely called research.

Loosely, because research for documentary is not the same as what is called research in the rest of academia, even while academia itself is a major source of research. The problem is that academic research is divided into disciplines, and the research that documentary calls for is cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, and even anti-disciplinary. Moreover, academic research is bound up in jargon and technical terminology, while documentary wants to speak in the vernacular. Furthermore, academic research is based in textual and statistical discourses, and documentary in plastic and ambiguous audiovisual representation. Finally, research for documentary is not the outcome but the preparation. The object is to translate it into speaking images.

An immediate caveat: what kind of research is needed, and how much, is neither prescriptive nor quantifiable, and the questions to be asked are not general ones, but depend on the chosen focus and scope of the film. This implies a different kind of epistemology from the abstract categories taught in philosophy departments; it needs to be both more situated and more situational. Situated means positioned in a specific context, situational that this context has both social and physical coordinates which condition the process of representation. It will have to be an epistemology based not on certainties and ‘objective’ truth, but on the uncertainty and subjective judgement of the encounter.

What’s needed, for example, for a typical student documentary project like a ten-minute portrait of a band preparing for a gig? In the first place, it depends on what the filmmakers already know about their subjects, although often without knowing that they know it, that is, without realising its possible significance. Think of it as tacit knowledge, which needs to be drawn out. In second place is contextual knowledge, what they know they know, and can talk about, like (in this example) their knowledge of the music. Third is what they don’t know, which might be useful to know — if they knew how it affected their subjects. Some of it is anecdotal and waiting to be discovered, like the personal histories of the individual members of the band and how they came to their instruments. Then there’s also a different kind of knowledge altogether, which calls on formal comprehension of the ways in which, behind appearances, the world, or some segment of it, is organised. For example, how does the band secure a gig and who else does it involve? Call it immanent knowledge, whose implications can be followed in different directions, like questions about the economics of the business and who controls it, or cultural questions about the meanings to be found in this particular music. There are experts in the university who know about such things, but for the student making the film, this is unknown territory, and such questions mostly function as structuring absences, because they’re largely invisible.

There is also a fifth category to consider: ignorance. Perhaps the first principle of documentary research is simply that you need to know more about your subject than is ever going to appear in the film, just so as not to make mistakes. Consider this example, which is not made up. In the 1960s, a television magazine programme makes a short film about birds in Scotland. They have silent shots of the eagles but no sound, so they resort to the sound library. After the broadcast, someone calls the viewers’ line to say that those were beautiful shots of eagles, but what we saw were golden eagles and what we heard were white-tailed eagles. In other words, if you make a mistake, there’s always someone out there who will spot it, and the film would be impugned. This is not such a trivial example. Documentary implies responsibility to truthfulness, which calls for wariness about one’s own ignorance. It also positions the documentarist, who begins a project in a state of ignorance, and armed only with curiosity must turn themself into an expert, or at least be able to pass for one.

Finally, there is the question of the procedural knowledge specific to the process of documentary making, but this divides into two. On the one hand, it includes formal requirements and the correct vocabulary, which contains its own traps, because while some terminology is technical, many of the terms involved are in fact ambiguous. Are you sure you know what a jump cut is? (A jump cut occurs when the middle of a shot is removed. It cannot always be seen. If the camera is mobile and pointing in different directions on either side of the cut, it just looks like any other cut, but if the camera holds the same framing, it becomes noticeable as a jerk in the action. Nowadays, of course, this is often quite acceptable.) At a deeper level, it’s about how to shoot for editing, because although this is about aesthetics, there are rules of film grammar to be observed – or perhaps just one, the 180° rule which applies to both fiction and documentary – in order to render the space of a scene coherent, especially as the camera moves through it. The dominant modes of fiction filming, before documentary taught otherwise, proceeded by means of découpage, the segmentation of a scene into separate set-ups, which mobile documentary shooting incorporates into the flow of the continuous take. To choose to do otherwise is an aesthetic choice, but to fail to do it when it’s needed only brings problems at the editing table.

Roadmaps

Let’s grant that not every film will bring all these categories into play, and that some genres, for example, the investigative documentary, which calls on savvy journalistic skills, are probably beyond the scope of a student project, or perhaps they think they are. That’s a different question. Notwithstanding, these considerations raise questions of methodology, in which the pedagogical setting can be used to advantage, because research (subject to the caveats already given) is disposed to documentation and hence to assessment as coursework, with feedback and guidance. But then comes the nub of the matter: the impossibility of a script of the kind conventionally required for fiction. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but only under certain conditions and on the basis of substantial research. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, you can’t put words into people’s mouths. (For present purposes I therefore discount scripted genres like drama documentary or purely instructional films, but that’s only for present purposes.) For another, reality, or the segment of it you choose to film, doesn’t always behave the way you imagine. Among other things, this means you can’t properly predict the best way to construct the film until you start editing, when you confront not what you wanted to film but what you’ve actually shot. So (you explain), documentarists write treatments, not scripts, and the process goes in stages. The first thing you do is write a proposal, in which you answer the old simple and basic journalists’ questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? Then, based on your research, you write a treatment, which expands on the whys and wherefores and says something about how. After that, before you’re ready to shoot, you draw up a shooting plan. The importance of this final step is often overlooked, but it’s more than procedural. Properly done, it obliges you to think around the subject, consider scenes in terms of telling details, close-ups, what the lingo dismissively calls cut-aways, and the like. But all of that is only preparation for the encounter, where the principle is that if you don’t shoot it you can’t use it, and if you do, you don’t have to.

But how do you do write a treatment? The first mistake by some over-eager students is to write something that reads like a narrative outline, starting with the first scene, but then it inevitably peters out. It doesn’t work that way, I say, you don’t know what the first scene will be until you get to the editing desk. The advice about what a documentary treatment consists in that can now be found on the web is not the best answer. A simple google search throws up a myriad of sites, many of doubtful integrity; scroll down and you find they’re trying to sell you an app or their own specialised services. The proliferation of such websites is another reason why documentary pedagogy is in trouble. Some of them tell you that a treatment is meant to entice your backers, and provide you with a formula for how to do so, much of which is irrelevant to students who don’t need to look for investors or commissioners. One or two of them are better informed when they explain that a treatment is only a starting point, it’s a roadmap for the film’s development from start to finish, a mutable tool that helps you plan your documentary as it moves from idea to reality. But there are also others, which offer the tendentious definition of a treatment as ‘a narrative summary’ or ‘short story narrative’ of the film proposed, which is exactly what it isn’t and can’t be, for the reasons already given. This advice is pernicious because the use of the word ‘story’, which comes from journalism, is constricting. As Alexandra Juhasz & Alisa Lebow put it in their manifesto ‘Beyond Story’, ‘storytelling is not the most or only effective form for documentary, as affecting as it can be. Not everything should be molded into a story, not everyone fits its constricting contours nor finds their most meaningful incantation in its familiar folds. There are many ways to shape a documentary.’ (Juhasz & Lebow, 2018)

Story is certainly the wrong word if it’s taken to mean a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, in which (usually) something happens to someone that needs resolution, already a gross oversimplification of the art of film narrative. A fairy tale which doesn’t even apply to fiction – remember Godard’s quip that every film has a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. Applied to documentary, and often all you have is the middle, which you enter in the here-and-now, an arbitrary starting point, and where the end lies in the future, after the film is finished.

For example, take that portrait of a band preparing for a gig. Does a portrait necessarily tell a story? There may be a story to tell behind it, in the same way as the story behind a painted or photographic portrait, but maybe it’s enough simply to show what the band is like when they’re rehearsing, how they behave, the way they make music together, made up of telling moments in no particular order. It could be the purest form of observational documentary, like the ethnomusicological films that Jean Rouch made in West Africa in the 1960s, and wouldn’t even need much research (although Rouch did plenty). The version of storytelling that according to Juhasz and Lebow has become a ‘ubiquitous mantra, structure, telos, and mind-set’, is posited on compelling characters, but this is another trap. Firstly, compelling often boils down to being a good talker, and there’s no denying documentary has a bias towards articulate subjects; this can be the making of a film, especially when someone is a good storyteller, but it can also be problematic when the viewer gets carried away by the gift of the speaker’s gab. And secondly, in theoretical terms, the perception of character can be independent of narrative, a property somehow ingrained in the image by the proclivity of our brains to interpret human expression. We cannot help but read character into the human form, to perceive the signs of interiority in the appearance of the face, body language, gesture, the manner as well as the content of speech. This attraction belongs to the ontology of the moving image as such, whether fiction or documentary. It explains the power of the film star not as a character but as a body. As Walter Benjamin saw it, the mechanical reproduction of perception brings about a ‘deepening of apperception’ because it renders behaviour susceptible to analysis the same way Freud’s study of the Psychopathology of Everyday Life exposed the significance of slips of the tongue (Benjamin 1969). Not something you can talk of in a treatment, but it has huge implications for why, among other things, you choose the characters that you do, and how you represent them.

These considerations apply to the process of making a documentary of almost any kind, but always in articulation with the subject. This word too is ambiguous. Here I’ve spoken of characters as subjects, a use belonging to academic discourse but in ordinary language, subject usually means subject matter, not human subject. Suppose the subject the student documentarists choose is a community garden, and the concerns that motivate them are ecological. This not only brings its own ‘cast of characters’, better to call them social actors, but makes the location itself into one of them. It probably brings into play every one of the alternative epistemological categories mentioned earlier. It also raises different kinds of initial questions that need asking simply in order to know what questions to ask on camera. This kind of research calls for diligent curiosity and a thirst for immanent knowledge, but sometimes a treatment works best as just such a series of questions. Simply asking them points the film in certain directions.

Against definition

An experiment in the 1990s in the Film Section of the then LCP shows what can happen when you put research at the centre of the documentary process. The college was keen to develop its postgraduate portfolio and we introduced an MA in Screenwriting, which included a term on documentary; then we split the course in two, and had a separate MA in Documentary Research. Some of the students were filmmakers but no-one actually made any films on the course; instead of writing a script, they wrote a treatment supported by a research portfolio (unless they chose drama-documentary which did require a script). Some of them secured commissions from television on the basis of their work on the course. The question arises whether this approach prejudges the style and approach of the resulting film. The clue is that a treatment isn’t written for the film’s viewer, but to fit the bill of a television executive or funder. This means, among other things, and pace Avellar, that it risks coming undone when the camera takes over and steps into the profilmic reality it seeks to capture – those aspects of reality that can be seen and heard and followed, let alone what lies behind them.

The websites imply that there’s a standard format for a treatment, but an event I attended in 1993 suggested otherwise. The Forum for International Co-Financing of Documentary at the Amsterdam Documentary Festival was a new phenomenon in which filmmakers were invited to pitch their projects in public to a panel of industry executives, which for the observer, as I was, proved a highly instructive form of theatre, as projects were batted back and forth across the table; it informed my teaching over the ensuing years. The treatments included information not to be expected from a student, like budgets, schedules, and the director’s or producer’s track record, but all of them revealed that they were the result of extensive research, and some of them included information on research trips and lists of names of people already consulted. However, the format varied. All but a few had a brief introduction, presenting either a character or an issue. Some followed this with separate sections on ‘Themes’ and ‘Visual Approach’, but one or two read like the draft of a commentary, and one or two provided a full scenario in continuous prose (observing the injunction against technical film terminology). One or two were written in the first person, thus foregrounding the role of the director. The theatricality of the event lay in the verbal pitches – all very different – and the ensuing exchanges, which revealed a good deal about the predilections and prejudices of the television executives. There was also another new element: some of the pitches were accompanied by a couple of minutes of footage already shot, or what is now known as a teaser and is nowadays often included in crowdfunding appeals. From a pedagogical perspective, however, this is problematic, putting the cart before the horse. It confuses the camera as a research tool and the camera as the instrument with which the film is made. Its adoption in the process of pitching, like the word ‘pitch’ itself, betrays the influence of the advertising industry, which carries unwelcome ideological baggage. Still, getting students to pitch their films to each other is an decidedly valuable experience.

The use of the camera as a research tool is a consequence of the shift from film to video, which no longer requires the same discipline when you no longer have to count the cost of shooting more footage. But the more you shoot, the more problematic the editing, beginning simply with the time it takes to log it. This is another aspect of shooting for editing – it’s not just about providing lots of choice. You could say that the filmmaker needs to know not only when to turn the camera on but also when to turn it off. This is more difficult to teach.

Some of the treatments presented in Amsterdam described themselves as ‘creative documentary’, but they weren’t thinking of Grierson’s famous definition of documentary back in the 1930s as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’, so much as using the right jargon. The term was given currency by the European Union Media Programme, which needed to define it in order to provide funding, but from a pedagogical perspective, it’s quite useless. The definition is cod Hegelian. It says what it isn’t (it isn’t corporate production, or current affairs, or instructional, or ‘programmes where the image is not essential’) but not what it is, as if it were some kind of mythical beast that nobody has ever seen, but everyone would recognise immediately if they saw it. In fact, Grierson arrived at his definition by working through the same problem, distinguishing between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ forms, downgrading forms like the newsreel, the travelogue and the educational ‘lecture’ film, and reserving the proper use of the term for films that aspired to the virtues of art. Pedagogically, this is a difficult distinction to maintain, since the same skills are involved whatever the mode of the film, the same ability to observe with intelligence, variously applied to the circumstances. The differences between filming a band rehearsing and or a community garden, an interview, a street scene, whatever it may be, these reflect objective properties of the profilmic space and the activity within it which call up different aesthetic preferences, like lensing and yes, whether or not to use a tripod. The more unpredictable, the more it calls on improvisation and intuitive aesthetic choices. In theoretical terms, aesthetic differences boil down to different tropes which often become associated with different subgenres, or with the different modes of documentary theorised by Bill Nichols. In practice, however, documentaries frequently move between them and encompasses an eclectic mix of different styles. The names of the genres may change, but there is no definition of documentary which isn’t normative. The pedagogical dilemma this poses is that students approach their projects with norms derived from very limited viewing. The task is to challenge these norms. This cannot be done without showing them a suitable range of examples (and any attempt by senior managers to reduce the time given to class screenings must be resisted). The collective discussion of different models is another essential component of good pedagogical practice, and private viewing is no substitute.

Exceptions

These remarks about methodology are intended, then, not to be normative. Although the terms seem unavoidable, it isn’t always helpful to speak of documentary in terms of genres or subgenres, because they suggest a way of classifying reality in advance of encountering it. Nevertheless, the lessons I’ve learned from the experience of making films of different genres, from television arts documentaries to current affairs to the academically and independently funded documentaries of the digital age, have taught me that there are always exceptions, which, although not perhaps directly applicable to the learning process, are always at the back of my pedagogical mind. Not directly relevant because the films I’m thinking of are far more ambitious, not to mention better funded, than anything a group of students can aspire to, but they still stand as signal cases. In particular, two occasions when I did write a script, once quite early in my career, and once quite recently. (Not, of course, in fiction format, but an outline blocked out in two columns, picture and soundtrack, like an editing script.) The first was an educational documentary fronted by a professor of philosophy, for which, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune, I didn’t need to write a treatment in order to raise the funding. When we started, and I realised that our presenter, for all his facility as a speaker, had no awareness of the role he was about to perform, I sat him down with a tape recorder and asked him to talk me through from beginning to end in the space of about twenty minutes, or a third the length of the film, and then I went away and turned it into a script by breaking it up into paragraphs, so we could film different sections in different locations, as you do in this kind of film. After that, the other elements fell into place, including other contributors and the felicitous results of a search in the film archives, and the end result was completely conventional, down to the addition of our own voice-over commentary. The recent occasion, which eschewed a commentary and produced a much more interesting film, was an academically funded investigation into climate and ecology in Cuba involving three filmmakers, myself as director-cameraman working with two historians, in collaboration with a Cuban NGO. In this case, we first wrote a treatment to secure the funding, and then a script, written collaboratively by the three of us and sent to our collaborators for feedback, which served as the instrument of ensuring that we were all singing the same tune, with the crucial proviso that it was provisional; and indeed, once we arrived and started shooting, the film took a new direction. In both cases, the script served as a vital tool in planning the shoot. In a pedagogical setting, the process can be telescoped and accomplished by a suitable treatment with its shooting plan.

No doubt, despite my protestations, the methodology I’m recommending is also normative. That’s inevitable. The point is it should correspond to the constraints placed on the students by dint of the institutional framework, and serve to orient the process but not the content.

Limits of representation

I strongly suspect there is no documentary which comes out the way it’s laid out in the treatment, even the most stilted or mundane television slot-filler. To put it another way, the documentary that you see is only one version of the documentary it could have been. There are several reasons why. First, because the documentary that was shot is only one version of what might have been shot if different scenes had been selected. Second, because whichever way the camera was pointing there was always whatever was going on behind it at the moment of filming (not to mention before and after). And third, because the other versions, in the old lingo, are lying on the cutting room floor; it could always have been cut differently.

Let’s take that apart a little. First, we’re speaking of an organic creative process which passes through several overlapping stages, in which the election of scenes is decisive. This goes with the subject matter, but several things bear down on the choice, including practical and aesthetic factors. In procedural terms this is covered by what is called a ‘recce’ – to wit, reconnaissance or reconnoitre – which comprises the first point of encounter with profilmic reality. For students to engage in subjects that don’t allow this, where they would need the skills of reportage, is risky. But they need to understand that location speaks. The place where you film an interview represents the subject’s station in life, or at least their place in the world of the film, but it can easily become a cliché, like ‘experts’ sitting in front of a computer. The space also affects the relationship between the subject and the camera, and whoever’s behind it. A formal space is likely to elicit a formal mode of speech. Someone’s kitchen has a more relaxed ambience. In short, everyone behaves a little differently in different situations. In theoretical terms this is about what Erving Goffman called the presentation of self in everyday life, and from another point of view, the semiotics of space (or place). The documentarist needs to feel it and give it audiovisual shape (just as much as fiction filmmaking).

But there’s more to it than that. The encounter with social actors in the form conventionally known as the interview (an ambiguous term for a variety of possible scenarios) always embodies an asymmetrical relationship between unequal agents, because one of them wields a camera, one of them commands the image of the other. This raises questions that are both legal and ethical, as well as political and ideological; the academic curriculum ought to include all of them. The legal procedure is marked by the release form, which students must be taught is a requirement of professional practice, but not in all circumstances (in UK law, for example, current affairs is a possible exception). But even without it, there is a kind of unwritten contract whereby the interviewee accedes to the power of the camera and of the filmmaker to fashion their representation. This operates whatever the subject’s station in life and whatever kind of power and authority normally goes with it, and helps to shape their persona, be it their public office, their wealth, their cultural reputation, or the absence of these things. Those who are in the public eye or official positions know this and take care of the image they project. A student crew filming a novice band are likely to see each other as equals, not so when they go to film the local council to ask questions about the regulations governing community gardens. Here the situation is governed by the rules of authority and political power, in which the filmmaker is unlikely to have the choice of whom to interview, and the student filmmaker is lucky to just get a foot in the door. Every film project should be analysed to distinguish different types of interview subject. There is a difference between those whom you choose (the band) and those whom circumstances choose for you (the community garden), and there are differences within each of these groups. There are differences, for example, between experts, who represent their own opinions, and local councillors, say, who follow a bureaucratic script. All of them, however, are objectified by the camera and with or without a release form submit to its power of representation, which is felt to be separate from whoever is behind the camera. There is a pressure to perform but also a fear of exposure. The artfulness of documentary lies in drawing out this power of representation, which has the capacity to upset the perception of authority. On the other hand, it can also simply affirm it unthinkingly by reproducing the existing order, in which insight is displaced by ideology. Is it too much to hope that a student film could avoid this trap?

The treatment, I’ve argued, is provisional, and thus to be discarded when you sit down to edit, because now you have to start all over again and make sense of what you shot, find the best scenes to open on and close with, and above all, perhaps, to give it all pace and rhythm. Editing a documentary is like a jigsaw puzzle without the picture to guide you, where you’re given the kit but you have to carve the pieces yourself. How to manoeuvre this process is beyond the scope of these reflections, but this is where research pays off, and informs the juxtaposition of speakers and information – or proves inadequate because there are gaps in the ‘story’ or the argument. The problem is that some of these gaps are the result of structuring absences, those things you can’t shoot because you can’t see them, things that are invisible in some way other than lack of light. This is where representation reaches its limits, in the same way that Brecht observed that a photograph of, say, the Krupp works or AEG tells us almost nothing about these enterprises, because it cannot reveal the reification of human relations which is produced within them. (Brecht 2000) Being invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t real, but it has to be represented by indirect means, such as symbols or metaphor or other semiotic resources available to the editor: in a word, montage. Of course, this goes back to questions of style and aesthetics, which remain beyond the scope of these paragraphs, except perhaps to say that these are qualities the filmmaker must discover for themself.

Afterword

The greatest obstacle to the kind of pedagogy I’ve outlined here is the crisis confronting universities as they emerge from the Covid pandemic and face a government intent on forcing them ever further into an instrumental role in a failing economy. In 2021, the government announced a 50% cut in funding art and design courses by reducing the subsidy in order to direct funding towards the favoured STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Several smaller universities have already announced course closures and job losses across fields like philosophy, anthropology, classics, art, design, music, drama, dance, media studies, journalism, creative writing, photography and my own field of film, while they launch new ‘career-focussed courses’ in said departments angled to ‘practical skills and industry/employer engagement’. That means courses being measured up to criteria of employability, and the only one that counts is earning power. The government has laid out the terms under proposals under consultation: universities could face penalties if fewer than 75% of undergraduates complete their courses and fewer than 60% are in professional jobs or studying for a further degree within 15 months of graduating – the figures of course are arbitrary. The same managerialism that carries out this restructuring is unlikely to be sympathetic to the pedagogical principles presented here, because what it really wants is that students should simply learn how it’s done and just get on with it without thinking too much about the whys and wherefores. Everything that can’t be directly logged in the appropriate tick box will become expendable. The courses that will be cast aside, or be re-structured out of existence, have a history dating back to the incorporation of the various strands of cultural studies and critical theory in the polytechnics of the 1980s. But they were designed to puncture the ruling hegemony of a self-regarding dominant culture in the process of expansion, and even then were attacked by right-wing ideologues, long before anyone talked about ‘culture wars’. The new attack on this pedagogical tradition in incoherent in an economy in which cultural production is a growth sector, but is motivated by the same fear as before, which is never openly admitted, namely, that students who understand the power of the media, now including the internet, are liable, unless they can be tamed, to upset the apple cart. I remain sure, however, that documentary can be a very effective way of doing that.

References

• José Carlos Avellar, Symposium on ‘Reality Effects: Poetics of Locality, Memory, and the Body in Contemporary Argentine and Brazilian Cinema’, Birkbeck College, 26-28 November 2009. See ‘Reality effects in London’, Putney Debater, 29 November 2009, www.putneydebater.com/reality-effects-in-london

• Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations, New York: Schoken, 1969, 217-152

• Bertolt Brecht on Film and Radio, ed. and trans. Marc Silberman, London: Methuen, 2000, 144-5

• Alexandra Juhasz & Alisa Lebow, Beyond Story: an Online, Community-Based Manifesto, 2018, www.academia.edu/39095386/Beyond_Story_An_online_community_based_manifesto