Practice-as-Research Professional Development Event

4-5 December 2018

hosted by Centre for Performing Arts Research for HKAPA staff and students

This professional development event was organised for HKAPA staff and students to enrich their understanding of Practice-as-Resesarch. The programme consisted of:

• masterclasses and workshops on how to encourage critical responses to creative works in practice, ways to instigate PaR projects during the production process, and reflective practice;
• panel discussion in PaR;
• the Academy's first ever Three Minute Thesis Competition for postgraduate students to present their research projects.

Guest Speakers

Emma Meehan

Emma Meehan is Research Fellow at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research, UK. Edited collections include Dance Matters in Ireland: Contemporary Performance and Practice with Aoife McGrath (Palgrave 2018) and Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice with Hetty Blades (Intellect 2018). In 2016-17, she directed and hosted a Practice-as-Research performance and exhibition tour called Live Archive using Irish contemporary dance archives, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. She is Associate Editor for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.

 Dorothy Morrissey

Dorothy Morrissey (EdD, MA, Graduate Diploma in Dance, Graduate Diploma in Drama, BEd) is a lecturer in drama education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland. She is course leader of the College's MA in Education and the Arts (META). She also teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate intial teacher education programmes and on the College's BA in Contemporary and Applied Theatre Studies. Dorothy has been using Liz Lerman's 'Critical Response Process' in a variety of contexts and across a variety of art forms since 2003. In 2012, she attende a workshop with John Borstel, a close collaborator of Lerman's, on the process.

Programme Abstracts

Tuesday 4 December, 2018

Masterclass: Practice as a Form of Enquiry

Facilitator: Emma Meehan

Although there are many models for Practice-as-Research, this workshop will focus on Robin Nelson’s approach to PaR. This approach includes the combination of undertaking practical creative work and critical reflection on it, along with drawing on the work of other practitioners and researchers in the field. The participants will first explore how to set up a research enquiry through practice, setting questions or topics to explore in their own creative practice. As part of this, they will examine how they might document and critically reflect on the process, through sketching, different kinds of writing, and audio-visual recording. This aims to help the practitioner-researcher find their preferences for investigation and reflection, through pre-planning and/or iterative layers of practice. Further, the participants will experiment with each other’s current examples of work, to explore ways of articulating a PaR enquiry to others, the complexities of collaborative working in PaR and the kinds of requirements needed to devise PaR (participants, audience, environments, materials, equipment etc.). The participants will also examine how ideas from their fields of research, whether theory or examples of practice by others, inform a practice-led enquiry. Finally, the participants will map what they learned from the process in defining the key elements of PaR, how practice is different from PaR, and how they might create suitable outputs or dissemination formats. It would be useful if participants can think in advance of an example from their current work which they would like to explore in relation to PaR. Participants are welcome to bring a small object or material, if it is needed in their work (e.g. instrument, prop, mask).

Masterclass: Getting Useful Feedback on Artistic Work in Progress: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process

Facilitator: Dorothy Morrissey

In this masterclass, participants will be introduced to Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. Critical Response Process is essentially a dialogic process of peer feedback (though expert feedback is not precluded) and has proven to be hugely useful to performing artists. The process is most valuable when artists are invested in the further development of their work or at least in the possibility of learning something that might be valuable in future projects. The defining feature of the method is that the feedback process is controlled by the artists themselves and not by ‘experts’. The process was developed by Lerman (a dancer and choreographer) as a method for dance makers to get useful feedback on their work-in-progress, however, it is now being used much more widely. Theatre makers, music makers and other artists have embraced its dialogic underpinnings and emergent performative outcomes.

In the masterclass,  the four core steps of the Critical Response Process will be outlined with reference to the facilitator’s own use of them in a variety of artistic (and other) settings. The participants will then use the process to provide feedback to a group of artists on their work in development.

Two groups of artists will show (excerpts from) works in progress and the workshop facilitator will guide the participants’ (respondents) feedback on the work. As the participants engage in the Critical Response Process, its four steps will be clarified and the roles of the facilitator, respondents and artists in each step will be elucidated. The masterclass will conclude with participants and artists sharing their reflections on the values and challenges of the process and its potential use in art making.

Masterclass: Reflective Practice as a Means of Artistic Growth

Facilitators: Phoebe Chan, Krissy Lam (Centre for Performing Arts Research, HKAPA)

Reflective Practice can help an artist become more self-aware of their professional patterns and behaviours. It is a living practice that can be internalised and done everyday, to lead to new understandings of and appreciations for one’s artistry. This in turn leads to professional growth. In this workshop, participants will be taken through a series of activities based on several reflective practice processes that occurred here in the Academy. The participants will consider how they can apply reflective practice in their teaching and practical processes.

Wednesday 5 December, 2018

Workshop: How Production and Studio Practices can Incorporate PaR

Facilitators: Phoebe Chan, Emma Meehan, Dorothy Morrissey, Prue Wales

Presenters: Lam Kwan-Fai, Li Yongjing, Grace Yu

PaR empowers practitioners to critically examine their practice, make breakthroughs, and advance their artistry. Production and studio practices have lots of potential for the inclusion of PaR. This workshop invites practitioners to present and reflect on a range of real-life production and studio projects, and explores ways to transform them into potential PaR projects. Participants will be taken through a variety of processes to help them identify and create different types of PaR models that they could later utilize in their own practices.

Panel Discussion: Bringing the Personal into Your Methodological Approaches

Panel members: Amy Chan, Emma Meehan, Dorothy Morrissey

Moderator: Phoebe Chan

It has been said that all research is about ourselves and our experiences. The questions are: How do we place ourselves and our experiences within our research? And, how do we manage the distance between the personal self and the professional self? This panel invites experienced PaR arts practitioners to critically reflect on how they place themselves in their PaR practices, and what it takes to closely inspect oneself. The panel interrogates the ethical and methodological issues in self research.