0.14 The evia project: many challenges, some solutions  (Page 4/9)

One final issue arising from the EVIA report and the project in general has to do with an area of research dogged by controversy during the past decade and a half: so-called “practice-led research,” also known as “practice-based research.” Annex 3 sets out relevant material from the Research Funding Guide of the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, which has been an ardent supporter of practice-led research for many years (e.g., in the form of a Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship program, as well as a practice-led route within the Research Grants scheme). One of the main obstacles within this field has been the reluctance or inability of potential practice-led researchers to produce documentation that appropriately and effectively demonstrates the research content of their creative activity. As the AHRC Guide notes, “Work that results purely from the creative or professional development of an artist, however distinguished, is unlikely to fulfill the requirements of research,” for which the following must instead be satisfied:

• “[a research proposal] must define a series of research questions, issues or problems that will be addressed in the course of the research. It must also define its aims and objectives in terms of seeking to enhance knowledge and understanding relating to the questions, issues or problems to be addressed.
• it must specify a research context for the questions, issues or problems to be addressed. It must specify why it is important that these particular questions, issues or problems should be addressed; what other research is being or has been conducted in this area; and what particular contribution the particular project will make to the advancement of creativity, insights, knowledge and understanding in the area
• it must specify the research methods for addressing these research questions, issues or problems. It must state how, in the course of the research project, it will seek to answer the questions, address the issues or solve the problems. It should also explain the rationale for the chosen research methods and why they provide the most appropriate means by which to answer the research questions, issues or problems.” See www.ahrc.ac.uk/About/PeerReview/Documents/Definition%20of%20Research2.pdf.

Possibly the thorniest problem thus far has been to encourage practitioners interested in this form of research to produce documentation alongside and in addition to the creative output itself, describing the research process and identifying the conclusions reached in respect of the basic research questions underlying the endeavor. As stated in Annex 3, this form of “documentation, analysis, and reflection must be an integral part of the project,” leading to outputs that “can go beyond more traditional academic papers and can include such forms as journals or diaries; documentation on a website, CDs or DVDs, etc” (234)

In my opinion, EVIA’s annotation methodology offers an ideal solution to at least some of the problems encountered within this area. By extending to those carrying out practice-led research a new means of documenting the research as it is happening, of undertaking self-reflective analysis of the creative outputs, and of presenting the research findings in a manner that recognizes and reflects music’s time-dependency, the annotation methodology if applied to this field of work could fundamentally revolutionize how it is done and what it represents to those within and outside the practice-led arena. Here the annotators would not be “collectors” of material but the generators of that material, i.e., creative practitioners themselves. I see this as a potentially exciting spin-off from EVIA that may not have been anticipated by the project team themselves.