Six rules for practice-led research

Abstract

Recent experience of practice-led postgraduate supervision has prompted me to concludethat the practice-led research method, as it is currently construed, produces goodoutcomes, especially in permitting practitioners in the creative arts, design and media intothe research framework, but at the same time it also generates certain recurringdifficulties. What are these difficulties? Practice-led candidates tend to rely on a narrowrange of formulations with the result that they assume: (i) the innovative nature ofpractice-led research; (ii) that its novelty is based in opposition to other research methods;1. (iii) that practice is intrinsically research, often leading to tautological formulations; and 2. (iv) the hyper-self-reflexive nature of practice-led research. This paper proposes a set ofguidelines composed in order to circumvent the shortcomings that result from theserecurring formulations. My belief is that, if these shortcomings are avoided, there isnothing to prevent practice-led from further developing as a research inquiry and thusachieving rewarding and successful research outcomes. Originally composed for thepurposes of postgraduate supervision, these six rules are presented here in the context of awider analysis of the emergence of practice-led research and its current conditions ofpossibility as a research method.