Decolonised In-betweenness - creative practice research made impactful

There is an undeniable tension between reach, impact and significance in relation to many creative practice research outputs. In large, it depends on the context of dissemination and the value applied to it. That links to the ongoing challenge many creative practice artefacts face, often failing to be recognised as research objects in their own right. That despite often robust conceptual complexity and innovation exhibited in these artworks.

This paper draws on extensive filming collaborations with Zhigoneshi, the indigenous filming collective from Colombia, as well as the author’s hybrid position between the art world and academia. It explores the challenges and opportunities of this position and the way this tension can be used to encourage and support a new, experimental approach among existing practice-based doctoral students. It also investigates the importance of decolonising local knowledge while preserving socio-cultural impact while conducting international (and intercultural) research projects. Effectively, it considers the ethical position of politics of representation, the importance of outputs’ contexts, and the potential of cultural and methodological hybridity.

Finally, it reflects on existing initiatives that blur the boundary between the art world and academia, offering some hope for the place where impact and research rigour can meet. And although measuring impact could prove more complicated than simple statistics, especially in the case of non-traditional research outputs, luckily, academia slowly starts to embrace the understanding of more profound socio-cultural impact as opposed to dry statistics.