Per/Forming Futures

Per/Forming Futures: Investigating Artistic Doctorates in Dance & Performance

Middlesex University London, April 11^th-13^th 2019

An event for researchers, artists, candidates, supervisors, arts organisations, funders and policymakers to come to together to celebrate research practices and consider the future of artistic doctoral education and its impact within and beyond the University as it interfaces with the cultural arts sector and with the public.

The event was attended by some 150 people and included invited presentations, sharings of practice, panels, workshops and working groups to discuss the benefits and pitfalls of the artistic doctoral studies.

PerForming Futures Programme, April 11th-13th 2019

Working Groups

A core feature of Per/forming Futures was an invitation to join working groups to consider topics that are central to Artistic Doctorates. Each group hosted by an invited guest offered a space to share experiences and importantly generate proposals to enhance the practice, structure and significance of Artistic Doctorates.

What follows are the working group topics and the resulting posters:

Making and Research Methods in Artistic Doctorates: What are the ways of ‘doing’ doctoral research in practice? What modes of enquiry are at work? What methodologies and methods are employed by or developed within artistic research? What is the significance of artistic research methods and methodologies to doctoral education?

Supporting Artistic Doctorates –programme design/supervision/training: What are your experiences of, or insights into, being supervised / supervising, being a mentee / mentoring? How might candidates best be supported in terms of training, finance and community? What are the issues, dilemmas and challenges in offering and undertaking an artistic doctorate? What ‘training’ is helpful for artistic researchers? What might strong and healthy artistic research environments look/feel like?

Artistic Doctorates and meeting Publics & Publication: Sitting at the interface of academic and art worlds – who are the audiences for artistic research? How is artistic doctoral work reaching publics as audiences or readers? What is at stake in finding suitable and sustainable formats to share artistic research? What formats might artistic research take ‘in the world’? How can doctoral researchers, publishers and producers work together to make research visible?

Impact of Artistic Doctorates : How do you make a difference through artistic research? How is the PhD by artistic research changing both artistic and academic practices? What are the benefits of this research beyond the arts – to health, wellbeing and the economy? In what ways might artistic doctoral researchers generate impacts with a public? What types of creative leadership for the future might emerge from doctorates? How are such benefits and impacts facilitated and evidenced?