The Practice of Practice Research

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Redhead, L. 2023. 'The Practice of Practice Research'. In: Public Research Seminar: Dr Lauren Redhead - The Practice of Practice Research. Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, United Kingdom 21 February 2023. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

The acceptance of the creation of knowledge by musical practice—and its expression of knowledge in its product—is one that, in the UK, is now taken for granted: the term ‘Practice Research’ functions as an umbrella for multiple epistemologies of practice. Nevertheless, this has also led to criticisms of the idea of Practice Research, many of which use this phrase to unhelpfully conflate the epistemological arguments that advance and underpin the knowledge claims of creative practice (not only in music) with institutional forms of knowledge organisation and assessment (such as the REF). In this paper I will argue that recent criticisms of practice research do not address the epistemological basis of musical practice and so therefore make claims about knowledge that are in fact criticisms of institutional structures; I will further consider how this conflation in fact avoids effective institutional critique. Then, I will consider what it means to articulate a more radical and non-institutional epistemology of musical practice. By concentrating on the experience of the researcher of the practice of research, I offer a phenomenology of Practice Research in music, reflecting on the creation of musical knowledge as a practice of being in the world. In so doing, I argue that such a radical epistemology of practice might offer a different kind of institutional critique: one that considers how practice research knowledge has been located in a fairly narrow range of practices and individuals. A better understanding of knowledge in and as musical practice ought to advance the argument for diversity within, and a much broader conception of, institutional music practices themselves.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Talk)

Keywords:

Practice Research, musical knowledge, epistemology, phenomenology

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Music

Dates: