Creative Practice Research Academy (CPRA)

Overview

CPRA brings together researchers working in a variety of creative practices and at all career stages, and includes research students, senior academics, as well as those just embarking on research. Our fundamental ethos is to provide a supportive, collaborative, encouraging, yet critical culture of working together. As creative practice researchers and those engaged with creative praxes, we recognise the importance of everyone who contributes to the field, opening up new conversations and furthering existing debates.

We are an externally-facing academy and welcome collaboration and critical engagement with organizations, practitioners, and communities outside the university.

Our projects are both impactful and significant, and at the cutting edge of a dynamic range of discipline areas where some can be found below:

• In Certain Places
• Media Innovation Studio
• Artlab Printmaking Studio
• Silicate Research Unit
• StoryLab – Skills Training for Democratised Film Industries
• Café Royal Books

Much of our research is multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary by nature, and some exemplars can be found below:

• Arts and Wellbeing Research Group
• Visual Studies Research Group
• Dance and Somatic Practice Research Group
• Media Innovation Research Group
• Music Research Group
• Place and Communities Research Group

Our aims and objectives are to:

• provide a home and support for research staff, their projects, and research students across the arts, media, and creative practices
• advocate and enable creative practices and critical engagement
• provide an infrastructure that supports transdisciplinary approaches to projects
• celebrate the breadth and depth of creative practice research undertaken in the faculty, and beyond
• make visible and accessible the impacts of creative research projects from the regional to the global
• encourage the development of our research bidding culture and a peer review procedure for external funding bids
• develop and support the postgraduate research student experience

We will do this by:

• managing a postgraduate research student training programme, open and invited research events, and an ambitious guest speaker programme
• providing a branded context, advocacy and policy support for research centres, groups, and projects
• shaping and disseminating the creative practice research narrative, research profile, and research culture, including through innovative social media engagement
• designing and managing a creative practice research mentoring scheme