Models of knowledge

Abstract

Art practice has an unusual history inside the university sector. Often originating from specialized academies, as disciplines they usually began life through a focus on practical work. This gave rise to small institutions that have been subsumed into larger ones, becoming colleges or schools within universities rather than continuing their independent lives. The advantages of this are clear: structural, financial and cultural opportunities that come with the status of university subjects. What this article argues is that there has been a considerable price to pay in being so accommodated. Creative practice subjects in a qualifications framework, and to some extent in exercises like the Research Excellence Framework, have been required to adopt intellectual enquiry processes in order to burnish their claims to knowledge. Mostly, these come from the humanities. This article examines the impact of this on creative practice, on acceptance of the research elements of it and on distinguishing the difference between arts-based enquiry and humanities models of interpretation and analysis. That these are increasingly incompatible requires rethinking of the relationship between arts and humanities that is so taken for granted.