Research Strategy for the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts
Valid from 2007-2012.
1. The Faculty’s tasks
According to the Higher Education Act, a faculty is responsible for research questions within its field. In this document, the Faculty Board describes how the development of research education and research within the different institutions of the Faculty is supported at faculty level.*
The Faculty’s research strategy can only be operative and effective if it is formulated and implemented through continuous dialogue between faculty level and the different institutions that make up the Faculty.
This dialogue is not only about formulating the specific needs of research at faculty level as well as at university level, but also about formulating ideas regarding the financial needs and the funding of research and research initiation.
A. The Faculty Board has common responsibility for the Faculty’s pioneer work in developing research and research education. The Faculty Board is responsible for the dissemination of information with regard to research activities within the Faculty. The Faculty takes a regular look at the research strategies of other faculties and institutions, keeping up to date with both national and international competence.
B. The Faculty strengthens research activities by representing them and presenting them to the University as well as to regional and national actors and financiers. The Faculty stays up to date with current and relevant information on areas of research and areas of artistic research, and also encourages research cooperation nationally and internationally. This includes cooperation with research centres in other parts of the world that have been established on the basis of other values regarding art and research than those characterising the Western canon.
C. The most important forums for discussing and implementing research within the Faculty are the Faculty Board, the Board for Artistic Research and Development, the Faculty Seminar Series, the Faculty Professors Committee, the Faculty Supervisors Committee, together with the periodical journal ArtMonitor.
2. Goals for the coming years
What we would like to see as our foremost strategic task during the coming years is the creation of a good research culture for the arts, where research, research education as well as relevant parts of our master’s programmes feel they not only have something to receive but also something to offer.
A. An experimental interartistic seminar culture, which, in a productive way, can accommodate art as well as critical reflection. This seminar culture is characterised by reflection and artistic production being in parity with each other. It is in the discussions that arise within this seminar culture that the qualitative criteria for artistic research will be formulated as we progress. It is therefore of considerable importance that the cross-faculty seminars are documented thoroughly and are made accessible to the public.
B. A high level of proficiency in the way artistic research and artistic work is made public, regardless of whether the projects consist of books, exhibitions, performance, film etc.
C. A culture capable of: assimilating the work that is done in the field of artistic research, keeping a filing system of all this work, and using the latter to build up a knowledge base for future artistic research.
D. A culture capable of drawing up principles for research ethics, criticality and autonomy in the field of the arts - principles which are, to a great extent, still undefined.
E. A culture that is open to meeting the political world, other educational institutions and other areas of research etc.
F. A culture that is willing to take part in a dialogue with the field of artistic research in other parts of the world.
3. Means
A. The Faculty’s most important task is to create the infrastructural possibilities necessary to build a culture that supports the specific research efforts pursued at the Faculty and that guarantees creative communication and qualitative discussion.
B. It is our intention to further strengthen the role of the Faculty Seminar Series for research education and research within the Faculty so that it becomes a central meeting place for our research to be made public. This will be a place where doctoral students, teachers, researchers and students can meet in dialogue. This will also be the place where the idea of having a specific room for artistic research can be realised. We also intend to document the activities that take place within the Faculty Seminar Series more accurately and more thoroughly than we do today. We could do this by publishing summaries in ArtMonitor, for example. In doing so, we could create the conditions required for realising our idea of building a common knowledge base within the Faculty, with the support of GUP (Gothenburg University Publications - the University’s new publication database).
C. We must find a productive solution to how our common responsibility for research education and research is to be divided between the Faculty’s institutions, the Research School and the administration of significant research applications, and so on and so forth. This involves enhancing the connections between first cycle (undergraduate) education, second cycle (master’s) education, third cycle (doctoral) education and research on the basis of the different institutions’ specific needs. Here, we would like to make a reference to the Higher Education Agency’s evaluation of our Research School in 2007, where we received good reports.
D. In addition to the possibilities ArtMonitor provides, we should also improve information on our research as well as how research results are disseminated within the Faculty, within the University of Gothenburg, within the research community and within the arts world. In a few years time we will have an excellent starting-point for research applications as a result of us having a great number of new doctorates; however, cross-faculty research will be of utmost importance in the future in order to create stability and continuity in our work, especially since we fear there will be cutbacks in research funding destined for artistic research.
E. The Faculty intends to keep up the number of doctoral students to 30-40 for this period.
F. The Faculty intends to maintain the number of ongoing research projects at 4-6 projects, which will be supported, and, if need be, funded by the Faculty– depending on how funding is allocated and how many are interested in applying for funding.
G. The Board for Artistic Research and Development will be assigned the task of regularly leading a critical discussion on research and research education at the Faculty and on how the funding of artistic development work and research initiation can be reorganised and improved.
* The living