Artist-researchers on the Margins: Communities of Practice Beyond the PhD

Abstract

This article considers the reflections of fourteen arts/creative media practice-based PhD graduates, interviewed as part of ongoing research into the field. The recorded conversations were shared as a podcast series entitled Corkscrew: Practice Research Beyond the PhD. We look at meanings of practice as research, ways in which practitioners value the intellectual rigour of doing a PhD and how this affects their relationship to their practice moving forwards. Using the theoretical concepts of “communities of practice” (Wenger 1999), “social site of practice” (Schatzki 2002) and “third-spaces of hybridity” (as developed by Lam 2018), we ask: what impact does doing an artistic/creative practice-based PhD have on when, where, and how practitioners identify as academics and vice versa; and what support structures and resources are needed (or lacking) which enable them to practise as both at once?