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Performance Research is an independent journal/book series championing artistic-led research at the interface between the academy and the profession. Published by Routledge for ARC a division of the Centre for Performance Research (CPR)[1]. Founded as a cultural and publishing partnership (1995) with Dartington it has developed an identity and frame of intellectual/artistic reference distinct from CPR, forging many developments with partners outwith the academy. CPR's relocation to Falmouth enables both to extend this relationship. PR provides print and on-line platforms for practitioners, arts organisations and researchers. Interdisciplinary in vision, international in scope; it emphasises contemporary performance arts within changing cultures.
Professor Lois Weaver joined QMUL Drama in 1997. Her research-led practice as artist, curator and activist has had substantial impact within two areas. First, within the cultural world of live art she has influenced the practice of both emerging and established artists, and the programming and curation of performance. She has facilitated, mentored and directed a range of artists; opened up new spaces for performance's production and presentation; and actively supported other curators in the expansion of live art programming, especially in London. Second, Weaver's research into forms of public dialogue — her `Public Address Systems' — has had impact in the wider social field, leading to events and projects around the world in which citizens of diverse perspectives and backgrounds, often excluded from public discourse on grounds of age, class, gender and sexuality, have been able to contribute meaningfully to discussions of urgent social issues, including human rights, sexuality, aging and new technologies.
The research described focuses on performance in an expansive sense — including both live and documented forms — to address and engage with audiences both within and outside the usual parameters of the art museum or gallery. Impact is achieved through multiple modes: public, audience and community, participation, video, broadcast and performance. This work addresses the impact on cultural understandings and attitudes to performance art in the light of its increasingly de-marginalised role within fine art. The study should be considered in the context of moves by major institutions to acknowledge the increased significance of performance art practice whilst also reaching beyond the fixed notions implied by permanent structures such as the Tate's oil tanks.
Two strands of research were developed within the Performing the Archive portfolio of projects, focusing on conservation, accessibility and the creative use of culturally significant and unique archives of live art and performance. These have impacted on professional artists, curators and producers working in live art and contemporary performance, on archivists and conservators and on the general public. Through a range of events, workshops, exhibitions and performances held between 2008 and 2013, partner arts organizations have also benefited, including Arnolfini, Bristol Old Vic Theatre (BOVT), In Between Time Productions (IBT) and the National Review of Live Art (NRLA). The influence of the research has been felt regionally, nationally and internationally.
What's Welsh for Performance? (WsWfP)'s research into the history of performance art in Wales has achieved its most significant and sustained impact through informing the professional practices of Welsh arts practitioners. These fall into two groups: artists engaged in live art, past and present; and art curators and policy makers who have responsibility for the presentation, conservation and funding of contemporary art in Wales. In uncovering, documenting and making publicly accessible Wales's rich but underappreciated heritage of performance art, WsWfP has given the first generation of performance artists a renewed stake in its history; inspired younger artists in the creation of new work; and helped to raise the public profile of the artform to the extent that performance work is now routinely included in exhibitions, publications and media coverage devoted to Welsh contemporary art. Three partnerships with major organisations allow WsWfP to inform directly how performance art in Wales is funded, administered, exhibited and conserved.
Since 2005, Dr Quick has created a series of practice-as-research projects and educational workshops to increase understanding of how new media-based performance is created and understood. Key beneficiaries have been young people, teachers, theatre practitioners, mixed media artists, and cultural organisations. Five new works have impacted through the introduction of innovative practice performance to new audiences, nationally and internationally (including central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Brazil and Taiwan); pioneering new uses of digital technology as creative practice, and sharing such innovation with both established and new theatres and groups.
This case study focuses on impact derived from Ildiko Rippel's practice-based research in contemporary performance, resulting in the presentation of Blueprint (2012), a performance involving interaction of performers with their mothers, who are present within the work via real-time video links. Blueprint continues to be performed at festivals and in venues in the UK. Impact, to date, has comprised: opportunities for public engagement with contemporary performance practice and furtherance of public understanding of it; the work's contribution to public performance programming in the UK; its contribution to development of contemporary theatre practices through experience and discussion of it amongst theatre/performance practitioners, promoters and critics; contribution to the vibrancy of publicly available contemporary arts culture in the UK.
For this case study our impacts include high levels of community engagement, innovative pedagogy, engagement with large and broad audiences (in real life and via an array of broadcast and print media), prize winning activities and quality outputs and publications. Our approach is trans-disciplinary, progressive and experimental and impacts in a local, national and global context. This case study refers to the group of researchers at Leeds Metropolitan University whose work is practice-based, practice-led and often collaborative. This type of innovative and progressive research has characterised the subject at the University since the establishment of Leeds Polytechnic in 1970.
A participatory public artwork commissioned as a part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, The Boat Project's impact reaches to a national audience of 440,698 while a global audience of many millions encountered the work via print and broadcast media. Outreach activity engaged over 100 schools while some thirty public artworks were commissioned in response to the project, underlining its impact on local authority cultural provision and the professional fields of contemporary performance, theatre and public art. The project created 22 paid positions, 80 volunteer positions and an on-going commercial venture.
Zoe Svendsen's 3rd Ring Out: Rehearsing the Future (3RO; 2010-2011) enhanced public understanding of and engagement with one of the most important social issues of our times through novel modes of performance and communication both live and online. This practice-as-research performance project had significant impact on a broad range of audience-participants, including policy-makers, local authorities, climate change communicators, other artists working in the field of art and climate change, children of school age and the general public. The project continues to attract requests for talks, policy meetings and/or further performances. The impact to date includes altering perceptions of both art and climate change, and of the relationship between them.