research into practice cluster
	the experiential knowledge project (2005-2007)
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research into practice cluster	The Experiential Knowledge Project was a preparatory project the aim of which was to coordinate resources leading to the establishment of a major AHRC-funded research project Non-Traditional Knowledge and Communication. The project was led by Dr Kristina Niedderer and co-ordinated by Prof Michael Biggs. It examined the philosophical foundations of experiential knowledge in the context of art and design research, and the area variously known as practice-based, practice-led, or studio-based research. As such it built on the successful Research into Practice conference series and other research by the tVAD research group.. One of the core problems in this area concerns the embodiment of knowledge that is not linguistically expressed. A sub-set of this is embodiment that cannot be linguistically expressed. Both forms of embodiment constitute an important part of the processes and outcomes of art and design practice and research. Discourses on the combination of word and image are concerned with whether experiential knowledge in its various forms could or should predominate in research, rather than the explicit/cognitive knowledge that is traditionally expected. Indeed, the notion of research as construed by universities and research funding agencies seems to emphasize linguistic communication over the visual. For example, this problem can be found in regulations concerning the inclusion and role of artefacts in doctoral submissions, and in the rules concerning the conduct of the UK Research Assessment Exercise. The appearance of this debate in areas such as the RAE indicates that the issue of experiential and embodied knowledge is of fundamental importance in the discipline, but it has not hitherto received a rigorous treatment in art and design. The Research into Practice Cluster, including the Experiential Knowledge Project, addresses this shortcoming. Outcomes The project investigated: the understanding of knowledge in current definitions of research in order to examine whether they prioritise certain kinds/forms of knowledge (e.g. propositional/explicit and if so why) and exclude other kinds/forms of knowledge (e.g. experiential/tacit), and whether this component is important for the development of knowledge in general. This has also served to clarify the role and inclusion of practice within research in relation to the requirement for making a contribution to knowledge; different concepts of knowledge including their different modes of communication, in order to create a concept map of knowledge that relates the different kinds of knowledge and knowledge communication, and to acknowledge the multiplicity of knowledge as a pre-curser to investigating the practical implications of this advanced understanding of knowledge for the inclusion of non-traditional formats of knowledge within research; the research exhibition as one prominent means of knowledge communication for art and design. While the research exhibition is normally understood as a means of disseminationg art and design practice, this research has investigated the potential and format of the exhibition as a tool for knowledge communication in research and proposed a theoretical framework for the development of the research exhibition. new knowledge in the creative disciplines through the establishment of the experiential knowledge conference The conference, first held at UH in 2007, was the first in a series, continued by University of Wolverhampton in 2009, on issues arising from the project. Selected papers from the 2007 conference were published in the Journal of Visual Arts Practice 6 (2). The remaining papers were published in the open-access e-journal Working Papers in Design vol.3. In researching experiential knowledge there is a paradox that has to be faced regarding how research can deal with the problem of experiential knowledge by means of explicit knowledge, and what are the implications of verbalisation? There are different ways of approaching this problem: On the one hand, one might argue that it is the task of research to make the implicit experiential knowledge as far as possible explicit. In this sense, the implicit knowing/knowledge becomes the (knowledge-)basis for explicit knowledge, and that part is represented which can be expressed with explicit knowledge. This approach is based on the assumption that there is a component that can be made explicit to any experiential knowledge and that this is sufficient to understanding this experiential knowledge. However, the concern with this approach is the recognition that any verbal descriptions of experiential knowledge will be missing an important part of what constitutes experiential knowledge. One might even say that we don't even know whether we are asking the right questions, i.e. whether any verbal constructs are adequate for the phenomenon of experiential knowledge or whether it is ineffable. The abundance of different terms (procedural, experiential, tacit, implicit, personal, embodied, etc) that are used and the confusion with which they are used may be a symptom of this. Nevertheless, it seems that verbal communication is the most pervasive means of communicating and sharing knowledge, and therefore to be used as a starting point to get an overview of the hypothesized territory. However, the comparison of the use of terms as well as of methods used for eliciting experiential knowledge has to be conducted with care in order to detect any inferences that may lead to further insights.