Interested to hear your perspective as a creative arts PhD candidate ie. in dance, creative writing, music (other than musicology or music therapy), visual arts, film-making etc.

It's an area I'm least familiar with, and am curious to hear about your project(s) and how you approach creative arts research at PhD level.

Anyone?

Busy at the mo but ... you might find this link of interest:

http://www.artlab.org.uk/

My research combines creative design and technologies; and uses artworks as research tools. It has a practical element. However it is not one of those practice-based projects where you don't have to write a thesis. I have to write full thesis and present the practical elements and use them to support my theories. Personally I don't agree with practice-only research where you can get away with writing a 10k-word lousy report instead of a thesis. And some of the doctoral art students I know thinks they shouldn't even have to write the report, they say the artwork (outcomes) can be enough to convey the theory .

The link Goods sent is quite good by the way. I like their work generally.

Thanks Goods, I'll go check out that website in a second.

404 - how big does your thesis have to be and how much weight does your practical component carry in the final assessment? I have heard of the practical-only PhDs and I'm trying to understand how that compares with producing an original thesis that significantly contributes to current knowledge about the given topic. Interesting stuff.

The minimum word-count for any humanities, social science or art thesis at my university is 40000 words. This applies to my PhD as well. On top of that I have the practical element (artworks, prototype and a public exhibition). My initial proposal was for 50% theory and %50 practice. But I ended up with full thesis where the theory is supported with practical elements. I think I will need to put a percentage on it, and I don't think I could go more than %20 practice and %80 theory as some of my practice work ended up counting towards my experiments. It's very strange because I feel like I am doing 2 PhDs.

When you say 'experiments', are you referring to a scientific model where you have a control specimen, statistical analyses, specified hypotheses etc?