Media practice research has over the past 25 years, or more, firmly established itself within the broader UK higher education research environment as important and legitimate research. This is also the case across the English-speaking world and, increasingly, we are seeing research contexts for media practice research in the wider global context rapidly developing, including in the global south.
As part of this maturation, it becomes important for the media practice research community to move beyond questions of doing media practice research, such as what media practice research looks like, or how it plays out within the institutional contexts of HEIs, and instead focus much more pragmatically on the unique value of media practice research to the wider world. In this wider context, research funding, and the evaluation of research, both in the UK and globally, is being focused on the impact the research being undertaken is having on both audiences, beneficiaries and industry partners. As an example of this, the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), which measures quality of research every five or six years across the UK higher education sector, has unequivocally indicated that evaluation of impacts will be an increasing feature of research assessments going forward. Various funding bodies, too, while not always using the word “impact”, are equally concerned that their investments deliver meaningful impacts.
Impacts, of course, take many forms and can be captured and articulated in many different ways. The bottom line, however, is that we, as researchers, are being asked by those who fund our research: what difference does your research make to the real world and why should we fund you? Might the approaches and forms of media practice research open up particular kinds of impacts? If so, how can we identify and understand these impacts?
In this emerging context, this JMPE/MeCCSA Symposium 2021 panel is designed to foster a discussion around the theme of impact and media practice research, and specifically asks: how can the approaches of the media practice researcher engage with overarching challenges identified by, for example, the Industrial Strategy (e.g., the role of emerging technologies in boosting the economy), UK Research and Innovation (e.g., Healthy Ageing or Sustainable Futures) and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (e.g., Quality Education and Reduced Inequalities)?
Panel Discussion Questions
The discussion will revolve around four core questions, each of which will have inherent sub questions:
- How do we, or could we, in the media practice communities define impacts? Who are our beneficiaries, audiences and partners and how do we wish to impact them?
- How do, and could, we in the media practice community engage with policy-led transdisciplinary challenges beyond our own specific forms to encourage impact-led research?
- How do, or could, our specific creative challenges and personal creative explorations relate to broader impacts?
- How can we adapt or develop an appropriate language with which to discuss with our transdisciplinary colleagues the relevance of our research impacts to real world issues, problems and challenges?
Panel Hosts
Erik Knudsen, University of Central Lancashire.
Erik Knudsen is a filmmaker and Professor of Media Practice at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in the UK, where he is also the Faculty Director of Research in the Faculty of Culture and Creative Industries. Prior to joining UCLan, Erik was a Professor of Visual and Digital Culture at Bournemouth University’s Media School. He has also been Professor of Film Practice at the University of Salford, Manchester, where he was, for a period of time, Head of the School of Media, Music and Performance. He writes extensively about creative film practice and his most recent book is Finding The Personal Voice In Filmmaking (2018). He is principal investigator on two recent Arts and Humanities Research Council grants: StoryLab International Film Development Research Network (2016 – 2018) and StoryLab Skills Training for Democratised Film Industries (2019 – 2020). Recent films as a filmmaker include True Calling (88 minutes, fiction, due for release autumn 2021), Cleft Lip (84 min., fiction, 2019), The Raven On The Jetty (88 min., fiction, 2015). Erik runs his own film production company, One Day Films Ltd (onedayfilms.com) and has recently been engaged with photography. He has exhibited and published several collections, including the photographic essay, Cuba in Waiting and a photographic and poetic book, combined with a film, entitled Doubt.
Matt Freeman, Bath Spa University.
Dr Matthew Freeman a Reader in Multiplatform Media at Bath Spa University, where he leads research across the School of Creative Industries and is Co-Director of The Centre for Media Research. He is the author of seven books, over 30 articles/chapters, and is Co-Editor of the International Journal of Creative Media Research. Outside of academia, he is the Founder & Co-Director of Immersive Promotion Design Ltd., a new university-led marketing consultancy for the XR world that supports Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality creatives and businesses to better communicate with their audience about the magic of immersive content.