PARIP 2005 

Welcome to PARIP 2005, the international conference that is the final public event of the five-year PARIP Project. The main purposes of PARIP 2005 are celebratory, collaborative and political.  They are celebratory because the short history of the PARIP research communities is already a success story. There is significantly more visible evidence of activity, energy, creative confidence, clarity of analysis and circulation of knowledge among practice as researchers in the UK than there was five years ago. This could not have been achieved without the widespread emergence of a strong determination to collaborate as openly and honestly as possible across a great diversity of practices and practitioners.  Such collaboration is remarkable, given the inevitable difficulties – apprehensions, misunderstandings, suspicions, even rivalries  – that the speedy expansion of a new and challenging ‘academic’ field is bound to face in the global advance of audit cultures with their emphasis on increasing competition. Given this, it is very important that this spirit of positive collaboration informs PARIP 2005, because its focus on peer review and criteria is a necessary tactic for communities of researchers in search of sustainable futures.  If such communities do not as far as possible take charge of how they wish to be valued, then others elsewhere will do the job for them.  It is in this broad sense that the conference – like many others – is political.  

PARIP 2005 brings together a fabulous variety of practices across theatre, dance, performance art, film, television, new media and more – all drawing on a fascinating range of genres and forms. For the first time PARIP is also privileged to welcome creative colleagues from around the globe. The conference format in all its aspects is designed to share knowledges and understandings across research cultures, but especially through the Panels and the Workshops, which will explore specific problems, approaches and methods in practice as research chosen by their contributors. We hope that this sharing will be a stimulus for bringing informed perspectives to the discussions in the peer review gatherings – the Plenaries and the Sessions – which will be chaired by researchers conversant with the specific interests and aims of the presenters. But through all this serious business let’s not forget the pleasures of creativity and its provocations, let’s not forego the thrill of the oddity and the fascination of the familiar, let’s not lose sight of that peculiar frisson that comes with the creation of research in the immediacy of the event. 

Researchers in the PARIP communities have often argued that practice as research can significantly stretch the bounds of ‘the academy’ and generate paradigmatic refreshment of its ingrained practices.  If that is true – and I believe that largely it is – it will be so for many unpredictable reasons, but perhaps none more important than the unique edge of quality contributed by each of its collaborating practitioners.  

Welcome again to PARIP 2005.

Baz Kershaw Director, PARIP Director, PARIP

• Go to PARIP 2005 Peer review guidelines