Creative Arts Research Approaches to Ethics: New ways to address situated practices in action

As a ‘new’ research discipline, the creative arts challenges ethics understandings with emergent research practices. There is a disjuncture between what happens in the academy and what happens in the “real world”. In this paper we focus on a current learning and teaching project that attends to ethical know-how in creative arts practice in order to address the gaps between institutional research know-how and the practices of creative practice researchers. Graduate researchers working in the university are required to observe the University’s Code of Conduct for Research and adhere to the guidelines provided by the National Statement, however practicing artists working in the community are not similarly constrained. Once creative practice PhD graduates leave the university, they are no longer required to gain ethics clearance for their work but use their own developed sense of ethics to make “judgment calls.” Ethical know-how is ‘situated’, contextual, and a mainstay of all professional practices in action. We draw on preliminary findings from a national mapping study of HDR candidates, academic supervisors and ethics administers which used an online survey to gather the thoughts and experiences of ethical know-how in order to show how ethics is understood. Ethics is at the forefront and centre of innovative creative research practice. We argue shifting perceptions and practice around ethics, beyond institutional ethics and risk management, to a situated ethics that prepares our research graduates to become ethical and innovative practitioners in the “real world” offer a significant contribution to ethical know-how.