iDARE 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 within the context of its emergent research methodologies and the interactive and polyvalent nature of knowledge produced this mode of research. In this paper we focus on a current learning and teaching project that attends to ethical know-how in creative practice research in order to address the gaps between institutional research knowhow and the practices of creative practitioners in the world. Graduate creative practice 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. In order to address the disjuncture between institutional ethics and compliance, what we call 'know-what,' and the ethical know-how required in the real world by artists, this paper sets out the principles and an approach to developing ethical know-how. Through a case study that adapts real world art practice to the research context of the Academy, this essay demonstrates how institutional know-what can be brought into play with ethical know-how. We propose that 'the hypothetical' enables us to shift perceptions and practice around ethics. This approach raises issues specific to the creative arts disciplines and prepares our graduate researchers to become ethical and innovative practitioners in the real world.