Teaching art and design: Communicating creative practice through embodied and tacit knowledge

Abstract

How do artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design? There is much discussion about the ‘mystery’ of creativity, but little understanding of how teaching occurs in creative contexts. Understanding this topic better will develop greater knowledge within the academy of how art and design is communicated by the creative practitioners who teach it, and could benefit other academic disciplines. In this article, I draw on data from a recent Australian study with artist/designer-academics. It provides rich qualitative data to explore in detail how artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design. Tacit and embodied knowledge theories are used to provide frameworks for explaining this phenomenon. I argue that artist/designer-academics embody their creative practices and communicate these through teaching in both tacit and explicit forms, and that they do this through modelling knowledge, skills and practice.

Keywords

Creative practice embodied knowledge higher education tacit knowledge teaching art and design

Introduction

The notion that creativity is connected with mystery and magic (see for example, Rhodes, 1961; Zehner et al., 2009) may explain why there is currently little understanding of how creative processes and practices are communicated within the teaching of art and design, and the role such processes play.

For all the research into creativity (for example, Boden, 2004; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, 1999; Guilford, 1950; Rhodes, 1961), Wielgosz and Imms (2007) argue that much to date has occurred in psychology, rather than in art education or in art and design. Research has been mostly in relation to creative thinking (Wielgosz and Imms, 2007) rather than creative process or practice. Yet, process and practice are arguably at the heart of what artists and designers do. In this article, I focus on art/design process and practice to explore how artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design. The activity of creative practice plays an integral part in creativity: the act of practising in order to bring about a creative product or endeavour is an important component. A question stemming from this and at the heart of this article is: how might we think about the notion of creative practice in relation to communicating it through teaching in art and design?

O’Connor (2005, 2007, 2009) contends that artists not only embody their practice in a physical sense but also in terms of the insider language and culture developed and used amongst practitioners. These understandings of embodiment along with Polanyi’s (1966) theory of tacit knowledge prompted the following questions:

Do university artist/designer-teachers embody their art and/or design practices?

If so, how might such embodied practice arise and be communicated during the teaching of art and design?

Is the communication of a tacit or explicit nature? In what contexts?

O’Connor (2005, 2007, 2009) has much to say about process and practice in the context of the art practice of glass blowing. Her work on embodiment sits within discussions and research of this phenomenon of knowing that draws from phenomenological and sociological traditions (see for example, Fourcade, 2010; Merleau-Ponty, 2005; Tanaka, 2011). Fourcade (2010: 570) defines embodiment as ‘a form of knowledge that cannot be easily disassociated from the personal qualities of its bearer’, a definition which I adopt in the context of this study. Tanaka (n.d.) claims that embodied knowledge ‘can be better presented by performance than by verbal explanation’.

Through her in situ ethnographic study, O’Connor (2005, 2007, 2009) specifically connects studio art process and practice with the notion of embodiment. She investigated what the body does in art practice and how it communicates through process. About this she says:

Expression is never solely of one art alone. That is, when we practice an art,

such as glassblowing, we express more than the practice of glassblowing itself: we express an entire history of learned corporeal knowledges. (O’Connor, 2007: 113)

Corporeal knowledge is that which is learned, held and understood through the body (Merleau-Ponty, 2005). O’Connor (2005, 2007, 2009) contends that artists embody their art practice due to repetition of movement, familiarity with tools and increased confidence in the nature of their practice. Artists not only embody their practice in a physical sense but also in terms of the insider language and culture developed and used amongst practitioners. Barad (2007) refers to this as entangling material and discourse. O’Connor (2009) argues that such embodiment enables the artist to hold tacit understandings of the physicality, language and culture of their creative practice. Such embodied knowledge includes the ability to access ‘modes of reading and understanding the practice, both cognitive and corporeal’ (2009: 1). Thus, O’Connor argues that there is deep embodied knowing in the process of art making, some of which is tacit in nature. This claim is important in terms of understanding how artists and designers might communicate art or design practice through their teaching in universities.

Polanyi’s (1966) work focusing on tacit knowledge is also instrumental in terms of understanding the process of communicating art and design processes and practice in teaching. His theory of tacit knowledge is built on the premise that ‘we know more than we can tell’ (Polanyi, 1966: 4). As humans, our understandings are built on explicit information via objects or information we can see, the words we use to describe what it is we see or is happening, and the tacit knowledge we use to fill the gap between these two areas because each of these areas is deficient in communicating fully on their own. ‘Shaping or integrating’ is ‘the great and indispensable tacit power by which all knowledge is discovered, and once discovered, is held to be true’ (Polanyi, 1966: 6).

Most importantly, Polanyi argues, ‘an explicit integration cannot replace its tacit counterpart’ (1966: 20), meaning the strength of what someone knows tacitly through their bodily absorption of such knowing cannot be replaced by someone teaching them through structured formal knowledge. His ideas enable an understanding of the tacit (and non-tacit) communication of practice in art and design teaching.

Understanding how creative practitioners teach art and design in the university context is an under-explored area of research, and to date, there is little understanding of how teaching occurs in creative contexts that draws on empirical data. Understanding this topic better will enable a greater knowledge within the academy of how art and design is communicated by the creative practitioners who teach it. In many ways, it is an invisible or at least an unarticulated aspect of teaching that much can be learnt from, including for those in academic disciplines outside of art and design.

Suchman (1995) speaks about the need for making work visible. This article aims to contribute to developing clearer understandings of how artists and designers teach art and design programs in higher education, capturing and highlighting the tacit, explicit and the embodied so that this work may become increasingly visible within universities. In doing so, much might be learned that can be shared and of benefit to those in other academic disciplines.

There are a series of specific terms requiring clarification that will be used in this article. Art and design disciplines will generally include all the sub-disciplines of fine art, architecture, industrial design, interior design, graphic design (also known as communication design), textile design, fashion, visual arts, media arts, creative writing, film and television, and digital design. This broad definition acknowledges ‘a wide range of different, often overlapping practices and nuances of practice’ (Shreeve, 2008: 12) in art and design.

The term artist/designer-academic, an inelegant but nevertheless convenient way to denote those who are at the centre of the research in this article, will be used to refer to those who teach art and/or design in university art and/or design programs. The terms academic and teacher will also be used interchangeably to indicate the same general meaning.

Creative practice will be referred to repeatedly and will be used to mean the art/design practice of being an artist and/or designer. Creative process and practice will be of particular emphasis, rather than broader applications of the term ‘creativity’.

The term program will be used to refer to an undergraduate or postgraduate degree of study.

The research design

I began exploring the question of how artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach in the context of research into a broader topic focusing on creative practice, value, and teaching of art and design in universities. The focus of the research was intentionally on teaching. This is an important boundary (and perhaps limitation) that deserves mention. There are other stakeholders in this topic whose inclusion would potentially have revealed different nuances and perhaps other findings. That is, the research of focus in this article does not include others in the university sector that may have views on this topic, such as management, senior university leaders, policy makers, and students. While it is acknowledged that the perspectives of these groups would be interesting and of value to include alongside those of the artist/designer-academics, including these groups as participants would have required widening the scope of the study, requiring a much longer time frame and funding basis to support its execution.

In 2012, I received university ethics approval to research connections between creative practice, artists, and designers teaching in higher education art and design disciplines, and value. I used a qualitative framework with 13 artist/designer-academics participants from universities within three Australian states to research this topic. As part of the methods of that study I observed, as a non-participant, artist/designer academics teaching classes with a subgroup of participants. In total, I observed 19 h of classes across four participants over two academic semesters in 2012. Observations included classes in studio drawing, studio textile design, art crits at two different year levels (the term crit’ is a colloquial term for ‘critique’), and a lecture. Between 4 and 5 h of classes were observed for each participant.

Participants

In the part of the study where I explored ideas about the communication of creative practice through teaching, there were four artist/designer-academics who agreed to participate. They were recruited via an email invitation to be part of the larger study. The focus of the broader study was on creative practice. Therefore, a key factor in determining selection was that participants needed to be artist/designer-academics with active creative practices. ‘Active’ was understood and used loosely with no specific requirements regarding size, frequency or level of practice. However, there had to be some evidence of an active and ongoing creative practice (for example, through participation in exhibitions, freelance design or consultancies).

Of the four, three participants had fine art backgrounds and one had a background in design (see Table 1). In order to protect the identity of participants, institutional names and other identifiers will not be revealed as I report the data. In addition, pseudonyms have been used as a further means of protecting participants’ identity.

Table 1.

List of participants (by pseudonym), their creative practice and teaching areas.

Participants	Creative practice area	Teaching discipline/area
James	Digital video and prints, installation and sculpture	Fine art
Rebecca	Textile design	Textile design – knit
Will	Drawing and painting	Fine art – drawing
Richard	Installation, drawing, and video	Fine art – painting

In the study, I was positioned as an insider–outsider (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009) researcher. Through working in universities, including with but not in art/design disciplines, I understand the higher education context. As a printmaker outside the university context, I understand some of the issues, challenges and complexities related to creativity, process and practice. Thus, in Dwyer and Buckle’s (2009) view, I am positioned as both insider and outsider, reflecting the paradoxical nature of the qualitative researcher.

Observations

My observations were focused on capturing times when art/design practice, knowledge and experience were referred to in teaching rather than recording verbatim pedagogical dialogue between teachers and students. I was struck by the range of ways I observed participants draw from and/or refer to their working knowledge and experiences of creative practice as artists/designers. I am not suggesting I heard participants constantly saying to students ‘Well, when I work, I approach that issue like this…’, though there were some occasions where the connection to practice was explicit. However, the majority of times I observed this kind of interaction occurring were in subtle and nuanced ways, and it was quite possible that participants were not overly conscious that they were working in this manner. Indeed, there were suggestions of tacitness in the knowledge or experience being offered and shared. The following are a series of examples drawn from observations of each of the four participants’ classes to provide a sense of what was observed.

In Will’s drawing classes, I witnessed his extensive modelling of ways to work with materials as well as general approaches to work. For example, he held a piece of charcoal and marked students’ drawing paper (propped on an easel) to demonstrate how they might capture an angle or a quality of light in the context of still life and life drawing classes. In another instance, he showed students how to use the charcoal to gain perspective and scale. He adeptly held the charcoal in his hand and looked at it and then at the object to be drawn, his eye moving quickly back and forth between the charcoal piece and the still life until it was clear he understood the scale of the work he was about to embark upon drawing. He then made quick marks on the paper that suggested the scale of the work to come. All of this happened rapidly and he verbalised very little during this process, although it was clear that he was consciously trying to slow the process down and articulate the elements for the students who were observing and listening.

In one class, he advised students not to draw small scale. He wanted them to know that it is important to work large with charcoal to achieve the particular drawing task of that day. He then modelled the creation of a charcoal mid-tone wash across almost all of the white drawing paper, rubbing it back to achieve the desired lightness in tone. He explained to students why this background to charcoal drawings is important saying ‘we do not live in a pure white world’ (class observation notes, Will’s drawing class). He then asked students to approach the work (a still life) as a cluster so that all objects could be captured and objects did not fall off the page.

In another of Will’s classes where students were to draw a life model, he encouraged students to ‘work big’ because ‘working from life is different from working with photographs. ‘Photography does simplify things somewhat’ (class observation notes, Will’s drawing class). He was able to teach all of this and more through his much practiced and embodied knowledge of drawing.

In the textile design studio classes observed, Rebecca used her extensive knowledge of textile design practice to guide students in their choices of technique, materials, structural form, in addition to conceptual approaches to work. With one student whose work (in a collaborative project with a student partner from architecture) was almost complete, Rebecca suggested how a small addition to the form would enable scale to be understood more clearly. She then asked the students to consider how the work would look when photographed in different light, and that this is important to consider when the end result is to be installed in a specific architectural space. Discussion ensued about how light would move differently through the piece and that this might inform the final work.

With other students Rebecca discussed details of technique and modelled ways of working with yarn so that students could see how they might work to achieve their desired outcome more effectively. Rebecca’s modelling of practice appears to be completely embodied from her extensive experience as a textile designer. Much of the way she teaches in studio classes involves communicating the tacit knowledge she holds as a practiced designer; that is, knowledge of textiles, form, colour, and many other aspects. She communicates this to students in both tacit and explicit ways. The tacit, for which she possibly holds no words, is physically demonstrated through handling materials and constructing textile forms.

In another example in a non-studio class setting, James facilitated post-graduate level art crit sessions with students. James performed an elegant intellectual verbal dance where he drew from his knowledge of art history and practice to lead students through a stimulating, engaging and educative critique of students’ work. For example, he drew on his knowledge of art and referenced iconographic traditions such as fairytales and images of horror in forests to help generate discussion about one student’s work. Later in the same session, he referred to the use of the narrative in art traditions.

In other parts of the crit, James drew on his art knowledge and practice to focus students’ attention to the way artwork had been hung in a particular space. He did this because he wanted students to draw meaning from the artist’s intention of presenting work in this way. In this instance, he drew on knowledge and practice that is tacitly known (and possibly embodied through his experience of installation and exhibition practice) and then used it in an explicit way to teach this particular point.

Similarly to James, in the fine art crit classes of the fourth participant, Richard drew on his knowledge and experience of art practice to teach students. In a teaching moment where he modelled how one might read a specific artwork (involving two pieces), he asked students to consider if the work might be a diptych and if so what brought the two pieces together. He drew their attention to how the work was hung on the wall and how placement is part of reading art. Through this teaching moment, he explained how two pieces, when pushed together, influence each other. Later in this crit where Richard modelled how to read artwork, he drew broader connections by explaining that the public’s response to work can influence artists. He then named an artist who chose to adapt their work based on how others have read it.

Throughout the crit, like James, Richard referenced an extensive range of other artists’ work to draw parallels with the student work being critiqued, and did this in many different teaching moments. For example, he asked students to consider the power of scale and named an artist whose use of scale deliberately changed the meaning of their work from cute to monstrous.

At the conclusion of all observations, I followed a process whereby I coded the observation notes working inductively, simply naming what I saw in the notes. I developed codes arising from the contents of my notes in addition to codes informed by the research questions and the literature. All notes were tagged with multiple codes. I double backed to check whether new codes could be added or if others should be collapsed together. Once I finished this process, I began to group related codes together. I then looked for themes that categorised the codes using Sandelowski’s (1998) idea of prevalence based on frequency.

The result of handling data drawn from over 19 h of observations of artist/designer-academics teaching art and design classes was that two themes emerged:

knowledge and experience is constantly drawn upon to teach aspects of design and making, and

it is also drawn upon to model practice in specific contexts and situations.

Table 2 outlines typical observation notes and major themes from coding data to illustrate how these themes emerged. The notion of modelling adhered to in this analysis is connected to the idea of acting out a practice and the behaviour and activity associated with that (including language), in relation to the practices and behaviour of artists and designers.

Table 2.

Overview of typical notes from observation of participants’ classes and major themes.

Overview of typical notes	Class observation major themes
Discussion with students about: form and scale; form and technique; technique and materials; placement and form; placement and composition; placement and artwork; scale; composition and movement; light and shade; conceptual ideas and their development	Drawing on knowledge and experience: about design and making
Modelling and encouraging professional practice; use of materials; drawing practice; understanding light, scaling of work; how to use and gain perspective; how to scale and proportion drawing; approaches to work; approaches to working in collaborative projects; resolving work; pushing work forward; approaches to art making	Drawing on knowledge and experience: to model practice

My next layer of analysis explored how this knowledge and experience of practice was communicated through teaching. I used embodied and tacit knowledge theories to interrogate the data as a means of understanding this process better.

The expression of embodied and tacitly held practice knowledge was prevalent amongst the artist-designer-academics I observed. For example, when Will handled drawing tools such as charcoal to model how a student might approach a particular drawing task, he did so swiftly and accurately, with no visible signs of hesitation. Both O’Connor (2005, 2007, 2009) and Fourcade’s (2010) work argue that this is due to embodied knowing developed through extensive repetition and practice over time on the part of the practitioner (in this case, Will, as artist).

O’Connor (2007: 114) explains that embodiment of art practice involves the centrality of the body as an ‘expressive vehicle’. In his drawing class, Will propelled his body swiftly from each student’s drawing easel, quickly assessing their progress and discussing possible approaches or ways to problem solve. His body was central to the relationship with students as he taught them how to draw because at times he stood to the side of the student (while the student faced the easel centrally), at other times he stood in front of the easel handling tools such as charcoal or pencil and demonstrated a mark on the paper. On other occasions, he stood almost behind the student indicating with a shadowing action how they should move their torso, arm and hand to execute a particular angle of mark making on the paper. As the drawing teacher, he was not standing at the front of the class abstractly verbalising how to draw; he was physically in the class and part of what O’Connor calls the dialogical relationship that occurs between maker and materials. However, in this case, a teaching context, the dialogical relationships occurred between the student, materials, and Will as the teacher. That is, there was an extra actor present in the process of sharing and acquisition of embodied knowledge in the teaching context: Will as the ‘expert’, the materials, and the student as ‘novice’. Through all of this, Will’s body was central because it possessed understandings beyond the cognitive to include knowing ‘the tacit workings and modalities of the practice’ (O’Connor, 2007: 116). It was through his body’s presence and engagement in the teaching of drawing that his embodiment of drawing practice was played out and communicated.

In her textile design studio classes, Rebecca showed many instances of being ‘immersed in and attentive to the body’ (O’Connor, 2007: 116) as someone carrying many years of understanding about tacit aspects of handling and working with textiles. In one class, she spoke with a student who was having problems with their choice of materials to construct a machine-knitted artifact. The student’s work was buckled and lumpy in appearance indicating to Rebecca that the form the student desired would not generate due to a combination of inappropriate material choices and novice handling of the knit machines. As she discussed the work, she handled it feeling the materiality of it between her fingers, gently stretching and pulling the textile shape to gauge flexibility, all the while considering the causes of the problem. Her eyes were constantly on the work as she assessed the student’s issue. The conversation between Rebecca and the student was focused on the materiality of the textile piece with Rebecca illustrating ‘the relation of maker and material via the tool’ (O’Connor, 2007: 116) as she handled the yarn and later moved to the knit machine to explore further possibilities.

Through this moment, I saw the way in which Rebecca was able to understand and control the materials of practice and how she exhibited what O’Connor (2007: 117) refers to as the ‘cultivation of the capacity to respond to the material’. Rebecca’s ability to listen and respond to materials in the process of making textiles with her student indicates how she embodies her practice. She was able to communicate this in her teaching through her responsive handling of the work, by showing the student where the issues lay, and by moving expertly between the textile artifact, the textile supplies, the student and the knit machine. She was able to communicate what was known through both tacit and explicit forms.

Rebecca told me that she finds it hard to model a particular aspect of practice with students because her body knows the movement so well that often she moves too quickly for students to understand. While teaching, she has to consciously slow the pace and deconstruct her practice so that students are able to see what is happening. Expressing some frustration, she told me that moving slowly breaks her flow and means that when demonstrating to students she makes mistakes. In O’Connor’s view, Rebecca practices in a way that is beyond a ‘corporeally-known process’ to showing signs of having a deep knowing about the ‘tacit workings and modalities of the practice’ (2007: 116). The practice is so deeply known and buried in her body that to move against this knowing (slowing down her work for students) means bringing what is tacitly known to the surface for scrutiny so that it can be made explicit for student learning. In Barad’s (2007) view where discourse and materiality are entangled, Rebecca’s knowing and being intra-act to surface through her teaching, but this is not always easy to execute.

In the art crits he facilitates, Richard showed evidence of bringing ‘corporeal knowledge not of a given practice alone, but rather of an entire embodied history’ (O’Connor, 2007: 121). That is, through his references to other artists’ work in the crit, Richard’s life history as an artist played a role in how embodied practice is enacted through interaction with art and their materials. This knowledge is embodied and tacitly developed so that he is able to reach in and draw from it in particular moments of teaching. In this sense, Richard is accessing the tacit to communicate with students in an explicit form, shaping and integrating (Polanyi, 1966) what is tacitly known so that it can be shared in teaching.

However, according to Polanyi’s thinking, even though Richard makes this knowledge explicit in various teaching moments, what he knows tacitly through his practice as an artist cannot be communicated in full because it is not possible to replace the tacit with explicit, structured, formal knowledge. To know in the way that Richard knows requires students to embark on their own artistic practices whereby the body becomes ‘equipped for listening’ to the materials and the artist develops ‘techniques and skills that act like a type of grammar’ in the body (O’Connor, 2007: 117). Through this process, practitioners possess a corporeal disposition developed over time through practice, reflection, and adjusted practice.

Embodied practices: Communicating the tacit

How do artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design? Through the lenses of embodied and tacit knowledge (O’Connor, 2005, 2007, 2009; Polanyi, 1966), analysis revealed that as artist/designer-academics, participants embody their creative practices and communicate these through teaching in both tacit and explicit forms, some of which are embodied. Specifically they do this through modeling knowledge, skills, and practice. Embodiment is evidenced through the modelling of knowledge, skills and practice as indicated in drawing and textile design studio classes and one lecture. Tacit knowledge is evidenced through the references to art history, contemporary art and artists, and conceptual understandings of approaches to work as shown through data generated in this study.

The extent to which artist/designer participants drew on their creative practices to teach highlights the stored knowledge, both tacit and embodied, that they contribute from the experience of their art/design practices. When considered through the lenses of tacit and embodied knowledge, the data highlight the range and variety of skills, knowledge, and experiences artist/designer-academics draw on to teach art/design.

My analysis of the data suggests that the skills participants draw on are embodied in nature, appearing to be mostly unconsciously executed as they teach and move around the art/design teaching studio and other classes they teach (such as crits). As Fourcade (2010: 569) argues, this is because ‘we come to recognize and experience certain physical sensations, to move and use our limbs in this or that manner’. Thus, through the practiced movements of their creative processes as artists and designers, participants know on an embodied level much of what they teach students in art and design classes. While teaching, participants model skills they know on a deep level (both corporeally and cognitively), accessing both explicitly and tacitly understood knowledge about tools, materials, processes, and aesthetics, including a combination of all these. In critique sessions, they model communication skills focusing on how to speak about their work and the work of other artists/designers, learnt over time in their own art/design practice. The nature of such communication skills is deeply embodied and both tacit and explicit in nature, and continuously drawn upon to sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly and not so explicitly, teach art/design.

The kind of knowledge participants as artist/designer-academics draw upon is embedded in practice, is tacitly known, is embodied as well as known and understood on a non-embodied level (that is, cognitively). Data generated through this study shows that experience of practice informs and guides participants’ teaching of art/design. Such experience may be supplemented over time with knowledge gained outside of practice (for example, through the study of others in practice, through theory, through reading, through teaching, through observations from life); however, it is experience of one’s art/design practice which is constantly drawn upon in teaching, and which is a source of understanding that is embodied and tacitly understood, and as well at times, explicitly known.

When data were questioned in relation to embodied and tacit knowledge theories, the breadth and richness of what it is that artist/designers-teachers contribute from their art/design practices to the teaching of art/design was illuminated. Interrogating the data from these perspectives reveals that this contribution is based on knowledge, skills, practice, experience of a complex range of areas including the tangible (tools, materials, techniques) and non-tangible (attitudes, dispositions, approaches). Such an analysis highlights the critical role that artist/designer-academics play in modelling the life and practice of an artist/designer for students.

The significant role of the corporeal and tacit in the context of art/design teaching suggests a need to attend to the value in something which is at times difficult to articulate. Tanaka (2011) suggests the idea that knowledge stems from the mind is still dominant, and though there are many embodied practice approaches today, thinking about the role and value of the ‘non-cognitive’ has not fully changed. There are hints of this tension in Fourcade’s (2010: 569) argument that our ‘Ways of knowing clash all the time’. What Tanaka and Fourcade allude to are the many ways of knowing that go beyond those derived from the intellect via the brain. Such ways of seeing knowledge and its communication challenge, for example, the Cartesian mind–body dualism purported by the philosopher Descartes (Robinson, 2003).

Yet, this tension needs to be acknowledged and critiqued if we are to fully understand the nature of teaching and learning in practice-based disciplines. In the research described through the artists and designers in this study, tension was visibly at play in the teaching context. That is, through the teaching of their subject matter, they worked with and drew upon embodied and tacit knowledge and yet they needed to slow down, articulate, and make explicit what it is they are doing to the students they teach. The tension here is between the knowing of the corporeal, so fluid and effortless, pushing against the need to verbalise through the cognitive. This is not to suggest that a sharp dichotomy between the two is always at play, however, the tension exists, and for those teaching art and design, and indeed other practice-based disciplines, finding a way to work with the tension without losing the essence of what is being taught is a complex skill, and perhaps one that to date has had little attention or acknowledgment.

Conclusion

In addressing the overarching question about how artists and designers teaching in universities communicate creative practice as they teach art/design, the research outlined in this article suggests that this involves drawing on embodied and tacit knowledge from deeply held and understood art and design practices. In addition, knowledge is communicated tacitly and explicitly through non-corporeal processes.

In response to the three questions focusing on embodiment of practice and communication through teaching, this research suggests that university artist/designer-academics do embody their art and/or design practices. Such embodied practices are communicated during the teaching of art and design in many ways that involve modelling practices and approaches to work, and communicating about art and design. This communication is both tacit and explicit in nature and occurs in a variety of different art and design teaching contexts (for example, studio, crits, and lectures).

However, this research does not claim a universalised position regarding the phenomenon of how artists and designers in universities communicate knowledge, skills and practices in their teaching of art and design. Rather it provides detailed insight into a small set of artist/designer-academics experiences within the Australian higher education context to reveal perceptions on this topic. There may be parallels and relationships to be drawn for other settings with similar contexts. Further research with a wider group of participants (for example, students) and in other settings would be of value in extending the work begun here.

The contribution this study makes is to a deeper understanding of how creative practice is communicated through the teaching of art and design and to making such work practices ‘visible’ (Suchman, 1995). In articulating this aspect of teaching, much can be learnt that may also inform and lend itself to those in academic disciplines outside of art and design. There are suggestions of how knowledge is communicated, including the level of complexity, which may be of relevance to other practice-based disciplines and professions. Through the research reported here, the work of artists and designers teaching in higher education has been made more visible. This is important, too, in terms of visibility within the wider academy.

Practice, including art and design practice, is infused with embodied knowing because of its physical nature. Due to this physicality, the body carries tacit knowledge (in addition to knowledge held cognitively in the mind) and, as I have argued in this article, is communicated through the teaching of art and design. This way of understanding the teaching of art and design and its relationship to practice gives visibility to its specific knowledge-making processes and illuminates the role of the embodied and the tacit within.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Kylie Budge was, at the time of writing, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Collaborative Learning and Teaching at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. She has held senior lecturer and lecturer positions in academic development working closely with art and design disciplines. Kylie was recently appointed Research Manager at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, Australia. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne where the focus of her research was creative practice and the teaching of art and design in higher education. Her research interests include art/design and creativity, social media and its intersections with art/design and learning contexts. She tweets @kyliebudge

References

Barad

(2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham: Duke University Press.

Boden

(2004) The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Csikszentmihalyi

(1996) Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People, New York: HarperCollins.

Csikszentmihalyi

(1999) Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity. In: Sternberg

(ed.) Handbook of Creativity, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 313–335.

Dwyer

Buckle

(2009) The space between: On being an insider-outsider in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8(1): 54–63.

Fourcade

(2010) The problem of embodiment in the sociology of knowledge: Afterword to the special issue on knowledge in practice. Qualitative Sociology 33(4): 569–574.

Guilford

(1950) Creativity. American Psychologist 14: 205–208.

Merleau-Ponty

(2005) The Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge.

O'Connor

(2005) Embodied knowledge: The experience of meaning and the struggle towards proficiency in glassblowing. Ethnography 6(2): 183–204.

10.

O'Connor

(2007) The centripetal force of expression: Drawing embodied histories into glassblowing. Qualitative Sociology Review 3(3): 113–134.

11.

O'Connor E (2009) Hotshop. An ethnography of embodied knowledge in glassblowing. (Unpublished PhD Thesis). New School for Social Research, New School, USA.

12.

Polanyi

(1966) The Tacit Dimension, London: Routledge.

13.

Rhodes

(1961) An analysis of creativity. The Phi Delta Kappan 42(7): 305–310.

14.

Robinson H (2003) Dualism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Zalta EN (ed). Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/dualism/ (accessed 28 October 2013).

15.

Sandelowski

(1998) Writing a good read: Strategies for re-presenting qualitative data. Research in Nursing and Health 21: 375–382.

16.

Shreeve A (2008) Transitions: variation in tutors’ experience of practice and teaching relations in art and design. PhD Thesis, Lancaster University, UK.

17.

Suchman

(1995) Making work visible. Communications of the ACM 38(9): 56–58.

18.

Tanaka

(2011) The notion of embodied knowledge. In: Stenner

Cromby

Motzkau

Yen

Haosheng

(eds) Theoretical Psychology: Global Transformations and Challenges, Concord, Ont: Captus University Publications, pp. 149–157.

19.

Tanaka S (n.d.) Embodied Knowledge. In: Research notes on the embodied mind from phenomenological perspective. Available at: http://embodiedknowledge.blogspot.com.au/p/emobodied-knowledge.html (accessed 25 October 2013).

20.

Wielgosz

Imms

(2007) A brief history of creative research. Where to now for art education? Australian Art Education 30(1): 47–67.

21.

Zehner R, Forsyth G, Musgrave E, et al. (2009) Curriculum Development in Studio Teaching, vol. 1: STP Final Report. Australian Learning and Teaching Council, Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.