BAFTSS Practice Research SIG Event 

Filmmaking in the Academy: Practice/Theory Interventions 

Date: Friday 12 June

Venue: UWE’s City Campus at Arnolfini – enter Bush House via Prince St (TBC).

THIS EVENT WAS CANCELLED DUE TO COVID – but four online research seminars took place instead which you can find on the main Research page.

This one-day symposium is a celebration of filmmaking in the academy, where practice researchers screen their work and the research dimensions are critically explored with a mixed panel of established, early career and PGR researchers from both practice and traditional film studies backgrounds. We invite practitioners to submit films and moving image works readily available to view online (can be password protected), together with a 300-word research statement and links to supporting documentation, if applicable (echoing REF guidelines for practice research).

The organisers will then make selected work available to an invited panel of respondents: Dr Jacqueline Maingard (Co-convener of the Screen Research Cluster, University of Bristol), Professor Andrew Spicer (Professor of Cultural Production, UWE Bristol and UoA 34 Lead) and Professor Phil Powrie (Professor of Cinema Studies, University of Surrey), who are all interested in engaging critically with practice research from different disciplines.

At the event the work will be screened with a brief presentation, followed by peer review, which will be performed live at the event in an informal, friendly and constructive environment. Together with the filmmakers, and the audience, the panel will aim to probe the Significance, Rigour and Originality and contribution to new knowledge of the presented works from a variety of theoretical frameworks, including textual analysis, screen industries and genre studies – with a view to supporting the contributors in honing the way in which they articulate their practice as research for REF2021 and beyond.

Practice work, statements and the resulting conversations could be written up and submitted as a strand to BAFTSS online journal Open Screens.

The aims of the event are threefold:

  1. to provide a supportive space to communicate the value of practice research to a mixed audience of practice and non-practice researchers in preparation for REF21
  2. to act as a pilot for a potential strand at future BAFTSS Annual Conferences to avoid practice speaking only to practice
  3. to encourage colleagues to submit practice for consideration by the journal.

Key Dates:

Deadline for submissions: 27 March 2020

Notification: 1 May

Registration: 22 May 2020

Event: Friday 12 June 2020

Please email charlotte.crofts@uwe.ac.uk by 27 March 2020 with “BAFTSS Practice SIG Event” in the subject. Please see details on Submission Guidelines below. We very much look forward to receiving your submissions.

Charlotte Crofts (Associate Professor, Filmmaking, UWE Bristol, BAFTSS Practice Research SIG convenor)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

 

Please submit a Word .doc or .pdf using the following headings:

  1. Vimeo URL
  2. Vimeo Password if needed
  3. 300-word Statement
  4. Other contextual information (previously called a ‘portfolio’). Both the item and the contextual information may include moving image, sonic, visual or other digital media or written text, as appropriate, to enable the panel to access the research dimensions of the work and to assess its significance, originality and rigour. The 300-word statement should be used to indicate what is the output and what is the contextual information.

For REF2014, the 300-word statement was particularly important for practice-based research, and for REF21 the 300-word statements are expected to be equally essential to setting out the basis and merits of the research, using the 300 words to explain succinctly how the output met the criteria against which REF outputs are judged: originality, significance and rigour.

According to the Guidance on Submissions 2019/0 (https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications/guidance-on-submissions-201901/) “For any submitted outputs where the research content and/or process is not evident from the output, such as non-text outputs or teaching materials, submissions should include a statement which identifies the research questions, methodology and means of dissemination (maximum 300 words).  The 300-word statement should only include “Factual information about the research questions, methodology or means of dissemination, where these are not described within the output itself. This applies to practice-based outputs, for example an exhibition, performance or artefact”.

According to Panel Criteria and Working Methods (https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications/panel-criteria-and-working-methods-201902/: ”The entirety of the material submitted (the output and the 300-word statement where provided) should provide the panel with coherent evidence of the research dimensions of the work in terms of:

  • the research process – the question and/or issues being explored, the process of discovery, methods and/or methodologies, the creative and/or intellectual context or literature review upon which the work draws, or challenges or critiques
  • the research insights – the findings, discoveries or creative outcomes of that process
  • the dissemination – how and where the insights or discoveries were ‘effectively shared’. This needs to satisfy the REF requirements around the dates at which work first entered the public domain (‘Guidance on submissions’, paragraph 205.b.). The principle that no output will be privileged or disadvantaged on the basis of the publisher, where it is published or the medium of its publication (paragraph 217), will also apply in relation to the broad range of modes through which practice outputs enter the public domain.”

 

Below is how the REF defines each of the criteria used for judging outputs:

Originality – A creative/intellectual advance that makes an important and innovative contribution to understanding and knowledge. This may include:

  • substantive empirical findings
  • new arguments, interpretations or insights
  • imaginative scope
  • assembling of information in an innovative way
  • development of new theoretical frameworks and conceptual models
  • innovative methodologies and/or new forms of expression

Significance – The enhancement of,

  • knowledge
  • thinking
  • understanding
  • and/or practice

Rigour – intellectual coherence

  • methodological precision and analytical power
  • accuracy and depth of scholarship
  • awareness of and appropriate engagement with other relevant work

This event is supported by the British Association of Film and Television Studies (BAFTSS) and the Moving Image Research Group (MIRGE), UWE Bristol.