The 21st Century Music Practice research network is organising a series of practice-based ‘Research Challenges’ in which participants are invited to address research problems or questions through a practical challenge that is filmed and documented. Each Challenge will involve multiple researchers working together in teams on the same problem and multiple teams working on related problems. The aim is to generate shareable and useful new knowledge about practical problems through a collaborative and experimental research process. At the end of the challenge the researchers discuss the issues that arise and the documented process becomes an online publication/resource for others to use and learn from.
Each Challenge should involve the following:
- A clear statement of the challenge / problem they are trying to solve / question they are trying to answer and what they expect practice research can contribute to it.
- Documentation of the experiments / practice and discussion that was undertaken. This can (should?) be edited and if anything important is missing, it should be explained or re-enacted.
- Discussion by the participants to discuss the contextual and practical new knowledge that they have gained through the process.
- The Research Challenge should involve multiple researchers and can involve multiple ‘teams’ working in parallel so that the discussion involves multiple and varied perspectives and can therefore be considered peer review.
The Research Challenges can be organised and hosted at a specific higher education or research institution, in any suitable facility by a group of individuals, a scholarly or professional organisation / conference, or in a virtual form online. C21MP will work in a collaborative capacity to help organise the events and will host the outputs (and any post-event online discussion) on the website.
The first of these ‘Research Challenges’ will take place at the University of West London’s Townshend Studio – Pete Townshend’s unique collection of synthesisers and electronic musical instruments on loan to UWL. Click Here for further details