Centre Overview | Research Approach | Teaching | Centre Impact | Our Networks, Projects & People

Centre Overview 

The Centre for Creative Practice is a multi-disciplinary artistic research Centre, promoting practice-based research in the creative industries. Our Centre members come from disciplines as diverse as music, theatre and performance, filmmaking, photography, advertising, creative writing, journalism, design and future technologies. We believe that interdisciplinarity, collaborative approaches to research and a strong creative imagination are central to understanding the world around us, communicating and negotiating its complexity in new and different ways. 

Research Approach

Collaboration and interdisciplinarity lie at the heart of our research approach. As Albert Einstein said, ‘To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in society’. This implies that there is no one research approach; rather our research approaches arise from the questions we are asking. What unifies our various creative, artistic, practice-based research approaches is our drive to understand ourselves, our place in society and a desire to make the world a better place to live in. Using media like film, music, digital cultures, computing, mixed reality, AI, VR and AR to name but a few, many of our researchers collaborate with social scientists, health and social work researchers, ecologists and climate change activists. By doing so, we aim to generate new knowledge, bringing a fresh approach to how we understand our world, its history, its heritage and most importantly, its future direction. 

Teaching 

Most of our Centre members are involved in teaching practice-based subjects. Our research informs our teaching and conversely, our teaching throws up research questions that we find interesting to investigate. Our staff are involved in both undergraduate and post-graduate delivery in areas like music, theatre and performance, filmmaking, photography, advertising, creative writing, journalism, design and future technologies. We also encourage practitioners, those working in industry and other students interested in practice-based, artistic research to pursue their Masters’ by Research or PhD. 

Centre Impact

We are immensely proud of the impact we have on a local, national and international level. Our researchers engage with their communities in a deep and meaningful way, often being harbingers of new ways of working, thinking and contributing to policy matters. We collaborate with a range of external partners from SME artists and production companies to city and district councils through to festivals like the Edinburgh international Film Festival, Edinburgh Book Festival and Edinburgh International TV Festival. Internationally, we have presented at UN fora, work with UNESCO Cities of Film Network, Pacific Community Filmmaking Consortium and are establishing collaborative research partnerships with Universities like Flinders in Adelaide, Australia. Mentoring, collaborating, networking, partnership-creation with industry and other academic partners outside the University, knowledge exchange and external engagement, are some of the other ways we create impact on our communities. 
British Council Indonesia Project: Repurposing Oceanic Plastic Waste
Our Networks, Projects & People
Upcoming Events

Guest Lecture by Christine Lang - 31st January '24
Venue: F12 - Merchistin Campus - Time: 13.30 - 15.30

Creative Practice Members

Find out who is involved in the Centre for Creative Practice.