The Strategic Partnership project "Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates" will produce innovative intellectual outputs that are ready to use for all of those involved in doctoral supervision across all art disciplines. It will lay the theoretical groundwork and also develop a prototype training module for supervisors that is tailor-made for implementation in art universities. “Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates” not only is a project run and developed in a transnational co-operation setting, it also strongly emphasizes the implementation of joint training modules: It’s beyond question, artistic research is a highly international endeavour. "Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates" aims to improve doctoral education at art universities. It addresses doctoral supervision as the core component in doctoral education, proposing a balanced set of measures to improve supervision on a practical level (addressing institutions and students), a strategic level (addressing membership organisations), and on an advocacy level (addressing stakeholders and policy makers). The members of the project consortium, led by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, come from all artistic fields (fine arts, media arts, performative arts, architecture and design, music, art theory) ensuring a transnational and transdisciplinary perspective of supervision in artistic research. The strategic partnership includes various European institutions in order to take into account a comprehensive range of national and local frameworks, and it includes members from different types of art universities, ensuring the validity of the project findings for all institutional contexts. The project proposes to closely investigate six areas in which tools and measures will be created to advance doctoral supervision in artistic research: (1) defining supervision (supervision vs. other concepts like mentoring, coaching, etc.); (2) ethical dimensions in supervision; (3) new competencies for supervisors; (4) professional education for supervisors (training); (5) the art of giving feedback in artistic research (transdisciplinarity); (6) the role of the research environment for supervision. The four intellectual outputs dealing with these issues take on the formats of mind maps, handbooks, online tool kits, briefing scenarios, a training concept as well as a comprehensive final publication on "Undoing Supervision| A Non-normative Guide on Key Issues in Supervising Artistic Research Doctorates", which will document and summarise all project findings in the format of an e-book with interactive elements. In addition to these outputs, the project will develop training tools and modules to create an original and tailor-made training activity for the field of artistic research. This training activity will account for the fact that state-of-the-art doctoral supervision needs to be implemented in a triangular way, establishing a process that includes student, supervisor, and institutional decision makers. Therefore, the training will address these three target groups and devise a training method that will advance the skills of all three actors involved. The project will organise three multiplier events, the first one is carried out in collaboration with an international stakeholder event organised by ELIA, the ELIA Academy. This cooperation will ascertain the widest possible broad dissemination of results and interaction of the strategic partnership consortium with students, supervisors, university leaders, stakeholders from the higher arts education sector, and policy makers. The second multiplier event addresses the target group of supervisors, beyond the partner institutions. The third and final multiplier event will present the project results to a broad audience, and encourage in particular the debate with representatives from other fields and disciplines. The embeddedness of the consortium members in Europe-wide network organisations ensures the sustainability of the project and the achievement of high-quality results.
Approximately 280 institutions around the world offer third-cycle research degrees in the arts. The legal frameworks and organisational structures of that institutions vary widely, as well as the doctoral programmes and degrees they offer. Yet, they share the same vision, namely to realise doctoral programmes that enable candidates to make an original contribution to their discipline and to advance the field of artistic research by further developing themselves as both artists and researchers. In 2016 The European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA) adopted the Florence Principles on the Doctorate in the Arts, a position paper that establishes a point of reference for doctoral education in artistic research. The paper identifies supervision as a key issue for facilitating good doctoral education and encourages institutions to establish a good supervision culture. Which in the quite young field of artistic research is a challenge as supervision does not have the same tradition it has in most other disciplines and – at the same time – a great opportunity. The Strategic Partnership Project “Advancing Supervision for Artistic Research Doctorates” has addressed doctoral supervision as the core component in doctoral education, proposing a balanced set of approaches and tools to improve supervision on both a strategic and a practical level. Having been set up as a strategic partnership project within the European Union’s ERASMUS + funding scheme, the project consortium represents different types of higher art education institutions situated in a comprehensive range of national and local frameworks, ensuring the transnational and transdiciplinary perspective on the topic. The project has very consciously approached the field of artistic research (doctorates) as braodly as possible instead of discussing individual disciplines in detail. Furthermore, the project has paid special attention to the triangular nature of doctoral supervision by emphasizing the (many) relationship(s) between doctoral candidate, supervisor and institution respectively university leaders and professionals in doctoral education responsible for the implementation of doctoral programmes. All outcomes have been developed in a way that they can be used by all three actors and at different stages of the supervision process. The project has been implemented in three phases: (Phase_1) In “Setting the Framework” the challenges, potentials and boundaries of doctoral supervision have been explored, aiming to come up with a working tool that takes the format of a mindmap to encourage the discussion about what supervision is – and what it is not. The second work package has dealt with questions related to the ethical and social values and conditions of art and research as well as the ethical and social responsibility of the artist and researcher. (Phase_2) During “Distinguishing the Actors” the roles and competencies of the supervisors have been elaborated and it has been shown that doctoral supervision touches on a wide range of human interactions and relationships. Doctoral supervision navigates scholarly frameworks and institutional rules and manages complex power relations as well as human emotions. An online interactive resource has been developed that enables users to explore different doctoral supervision frameworks and scenarios. (Phase_3) The ability to share knowledge is crucial for the further development of artistic research as such, nurturing a feedback and peer culture in doctoral programmes is therefore essential. “Improving Practices” has explored and analysed artistic feedback practices in doctoral supervision and the shifting boundaries in supervisory relationships that may take place when peer learning comes to the fore. The final book presents the project resources and outcomes in a compact and ready-to-use format for advancing supervision practices and strategies in diverse contexts. All outputs and resources can be accessed via the project website: https://advancingsupervision.eu