Research projects

Artisanal Making and the Future of Small-Scale Local Production

This Australian Research Council Discovery Project will provide both policy-makers and artisanal industries with invaluable insights into the cultural values underpinning the marketplace for small-scale Australian producers, and how this can be leveraged to enable future growth.

Critically Creative Reading and Writing Collective

The Critically Creative (CCRWC) is a reading group with a difference. We meet monthly to discuss a set text regarding creative research, and as well as talking, we explore ideas through creative practices such as writing and sketching. We are both “creatively critical” and “critically creative”.

Documentary Film Society

Documentary Film Society is a forum dedicated to screening and building a community of practice around rare, experimental and contemporary documentary and nonfiction films.

Expanded Storytelling Lab XSL

The Expanded Storytelling Lab (XSL) investigates the use of a range of emerging media platforms, technologies, and formats to create non-traditional, immersive and/or multi-dimensional narrative experiences.

Film Festivals Post-Covid

A study on the impact of COVID-19 on film festival experiences.

Immerse: Virtual Reality Journalism

A virtual reality content editing tool and a mobile phone application for dissemination called 'Immerse'.

Indigenous visual narratives: Using haptic approaches to further decolonisation

An ongoing collaboration with Associate Prof Magdalena Zolkos at the University of Jyväskyla. This collaboration involves the investigation visual narratives, including graphic novels (especially creative non-fiction) animated documentary and alternate reality games by indigenous artists.

Invisible Walls: Poetry as a Doorway to Intercultural Understanding

Australia and Korea are both grappling with creative isolation due to COVID-19 flying restrictions. ‘Invisible Walls’ redresses a need for cultural and artistic connection, using poetry, letters, and video-conferencing to facilitate fully online intercultural exchanges between Australian and Korean poets.

Keeping creative

Assessing the impact of the C-19 emergency on the art and cultural sector, and responses to it by governments, cultural agencies and the sector.

Mentor=Mentee: The Longitudinal Impact of Mentoring on Creative Careers

A research-informed evaluation of Guildhouse’s mentorship programs identifying the impact of mentorships on artistic careers over time.

Musical Automation in the Australian Games Industry

The automation of art is currently dominating headlines. While much of the focus has been on the automation of design and text-based communication, musical automation is still a relatively unknown space, with most of the R&D in this area having been developed by the film industry.

Reset: art and culture

This programme of events involves art and culture practitioners, policymakers and academics from all three universities in South Australia.

South Australian music industry health check 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the South Australian music sector in multiple ways and continues to impact the industry’s ability to function. This research project draws on qualitative data gained from participant interviews with multiple stakeholders in the SA music industry to gain on-the-ground insights into the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the sector.

The value of craft skills to the future of making in Australia

A 2019-2022 Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP190100349) will identify ways in which the making skills required to sustain and grow future manufacturing and repair in Australia can be maintained and extended.

Transformative Repair

This Australian Research Council funded Linkage project, led by UniSA Enterprise Fellow Dr Guy Keulemans in partnership with JamFactory and the Australian Design Centre, explores the creative repair and reuse of consumer products as a service provided by designers, craftspeople and visual arts professionals. Image: Plan-o-spider chairs from Sally Dan Cuthbert. Photo: Traianos Pakioufakis.

Transnational Selves: French Narratives of Migration to Australia

Explores how migrating subjects write their identity, how migrants represent the self between nations and between languages, and how Australia is viewed through the prism of another language.

UNESCO and the Making of Global Cultural Policy: Culture, Economy, Development

This project aims to influence global cultural policy and governance and the way 'actors' like UNESCO shape local policy and practice.

Urban Cultural Policy and the Changing Dynamics of Cultural Production

This project aims to identify new directions for urban cultural policy by conducting international comparative research around the emerging nexus between the cultural industries and manufacturing.

Writing, Gender and the Natural World

This project explores how writing about the environment manifests in Australia. In particular, it investigates how gender inflects responses to and representations of the natural world. Nine writers speak about the importance of our environment at a time of climate and extinction crises across six hybrid/live events.