The Creative Interactions Research Group explores the powerful intersections between academic research and creative practice. Disciplines across the arts and humanities have natural affinities with art forms such as creative writing, music, theatre, and fine art; indeed, many colleagues in the school are both academics and creative practitioners. Other colleagues too, in social sciences and STEM subjects, engage with creative methods in research, engagement and impact.

As a group, we explore the ways in which engagement with creative practice can enhance academic research, and vice versa; we seek to open up new avenues and opportunities for what it means to do ‘academic research’ and what ‘research outputs’ should look like; and we advocate for making collaboration with creative practitioners more accessible and easier in practical terms within existing structures for funding and administrating research. We also serve as a network for those seeking to share or access knowledge about projects that combine academic and creative approaches or to meet potential collaborators. Our members are involved in projects across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines and creative media, from working in collaboration or co-creation with artists to carrying out their own practice-as-research projects, and we showcase these projects at our events and on our website. We hold project sharing and networking sessions, discussion groups, practical workshops, and conferences.

Although we are based in the School of Arts and Humanities, we welcome academics (and creative practitioners) from across and beyond The Open University whose interests intersect with our own.

Image credit: Steve Johnson (c) Pexels