Creative Writing

This paper presents initial work on the Circus Oz Living Archive, an interdisciplinary research project funded by the ARC through, in the first instance, a successful LIEF grant (as part of the larger AusStage Phase 4: Harnessing collective intelligence and pioneering new visual methodologies for innovative research into Australian live performance project led by Flinders University), and secondly, a successful Linkage proposal in partnership with Circus Oz, the Australia Council and the Performing Arts Collection of the Victorian Arts Centre Trust.

This essay seeks to explore the tensions in the paradoxical location of ‘non-fiction’ — or the de-hyphenated ‘nonfiction’, as we prefer — as a literary/artistic category, one that is built upon a negation. The opposition set up in the term by the operation of the ‘non’ upon the ‘fiction’ suggests a steadfast binary. However the friction between the two sides of this binary, and the inherent resistance embodied in the close proximity and conjoining of the two parts, accounts for much of the energy and interest in contemporary nonfiction writing.
Here we bring together etymologies and theoretical topographies to problematize the intriguing situation of ‘nonfiction now’.

Designing a 'living archive' that will enable new forms of circus performance to be realised is a complex and dynamic challenge. This paper discusses the methods and approaches used by the research team in the design of the Circus Oz Living Archive. Essential to this project has been the design of a responsive methodology that could embrace the diverse areas of knowledge and practice that have led to a design outcome that integrates the affordances of the circus with those of digital technologies.

Drawing on contemporary transition pedagogy, this paper provides a case study of a suite of transition activities piloted by The Belonging Project in collaboration with a creatively oriented academic program in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Through qualitative research, this case study demonstrates the importance of adopting Kift, Nelson and Clarke’s (2010, p. 6) notion of transition “as a process, not an event.” This paper argues that a sustained program of low cost transition activities that bridge the formal and informal curriculum fosters an essential ”sense of belonging” among first year students. It provides a successful example of an approach that embeds essential social and academic literacies while facilitating positive social, cultural, and academic transitions.

Drawing on contemporary transition pedagogy, this paper provides a case study of a suite of transition activities piloted by The Belonging Project in collaboration with a creatively oriented academic program in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University.  Through qualitative research, this case study demonstrates the importance of adopting Kift, Nelson and Clarke’s (2010, p. 6) notion of transition “as a process, not an event.” This paper argues that a sustained program of low cost transition activities that bridge the formal and informal curriculum fosters an essential ‘sense of belonging’ among first year students. It provides a successful example of an approach that embeds essential social and academic literacies while facilitating positive social, cultural, and academic transitions.

This paper presents some preliminary findings from The Belonging Project – a
longitudinal learning and teaching research project seeking to develop and define
a new approach to student engagement. In this project, the concept of belonging is
used as a tactic to engage both staff and students in the School of Media and
Communication at RMIT University as part of the project’s aim to improve the
student experience. This paper maps the way in which we use belonging – defined
in relation to the educational experience – as a point of departure to achieve this
outcome. Having established our definition of belonging and its purpose in our
project, we then discuss some key results of focus groups with students, outlining
the way in which students navigate issues of transition, interdisciplinarity, and
notions of space and place, in their relationship to university and campus life.

This paper presents some preliminary findings from The Belonging Project – a longitudinal learning and teaching research project seeking to develop and define a new approach to student engagement. In this project, the concept of belonging is used as a tactic to engage both staff and students in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University as part of the project’s aim to improve the student experience. This paper maps the way in which we use belonging – defined in relation to the educational experience – as a point of departure to achieve this outcome. Having established our definition of belonging and its purpose in our project, we then discuss some key results of focus groups with students, outlining the way in which students navigate issues of transition, interdisciplinarity, and notions of space and place, in their relationship to university and campus life.

Drawing on contemporary transition pedagogy, this paper provides a case study of a suite of
transition activities piloted by The Belonging Project in collaboration with a creatively
oriented academic program in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University.
Through qualitative research, this case study demonstrates the importance of adopting Kift,
Nelson and Clarke’s (2010, p. 6) notion of transition “as a process, not an event.” This paper
argues that a sustained program of low cost transition activities that bridge the formal and
informal curriculum fosters an essential ”sense of belonging” among first year students. It
provides a successful example of an approach that embeds essential social and academic
literacies while facilitating positive social, cultural, and academic transitions.

Abstract:
In a fluid and rapidly changing media landscape, today’s screen production students more than ever require skills in ‘critical practice’ to enable them to play leading roles in tomorrow’s screen culture and industries. It is extremely difficult to find pedagogical approaches that facilitate student learning of creative and technical production skills and at the same time place these within a critical and theoretical context that encourages the questioning of and experimentation with existing production and aesthetic paradigms. Two second-year undergraduate screen production courses at RMIT Media have introduced ‘digital dossiers’ as part of an attempt to foster a learning culture of ‘critical practice’. These digital dossiers, when embedded within a structure of process-based learning, may play an important role, we argue, in helping students identify and challenge assumptions they bring to their understanding of screen practice.

A couple sit, pace the floor, or make love on the disheveled bed. She leaves in a car, driving beyond the future. He arrives from the past, and can only stay half an hour. In Motel, three short films explore the spaces of an anonymous motel room, and the spaces of a relationship and time-travel.
Scholar/practitioners in the fields of creative arts and design are increasingly looking to locate their creative practice within a research context that leads to the development of new insights, processes and approaches. Motel was a trans- disciplinary practice-based research collaboration between a group of scholar/practitioners: three filmmakers and two interior designers from RMIT University. The project aimed to explore the innovative potential the academy affords to situate filmmaking and interior design practices outside usual industrial/commercial contexts so as to create what Geuens (2007) calls a ‘differential space’ of film production.
The Motel research group used techniques of reflective practice—reflection-in- action and reflection-on-action (Schön 1983)—to analyse shifts in practice and conceptual frameworks brought about by the constraints applied to the collaborative project. These constraints came from a set of collaborative 'rules' applied to the production process which, among other things, altered the usual hierarchical relationship between design and film, which privileges the director and his/her vision. In Motel the interior designers called a halt to the machinery of production, demanding an examination of established practices. The traditional A4 film scripts were tilted sideways and exploded, laid out alongside each other like patients in a ward, and new intimate relationships were formed. Exactly what was interior and what was exterior came into question. The space of an Australian motel room, and the space of filmmaking itself was interrogated, dissected, made new. The resulting triptych of short films is only one of the media objects to have resulted from this innovative collaboration.

This paper discusses interior as a concept used as a motivating principal in a collaborative work between three filmmakers and two interior designers. It will describe and critique the film based operations and processes used by the three writer/directors, two interior designers, sound team and cinematographer in the production of interiors within the recently shot triptych of short films titled Motel.

How might film-makers and designers from other fields collaborate to create new ways to develop screen works? What new forms of ‘script’ might be designed, and to what purpose? How might such ‘writing by design’ make a tangible difference to the film(s) produced?

This paper discusses interior as a concept used as a motivating principal in a collaborative work between filmmakers
and interior designers. This raised work substantial questions in relation to the role of ‘interior’ within each of
the films made through the collaboration. Where and how was interior defined and located? What sort of interior
relations existed within each of the screenplays? And how might these be represented relative to the various filmic
instruments of camera, set, lighting, sound, etc?’
The paper describes and critiques the film-based operations and processes used by the three writer/directors, two
interior designers, sound team and cinematographer in the production of interiors within the recent triptych of short
films titled Motel.

The Belonging Project is a four-year pilot project to investigate, design and trial an integrated program and school-based approach to enhancing the RMIT undergraduate cohort experience.

In the Belonging Project narrative model (the model), each student’s sense of identity and belonging is built incrementally across the three years of their undergraduate degree program. In first year students establish a strong disciplinary and professional
base within their program cohort. In second year, students build on this disciplinary base, becoming more aware of their place within an interdisciplinary community (a wider school cohort). In third year,
they are supported to test their disciplinary and interdisciplinary identity and knowledge by working in a wider world of intercultural and global links and experiences.

In this report detailing Phase Three Focus on the Interdisciplinary Experience (2013) we discuss the rationale for interdisciplinary learning within the broader context, how we have mapped and modelled interdisciplinary practice within the School of Media and Communication and propose a range of strategies and recommendations for embedding interdisciplinarity within student lifecycles.