Western Sydney University | Research Creation Showcase

Welcome to the HCA Research Creation Showcase as part of Research Week 2020. As an online event, it features practice-led and research outcomes from School staff and postgraduate students across Design, Music, Media Arts, Digital Humanities, Writing and Humanities. As a showcase of creative practice and research, an online exhibition of creative works including posters, films, photography and music has been curated by a team drawn from the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. A suite of artists talks, curators’ presentations, panels, performances and keynotes from both academics and industry partners are featured. Additionally, the top practice-led and traditional researchers in the School will be recognised at our researcher awards ceremony.

Over most of 2020 we have been waking up to a world that is less recognisable and less familiar to what we would have expected of our current lives and livelihoods. The small joys of daily life that we have taken for granted have become precious. Our working lives have been transformed. COVID 19 means living with a global health crisis and permanent uncertainty, the full magnitude of which is only now coming into focus. As we have seen, in response to the need for greater physical isolation, many of us have found ways to retain and even re-make social connections. The creative and communication arts have been indispensable to the resilience of many in this situation. The Arts is one of the hardest hit industry sectors and has not sufficiently benefitted from the Commonwealth’s largesse. However never has the value and necessity of creative arts and the people who sustain creative practices been more evident. In a small way, maintaining the Research Creation Showcase as an online event for 2020 is an emphatic indication of the importance of the Creative Arts in a time of crisis.

Hart Cohen for the Curatorial Team