What is ‘Value’ When Aesthetics Meets Ethics Inside and Outside of The Academy

As a ‘new’ research discipline, the creative arts challenges ethics understandings with emergent research practices. In this paper we focus on a current learning and teaching project that attends to ethical know-how in creative practice research in order to address the gaps between institutional research know-how and the practices of creative practitioners in the world. Graduate creative practice researchers working in the university are required to observe the University’s Code of Conduct for Research and adhere to the guidelines provided by the National Statement, however practicing artists working in the community are not similarly constrained. Once creative practice PhD graduates leave the university, they are no longer required to gain ethics clearance for their work but use their own developed sense of ethics to make “judgment calls.” Ethical know-how is situated, contextual, and a mainstay of all professional practices in action. The aim of this paper is to examine the notion of value as it is perceived by academics, practitioners and PAR researchers in and beyond the university as this relates ethical know-how. Through an examination of a survey of PAR supervisors and RHD candidates this paper will discuss issues specific to the creative practice disciplines. This analysis enables us to raise issues specific to the creative arts disciplines and will help us prepare our graduate researchers to become ethical and innovative practitioners in the real world