Next steps for practice research: PR Voices and SPARKLE projects

(This was originally posted by JISC’s Caroline Ingram – you can see the original post here)

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At (JISC’s) latest Digital Research Community monthly discussion meeting we heard from two recently funded AHRC projects aiming to improve access to and preservation of practice research outputs.

Shared goals

Across the two projects the shared goal is to establish a national shared digital space for storage, access, analysis and preservation of practice research. For too long, practice researchers have been trying to meaningfully present contributions to knowledge made through practice without having a suitable infrastructure. The two projects are complementary even though they have the same shared goal.

Community of practice creation

At the University of Westminster, Jenny Evans is leading on PR voices. The project will create a practice research community of practice, bringing together an intersectional community that spans all stakeholder groups. The team will build on existing software and standards, and encourage people to get engaged in the development. The community will act as critical friends.

At the University of Leeds, Tom Jackson is leading the SPARKLE (sustaining practice assets for research, knowledge, learning and engagement) project, focussed on preservation of all practice research assets. They will be trying to answer how a data repository for practice research might meaningfully represent any iterative phase of experimentation and play during the development of artefacts.

Transferability and flexibility

A lively discussion followed the presentations about the projects. Members of the group asked about transferability of the findings from the projects to other infrastructures and how the process of creation will be captured. Everyone agreed there will be a need for flexibility in the development of standards. The next researcher will always say ‘how is my thing going to fit in there?!’

Get involved

Jenny and Tom are currently in the set up phase for their projects, and encouraged anyone from the research community to get in touch if interested t.jackson@leeds.ac.uk or J.Evans2@westminster.ac.uk as they are both keen to make new connections. If you’d like to read more detail about the session see the slides and shared notes.