Design and Creative Practice Platform

Design and Creative Practice Platform

Design and Creative Practice research is committed to research impact and contributing to the common good: through collaboration, innovation, imagination, and the envisaging of other possible truths and other possible futures.

We seek new ways of working together and new forms of collaborative practice; to tell new stories in new ways. We seek to be equally creative and critical, rigorous and curious, ethical and inventive.

Above all we seek to engage with and contribute to the address of complex problems in the world. Design and creative practice researchers have a crucial role to play in engaging with external stakeholders to create impact across a range of arenas from health to sustainability, from digital cultures to material innovation, from resilient cities to workplace productivity.

The research skills and competencies within this Platform can be applied to any sector or organisation, regardless of size or stage of development. We are currently refreshing our impact priority areas - please check back in the coming weeks and months for more detail.

Naomi Stead

Our Vision

Professor Naomi Stead
Director, RMIT Design and Creative Practice Platform

“We will apply an inventive, exploratory and rigorous approach to addressing real-world problems through transformative interdisciplinary research within and beyond the Design and Creative practice fields.”

Read about Naomi’s research

Creating impact

Read some examples of the Design and Creative Practice Platform’s collaborative research projects.

Writing in the Expanded Field Volume IV: Touching Feeling Writing
Writing in the Expanded Field is an industry-engaged research translation project that expands the way the arts may be encountered and known through new compositional, auditory, performed, hyperlinked, networked and other experimental digital writing approaches.
Read full case study
news_wurrunggi-biik-law-of-the-land_art-min.jpg

Case study | Weenthayoothan: towards a relational and ethical cultural framework for making public art on Country

Case study | The Weenthayoothan Thought Leadership project aims to generate discussion and produce critical frameworks addressing ethical practices for commissioning and creating public art with First Peoples on Traditional Custodian Country.

Plant garden island in residential street

Case study | Haptic Pathways

The 2019 Design Challenge was a joint initiative between the City of Melbourne and the Design & Creative Practice Platform which sought to tackle the real-world issue: How do we design for inclusive cities?

Person wearing a decorative brooch

Case study | CaTPin Conversation as Therapy

The Design Challenge was a joint initiative between Telstra and the Design & Creative Practice Platform which sought to tackle the real-world issue: How do we design for Ageing Well Futures?

Research and innovation priorities

We are committed to working with collaborators on transdisciplinary research towards social and environmental benefit. We hold that in design and creative practice, this positive change comes about not only because of what we examine, but also why we do so; not only how we undertake our research process, but also how we translate its outcomes – that impact in design and creative practice emerges in the intersecting entanglement of matters, methods, mechanisms and motivations.

MATTERS of enquiry

In which areas does transdisciplinary design and creative practice research show promise of social and environmental benefit at scale?

  • Indigenous knowledges, cultures and sovereignties
  • Health, wellbeing, and care for all
  • Climate crisis mitigation and adaptation
  • Digital and socio-technological transformations
  • Regenerative, reparative, circular and systems design
METHODS of research

How can DCP research methods contribute to trans-disciplinary research impact?

  • Practice-based, practice-led, and process-oriented methods
  • Experimental, speculative, propositional methods
  • Qualitative, experiential, subjective methods
  • Regenerative, reparative and participatory methods
  • Feminist, queer, and critical methods
MECHANISMS of impact

What modes do we use to translate, deliver, influence, and advocate for DCP research towards impact?

  • Research-led teaching, studio-based exploration, and practice-based research
  • Exhibition, broadcast, and creative works
  • Mapping, narrative, games, and story-telling
  • Material experimentation, fabrication, and making
  • Public policy, advocacy, and activism
MOTIVATIONS for engagement

Why do we do what we do and to what end?

  • Social, spatial, and environmental justice
  • Access, equity, and inclusion
  • Imagination, openness and emergence
  • Ethical responsibility and accountability
  • Amplifying impact across disciplines

 

Aligned networks and centres

Annual reports

Want to find out more about the Design and Creative Practice Platform?

Explore our Enabling Impact Platforms

aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

More information
aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.

More information