Navigating the unknown: the creative process in contemporary performing arts

As Head of ResCen, I am the principal architect behind this collection of writings, including my own chapter, "The Butterfly Unpinned", that brings together ResCen artists' and others' reflections on creative process as research, within the wider arts-professional economy. The work aims to record discursive engagement with creative enquiry, pursued by the stable group of ResCen researcher-practitioners, and to push this enquiry forward, targeting other audiences, while retaining its practitioner-specific integrity. The project was part-funded by NESTA, and the publication marks a significant publishing undertaking in its inclusion of a range of visual, compositional and documentational registers which expand the notion and the function of the book. In 'The butterfly unpinned', I consider the role of intuition in the creative process while asking questions about accepted paradigms of understanding in Higher Education - particularly where these are focused on the application of verbal constructs to the domain of art making. The volume more generally attempts to exploit visual and compositional registers and mixed-mode representations, in such a way as to account for expert-practitioner creative processes (as distinct from their product).