Six new research Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts have been announced by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Each Fellowship is worth over £200,000 and these awards are intended to support artists - whether visual artists, performers, musicians, creative writers, poets, and other producers of original creative work - as research fellows within a research environment.

Competition for these awards is fierce with over fifty applications for the scheme this year. The successful artists have all had to demonstrate that they have a track record in their discipline at national or international level to secure funding.

Fellowships can be held for either 2 or 3 years full time, or for five years at either 0.4 or 0.6 FTE.

The scheme contributes to one of the AHRC’s key priorities, which is to support research in the creative and performing arts where practice is integral.

The 2009 awards are:

Mr H Barker       £245,315.00
School of Performance Arts, University of Exeter
Plethora and Bare Sufficiency:a new practice for a tragic theatre
Panel(s):

Mr JA Crouch     £212,226.00
School of Humanities, University of Southampton
"The Perfection of Talent": The Cello as Chordal Accompanist in Simple Recitative, 1750 - 1850.
Panel(s):

Mr J Maynard Smith        £230,258.00
Faculty, Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
Telematic Theatres: usable technologies and the dramaturgies of global space
Panel(s):

Ms TM O'Connor             £261,793.00
School of Arts, Roehampton University
In Conversation: exchange and relation in live art and performance processes.
Panel(s):

Mr CF Redgate   £245,259.00
Research, Royal Academy of Music
21st-Century Oboe: Re-activating interactions between composers, performers and makers
Panel(s):

Miss N Watson    £228,209.00
Faculty, Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
The Life and Death of Objects and Puppets: Immanence, Intervention, Presence and Absence
Panel(s):

Total value of awards:   £1,423,060.00

END

Media Contact: Jake Gilmore, Communications Manager, Tel: 0797 099 4586.

Editors Notes

Arts & Humanities Research Council: Each year the AHRC provides approximately £102 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. Arts and humanities researchers constitute over a quarter of all research-active staff in the higher education sector. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.

The Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts scheme supports artists as research fellows within a higher education environment. The scheme contributes to one of the AHRC’s key priorities, which is to support research in the creative and performing arts where practice is integral. The aims of the Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts scheme are:

• to support artists who have not had the opportunity to carry out a significant programme of research at post-doctoral level within a research environment, and who would benefit from time to pursue a sustained programme of high quality practice-led research within the creative and performing arts. The artist’s own creative/performance practice must be integral to that research
• to enable artists to develop their research careers by working in a research environment, and by improving their research skills, including developing their knowledge and understanding of advanced research methods
• to encourage and nurture the development of new or existing research environments and cultures within the host organisation through supporting the work of individual artists
• to maximise the value of the creative and performing arts by promoting their dissemination of research outcomes and where appropriate, to facilitate the knowledge transfer of those outcomes, both to the research community and to other contexts where they will make a difference. The choice of the host institution can happen in two ways. The artist can approach an institution they consider to be an appropriate place to carry out the research they have in mind, or an institution can approach an artist if it has a particular programme of research that it wishes to see undertaken.