ABSTRACT
This chapter reports on a writing strategy – The Gathering Method – developed in the Curtin School of Design and Art with a selection of PhD, Masters and Honours research students – that seeks to address the writing anomalies we have observed in art and design students. Informed by the contemporary social phenomenon of ‘Gatherings’, this chapter outlines the development of a performative, non-threatening, supportive and peer-managed forum that has resulted in positive change in the way students think about academic enquiry and writing. Encouraging students to play with words and act out ideas that evolve out of creative practice, this chapter discusses how this socially informed method facilitates the development of a rich exegetical dialogue between the ‘learned knowledge’ of theory and the ‘tacit knowledge’ of creative practice.
