Primarily aimed at high-level practitioners from a wide cross-section of the arts community who wish to extend their independent capacity to operate in an increasingly multi-art form and technologically-based profession. Students may be required to research, devise and produce new works of art, or develop new approaches to arts practice and/or its critical and social contexts and meaning (depending on the specific research project entailed). It is expected that any such arts practice will be a contemporary expression leading towards new insights in the selected field of study. The work will be exploratory, frequently based around emerging methodologies of arts research, leading usually to a performance, presentation, exhibition or publication of significance. Specifically, the course aims to create opportunities for innovation and creativity in the arts; use the resources of the Academy to create leadership opportunities for people who can offer the arts informed direction, and identifiable and marketable skills, to advance the Australian cultural environment into the next decade; provide opportunities for people from diverse ethnic and creative arts backgrounds to synthesize disparate artistic skills to produce innovative and creative outcomes for the arts industry; and build upon and extend the traditions and conventions of the student's earlier training to create new knowledge for the arts. Course Learning Outcomes Apply and defend innovative practices and abstract ideas which contribute to problem solving or the advancement of professional knowledge and/or practice in Performing Arts. Communicate knowledge and research results within performing arts through disciplinary mediums and in written and oral articulations to specialist and non-specialist audiences. Critically consider and apply emergent practices, including sustainability and global perspectives, relevant to the performing arts. Demonstrate advanced knowledge of research principles and methods and design and evaluate appropriate methodologies to conduct learning and research in the practices of the performing arts. Demonstrate cross-cultural awareness and reflect upon alternative knowledge formations, including indigenous cultural competence as applicable to research design, research methods and/or professional practice in performing arts. Demonstrate specialist knowledge and understanding of theory, practice and recent developments within performing arts. Demonstrate the ability to work independently and collaboratively, relevant to research or artistic practices to produce assessable outcomes. Design, plan applies and evaluates a substantial piece of research, with ethical accountability, which contributes to the practice of performing arts. Independently integrate theoretical and technical knowledge to contribute to the development of conceptual understanding and practice in performing arts. Investigate, analyze and synthesize complex concepts and problems in the performing arts discipline, through the application of advanced technology, information and numeracy literacy. Reflect critically on theory in and about practice in the contexts of the performing arts.