Nick Braae and Lesley Brook

The concept of “impact” has grown in currency and prevalence in New Zealand research environments over recent decades. In 2015, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) established the “joint pillars of excellence and impact for the research system.” In a 2019 position paper, MBIE updated this vision, calling for publicly-funded research to maintain “line-of-sight to impact” whereby “each researcher and institution understands their part in the bigger picture – how their activities have or could contribute, directly or indirectly, to the shared endeavour of impact for New Zealand.”

Concurrently, The Report of the PBRF Review Panel in 2018 had research impact as a recurring theme, with the authors noting “[the] persistent concerns about the ability of peer review panels to assess the quality of research engagement and impact [...] and the contributions that many researchers make to a vibrant research environment” (p. 62). They suggested that their recommended changes would “place more value on the impact of research” and “provide a more obvious pathway for staff to have the impact of their research recognised” (p. 65). Since then, the Sector Reference Group – responsible for making recommendations to the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) about the design of PBRF – has established a working definition for research impact: “a positive effect on, change, or benefit to society, culture, the environment, or the economy at any level, outside the research environment” (p. 11). This definition is close to that used by MBIE: “a change to the economy, society or environment, beyond contribution to knowledge and skills in research organisations.”

The aim of this publication is to explore how notions of “impact” operate and can be translated into a creative arts research environment.

ISBN 978-0-908846-96-2