A Way with Words: documenting embodied practice in screen media

The paper offers some reflections arising from the experience of editing the Journal of Media Practice. These centre on the role of writing as the prime means of constructing creative, critical and research practices within the academy. The Journal was established for largely pragmatic reasons centred on the perceived need to establish a stronger presence and voice for media practitioners in the academy. Since that time, however, radically re-determined academic, political, institutional, technological and funding regimes have created a context that challenges the role and form of a practice-centred ‘journal’ in an evolving digital environment. The paper raises some points that centre on the nature of writing about practice in contexts of teaching, professional practice and, as a principle focus, practice / research. These include: - approaches to writing about teaching and professional practice; - writing that constructs film and programme-making practices (in terms of both process and ‘outcome’) as research, with reference to ... - ...writing that conforms practice to critical / theoretical discourse in the humanities as the means of determining the substantive value of creative practice in a research context ... - ... and asking whether creative practice has passed the moment of its encounter with critical theory. It also considers: - forms of re-creational writing about embodied practice in screen media ... … ... and other ways in which practice / research may be constituted through a performative metatext (in which writing may or may not play a part). Finally it speculates on future direction and media form(s) of a ‘journal’ of media practice in these contexts.