SAR Newsletter January 2026

Looking ahead: A message from SAR's Executive Board

In a world where unshakeable certainties evaporate overnight, what challenges does artistic research face? How can artistic research engage with a world order that is being turned upside down, inverting or falling apart?

When conventional or established methods fail to generate the knowledge needed to respond to societal challenges, experimental, practice-based research through the arts becomes more important than ever.

Indeed, in recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the recognition of practice-based forms of research across the arts. Higher education institutions in the arts have rapidly adapted to third-cycle education, establishing successful PhD programmes across Europe and the world, covering artistic disciplines from music and fine arts to performance, film, and new media.

However, the relevance of artistic research is also evident in heated debates around AI and machine learning, which call into question not only the technical and social divisions of creative labour as we know it, but also the very concept of creativity.

Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that the growth of artistic research is reflected at a high policy level. The new Work Programme for Horizon Europe, for example, offers many opportunities on an unprecedented scale for artistic research to develop collaborative projects in cross-disciplinary consortia.

However, many member institutions of the Society are facing unprecedented challenges with regard to support mechanisms for artistic research. Over the past few months, programmes have been closed, funding has been cut, and colleagues have been made redundant.

Advocating for artistic research in these times requires forming new alliances. SAR plays an important role in the Artistic Research Alliance, which brings together the main network organisations in higher arts education. Instead of viewing arts and culture as a luxury or bonus feature that is nice to have, the main goal in this context is to struggle for cultural diversity as both the fundament and the key to future competitiveness.

The statement by Teresa Ribera, executive Vice-President of the European Commission, at the PACESETTERS summit a few weeks ago has been very encouraging for artistic research. Strengthening the links between art, science, and policy enables us to develop, test, and disseminate approaches and methodologies that integrate the arts and creative practices across the public and private sectors, reaching far beyond the walls of academic institutions.

Artistic research offers unlimited opportunities for interventions that connect cognitive and affective forms of knowledge production. It can establish frameworks for testing and implementing these in real-world scenarios and use cases. Ultimately, it promotes artistic intelligence as an alternative to, or counter-model for, AI. SAR has played a key role in driving the new COST action, Artistic Intelligence. Its success, particularly among early career researchers, has been overwhelming.

However, SAR also faces challenges that require further development and strengthening as a member-driven network organisation representing nearly 100 art academies, music conservatoires, film schools, and universities invested in artistic research.

SAR's steady and robust growth as an organisation generates new opportunities and areas of activity, but this must be combined with a thorough analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of its very lean and flexible structures.

The Executive Board has started a six-month project to develop future scenarios for strengthening the organisation, professionalising its operations, and making SAR more resilient while considering the full range of possible risks and opportunities. The results of this project will be presented and discussed at the next General Assembly during the International Forum for Artistic Research, which will take place from 23 to 26 June 2026 in Galway.

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Call for contributions - 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research | 17th SAR Conference

Endangered conceptual worlds

23-26 June 2026, University of Galway, Ireland

Deadline for submissions: 1 March 2026

This year’s International Forum on Artistic Research explores how artistic research engages with endangered conceptual worlds and minoritised languages. It considers precarious forms of knowledge as epistemic resources and practical potentials; cultural sedimentations shared between generations and across contexts that provide unique ways of making and being in the world.

The 2026 International Forum on Artistic Research will explore and discuss artistic research in all its diverse forms as well as its untapped potentials within the dense social, cultural, and political contexts in which it operates. It provides an extraordinary opportunity to rethink the relationship between cultural heritage and creativity, while thoroughly investigating the impact of colonial and extractivist legacies on contemporary artistic practice.

Read more about the call, submission guidelines and selection criteria here: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/portal/announcement?announcement=4125613

The submission form will be open until 1 March 2026: https://sar2026.ie/form/submit-contribution

Additional support

You can access a webinar on creating an exhibition as part of an application to a SAR Conference at: 
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/shared/5d5a2109c8b2f767692b067bf6f1cc91

Subscribe to the 2026 Forum Newsletter: https://sar2026.ie/newsletter

Join us on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@sar2026

For further information, please contact the conference hosts at: creativity@universityofgalway.ie

 

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Reminder: SAR Annual Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition 2025

- Nomination Deadline 31.01.2026

It is still possible to nominate candidates for the Annual SAR Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition 2025. The prize aims to foster and encourage innovative, experimental new formats of publication and to give visibility to the qualities of artistic research artefacts. The Executive Board will appoint a jury to assess the submissions. The jury consists of one member of the SAR Executive Board, one representative from the Portal Partners and one former RC prize winner.

Learn more about the prize here: https://societyforartisticresearch.org/annual-prize-excellent-research-catalogue-exposition

See submission guidelines and selection criteria here: https://societyforartisticresearch.org/article/rc-prize-2025-call-nominations

The finalists and winner will be announced during the Award Ceremony at the International Forum on Artistic Research 2026, 17th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research, 23-26 June 2026, University of Galway, Ireland.

The winner (or one representative of a winning team) is invited to attend the ceremony and participate in the Forum free of charge in person (travel and accommodation not included).

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SAR Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research

Convocation III - A Gathering of Language-based Artistic Research

30 June – 3 July 2026
Expositur Rustenschacherallee 2-4
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Austria

Convocation — from com ‘with, together’ and vocare ‘to call’. We call for a live “coming together” of artistic researchers whose practices engage with the materiality and mediality of language: from the wordless corporeality of body language to the virtuality of digital text, from the voicing of spoken utterance to the textility of words on a page.

 

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The focus of Convocation III is on the sharing of language-based artistic research practices — accordingly contributions need to be “language-based”; “artistic research” and focused on the sharing of “practices”. Contributions can take the form of:

• Participatory Practice Sharing (duration: 30 – 90 minutes)
• Performative Practice Sharing (duration: 20 minutes max)
• Glimpses (duration: 10 mins max)

The full call with further details on the formats and how to apply can be found here: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/835089/4121506

Please make sure you carefully read the guide on ‘how to apply’, as applications which deviate from the specific format for submission will not be accepted.

Deadline for proposals: 23 February 2026 noon CET.

Notification of acceptance no later than 15 March 2026.

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Upcoming RC Webinars and Portal Partner Seminars

Intro Webinar for New Users of the RC
Friday 30.01 – 15:00-17:00 CET

This Webinar aims at inexperienced users at the RC and should be relevant for all who wants to use this platform to deviate from the standard format of academic presentations, journal articles and/or research repositories. It is also an especially useful platform for bringing together a number of researchers or students for project development, teaching and training.

In this webinar, the RC Team – by Casper Schipper and Daniele Pozzi – will
offer a basic introduction to the use of this platform and demonstrate hands-on some of its potential for documenting research processes and outcomes.

As an RC Portal Partner, this webinar is open to all staff and students at your institution.

Sign up here: https://societyforartisticresearch.org/form/sign-up-webinar-new-rc-u

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RC New Portal Partners - How to Quick Start Your Portal
Tuesday 27.01.2026, 15:00 CET

Over the last two years, we have a number of new portal partners including partners from Belgium, Iceland, Italy, Germany, Norway, and UK.

At the same time, we have observed that it takes a long time for several new portals to come online in our Portal Partner Front Page Section, and will use this seminar to provide support for local admins and other stakeholders to overcome this threshold.

With presentations by our Communication Officer Linnea Langfjord Kristensen and the Research Catalogue Management Team Casper Schipper and Daniele Pozzi, as well as the other well experienced members of RC Monitoring Group, this will be a hands-on session for new portals, where we will focus on how partners can quickly get their RC portal up and running. We will discuss communication strategies, demonstrate options for how to design your portal landing page and how to handle basic workflows for content submissions within the portal.

We will present examples of how other portals have used the possibilities of the RC to present existing research projects and previous/upcoming events and how to showcase them in your portal. Finally, we will also introduce a newly developed package of onboarding support for new portals.
Certainly, all other portals are also very welcome to attend this session.

Thematic Seminars are for Portal Partners only. Registration link and more information is shared on Basecamp.

Learn more about Portal Partnerships here: https://societyforartisticresearch.org/portal-partners