'The boat that rocked': restoring the creative: a new journey for dual sector universities

Global research connections are an increasingly important focus for all universities and for governments seeking to position themselves as providers of high quality research, as partners in education and practice. Value is now recognised for research proposals and projects that enhance international cooperation and collaboration between individual researchers, and the opportunities for exploring uncharted research terrain and pedagogy within the creative writing discipline is encouraged under a raft of new funding schemes and through additional openings within previously limited and targeted schemes. Australian creative writing programs now have an imperative to expand our existing national and international collaborative research linkages and include areas such as children’s writing and other hitherto under-represented areas within our course offerings to ensure and, where necessary, establish valued course and research cultures -and vibrant national and international linkages in this area of creative arts and writing. Creative writing and the creative arts generally are no longer positioned at the margins of the higher education system. Increasingly our practice and expertise is valued as central to Australian economic and cultural development as the foundation for a 21st-century knowledge-based economy.