IPCRES is a new research centre developed by the Faculty of Art & Design at Swansea Metropolitan University, commencing October 2009.

The Centre will be project based consisting of two projects per semester, starting at first with groups of students from across the University bidding to take part via the articulation of possible areas of enquiry. It aims to create a sense of fun alongside serious cultural inquiry through the purposeful setting up of events and situations based around experimental art practices, both material and non-material. It will have the aspect of quasi-organisations such as the Situationist International, and promote its own playful obscure mystery as it conducts its experiments into aspects of everyday life, seen through the optics of the visual arts, literature, performance, design etc. The aims are to engage the students in the thrill of real artistic experiment and research, to promote process and enquiry, to present findings in innovative ways, and to discover new relationships between object and concept, word and image and art and life. Outcomes will be presented as ‘files', which will hopefully be publishable, along with reports and artefacts to be presented as intellectual enigmas. Suitable individuals will be engaged on occasion to start and finish the process and once established we will be seeking inter-university collaborations, as well as inviting internationally recognised artists and interesting early career artists to work with the centre.

The research centre will be organized and run by Dr. Paul Jeff and a PhD research student, who together will set the tone, atmosphere, and parameters of the work to be carried out. These staff officers will set an area of enquiry, which can offer wide-ranging stimulus for the student body and/or any external applicants or invitees who present their project ideas.

At its core IPCRES will be an educational facility servicing first the University but also operating as a research centre out of SMU, in collaboration with other institutions and individuals, with the express purpose of developing and disseminating research in durational and event based practices, both material and non-material.

One of the major educational aims is to allow and promote creative thinking in the arts and life itself. Students will learn that systems never hold all the answers and that the individual often has more potential than they are sometimes allowed to show. By allowing the imagination to take creative control of any situation whether found or constructed false boundaries are often broken down, and the individual gains the ability to problem solve in a much more creative and perhaps ultimately productive way.