The Centre for Practice as Research in the Arts emanates from Fine Art and Performing Arts at the University of Chester, where there is a shared interest and expertise in the way practice forms, advances and establishes knowledge. This is integral to both the content and form of research supported and developed by the Centre.

 The Centre provides an intellectual, creative and organisational resource for its own researchers, a developing archive and research resource and a platform for the exchange of ideas and the development of dialogue, with individuals and institutions at a local, regional, national and international level.

 By encouraging critical exploration of contemporary practice, its reception and interpretation, the Centre seeks to further the gathering body of knowledge in this area and develop innovative models of best practice in the methodology and realization of this knowledge.

By focusing on the way that disciplines are advanced by practice, the Centre fosters a robust relationship between practice and theory and hence foregrounds the interdisciplinary.  The activity of the Centre therefore extends beyond practice-based research to embrace a range of cultural activities that has at its heart the utilization of the unexpected and previously unconnected. It aims to keep debate fresh, dynamic and unhampered by boundaries making interrogation of those boundaries all the more possible.
Through individual and partnership collaborations CPaRA explores the potential of new models of engagement and understanding, the role of the experimental and the performative and new strategies of interpretation within the visual and performing arts.

The Centre comprises a diversity of media disciplines and subject expertise, however, areas of specific research interest include:

• The 'expanded field' of textile practice.
• The development of the digital artefact
• New media and collaborative practice
• Post-modern devised performance/ performance art.
• Applied/intercultural theatre
• Photography and the Gestural

The Centre provides a supportive research environment for Postgraduate students. It offers Postgraduate qualifications [Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma and Masters] in Fine Art [Department of Fine Art] and Performance Practice [Department of Performing Arts], and opportunities for MPhil/PhD study.