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This methodological paper connects posthuman conceptualizations of voice with artistic research and examines whether it opens toward different registers and levels of embodied and aesthetic forms of knowing that cut across normative accounts of what it means to know. We start from what Patti Lather calls 'a praxis of stuck places' and ask how to give voice to experiences such as chronic illness and pain, while at the same time disrupting representational forms of illness and pain. To investigate this, we first critically engage with the popular genre of the health diary and its representational form. Secondly, we explore how Lisa A. Mazzei concept of 'voice without subject' can support us in disrupting the normative and representational production of voice, while working with a failing voice. Finally, we analyze the sound installation, A Borrowed Diary —made by M. Broeckmeyer, and explore how it opens up alternative approaches to voice and chronic pain. We will argue that making 'voice without subject' work, touch, and resonate can impact the lives of people who often remain unheard, in that it acknowledges experiences and expressions that are mostly not validated. Creating with 'voice without subject' makes tangible how personal experiences, however, temporarily, contribute to the bigger picture of how we look at and listen to people with illnesses and/or disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Showcasing plays a fundamental role in arts education programmes. This paper presents an approach to research scenarios which explore 'event-centred' projects. Drawing on arts-based methodologies and research projects, this approach could be extended to the study of seasonal rituals, festivals and other types of organisational settings in which creative work culminates in some type of public display. This paper defines the key features of this method, which draw on Paul Willis' concept of 'grounded aesthetics' and Sarah Pink's work on the sensorial and embodied experience. I discuss the experimentation with various digital media and documentation strategies which adopt a participatory and collaborative perspective. I focus on how the sensorial, multimodal and collaborative approaches to ethnography are used within event-centred research projects which complement more 'traditional' ethnographic approaches. Finally, this paper offers a methodological contribution regarding how to unpack the 'grounded aesthetics' of specific contexts and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research that 'grows apart' from its original design and proposal is not uncommon, especially when involving participatory and creative methods. However, the disconnect between research intentions and research realization is seldom probed for the insights offered; this paper addresses this gap. Taking up the conceptual lens of research imaginaries, this paper dives into the tensions and discoveries experienced in between the design and the practice of a multi-site participatory research project. The study involved two groups of young people, in two cities in two countries, with a focus on digital lives. In a commitment to collaboration with artists, senior researchers, research assistants, and young people in community spaces, a complex project emerged. This paper describes the tensions and possibilities of an emergent methodology and in doing so argues for increased attention to the movement of research designs; rather than the adherence to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents one aspect of a sociocultural micro-ethnographic study examining how 11- and 12-year-old children formulate meanings when working with an artist in a contemporary art gallery. My primary focus is an examination of methodological contributions emerging from an imaginative coding and analysis of children's art. Ninety-nine artworks were created in collaboration with the artist and were organised and interpreted using a constructionist interviewing coding scheme. This unorthodox approach to visual analysis unearthed information that oral accounts cannot provide alone revealing meanings which would otherwise remain dormant. By intuitively applying the coding framework I expose how participants' meanings are negotiated by appropriating and re-organising cultural concepts into personalised narratives. As such, artworks reveal participants' desires, interpretations and intentions, operating as agentic cultural producers as well as unconsciously reproducing visual epistemologies ubiquitous in Western cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on the complex and sometimes contradictory effects of generating films with and about young people who have experienced homelessness, through participatory research. Drawing on two projects – one in Ottawa, Canada, and the other in Manchester, UK – we scrutinise two key aspects of participatory research projects that use film: first, how to appropriately communicate the complexity of already-stigmatised lives to different publics, and second, which publics we prioritise, and how this shapes the stories that are told. Through a theoretical framework that combines Pierre Bourdieu's account of authorised language with Arthur Frank's socio-narratology, we analyse the potential for generating justice versus reproducing symbolic violence through participatory research and film with homeless young people. In particular, we scrutinise the distinct role played by what we are calling first, second and third publics – each with their own level of distance and relationship to the participatory research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and counter-disciplinarity are the hallmark of cultural studies and qualitative research, as scholars over the past three decades have discussed through extensive self-reflexive inquiry into their own unstable and ever-shifting methods (Denzin and Lincoln, 2018; Dicks et al., 2006: 78; Grossberg, 2010). Building on the interdisciplinary thought of Jacques Rancière and Caroline Levine on the one hand and traditions of participatory action research and activist anthropology on the other, we bring the methods conversation forward by shifting the focus from disciplines to forms and by making a case for aesthetic practice as qualitative research process. In this paper, the question of methods is approached through the action-based Cartonera Publishing Project with editoriales cartoneras in Latin America – community publishers who make low-cost books out of materials recovered from the street in the attempt to democratise and decolonise literary/artistic production – and specifically through our process-oriented, collaborative work with four cartonera publishers in Brazil and Mexico. Guided by the multiple forms of cartonera knowledge production, which are rooted not in academic research but rather in aesthetic practice and community relations, we offer an innovative 'trans-formal' methodological framework, which opens up new pathways for practitioners and researchers to work, think and act across social, cultural and aesthetic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a research project carried out with participatory methodology in which the collaborative creation of an audiovisual has been the driving element of a complex process of inquiry about prison reality. The objective of the project is to describe, reveal and denounce how conjugal and family visits to inmates in prison take place. We have employed artistic co-creation and media literacy as facilitators of the participation of social groups without a voice. The project is structured as a qualitative case study. The participating group consists of six men in a Centre for Social Integration, the social worker and three researchers. The results discuss the possibilities offered by art as a viable social transformative practice. Likewise, the possibilities of art as social activism and as a facilitator of new forms of knowledge accessible to all are analysed. Finally, as a device of digital artivism, the audiovisual will be disseminated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to literature on live methods and specifically to the idea of research as an informed provocation of experience in the context of growing methodological experimentation in social science research. The liveness of our method sits with our close attention to inquiry as encompassing of human/non-human relational encounters that, drawing upon a materialism of lively matter, come together in the form of material thinking. We sought to foster a creative encounter between people with experience of self-harm and published narratives about self-harm in the light of 'provoked perplexity'. We suggest that deliberately 'provoking perplexity' in creative and live methodologies, opens up possibilities for inquiry into the unimaginable and unthinkable. Participating in a series of collaborative, creative (visual art) response workshops, our participants troubled the idea of meaning as neat and coherent, linear and final, showing instead how it dwells precisely in the very process of inquiring by means of creative making that constitutes practice as research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity involves examining one's background and perspectives in relation to the research topic, participants, and the processes and practices of research. Building on the growing field of utilizing arts-based practices in teaching qualitative research, in this article we examine how one doctoral student's engagement with drawing and painting within and beyond a qualitative research class supported her developing reflexivity. Guided by an interactional ethnographic perspective, we conducted domain, taxonomic, and discourse analyses of the student's art, reflection journals, video of a class presentation, and retrospective reflections she wrote three years later. Through these analyses we make visible that reflexivity through art creates potentials for understanding and transcending one's background to create new opportunities for learning about self and research. We also argue that deepening reflexivity requires a commitment to engage in the discomforts of learning in order to develop new ways of thinking and researching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the iSquare protocol, a novel application of the draw-and-write technique. The protocol was developed in the field of information science to explore the visual dimension of information and as an alternative and complement to written definitions of information that dominate the literature. In addition to generating a new visual perspective on information, the approach has proven fruitful for artistic and pedagogical purposes. Here, the protocol is presented in detail for scholars within information science and those beyond who may adapt it to their own research questions. The article begins with an overview of the draw-and-write technique, followed by a history of its use in the iSquare Research Program. Then, the distinguishing features of the iSquare protocol, its artistic potentials and teaching applications are outlined. Links are provided to an instructional script and research instrument template, enabling turnkey implementation of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Canadian context as a case study, the research reported here focuses on in-depth qualitative interviews with 36 researchers, artists and trainees engaged in ‘doing’ arts-based health research (ABHR). We begin to address the gap in ABHR knowledge by engaging in a critical inquiry regarding the issues, challenges and benefits of ABHR methodologies. Specifically, this paper focuses on the tensions experienced regarding academic legitimacy and the use of the arts in producing and disseminating research. Four central areas of tension associated with academic legitimacy are described: balancing structure versus openness and flexibility; academic obligations of truth and accuracy; resisting typical notions of what counts in academia; and expectations vis-à-vis measuring the impact of ABHR. We argue for the need to reconsider what counts as knowledge and to reconceptualize notions of evaluation and rigor in order to effectively support the effective production and dissemination of ABHR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we remember experiences of our participation in an artistic event for youth of African descent in a Norwegian city to reflect on the potential of arts-based methods for exploring migrant and diasporic youth identities. Reflecting on the process of curating an event titled Afrikanske Dager in Drammen (African days in Drammen) involving young Africans in a Norwegian city, we demonstrate the methodological potential photography making, exhibition and dance performance. We show how processes of collaborative photography making provide spaces for participants to negotiate and think through identity and self-representation. We tease out the potential of dance choreography and performance as avenues for participants to embody and retell old histories from the archive of African presence in Norway. We discuss how the event making process was the site of unstable hierarchies where roles and positions constantly changed and highlight the power relations involved in the collaborative production of knowledge from artistic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the ontology of theory as a shaping phenomenon in qualitative research by opening up its intersection with artistic dimensions of knowing and knowledge. We argue that the plurality of practices and perspectives for research hinges on what theory is understood to be. Thus, rather than approaching theory as something predefined, we draw on conceptualizations of the experience of art to articulate the being of theory as an aesthetic renewal of a shared human movement of becoming. We then illuminate theory's potential as a multidimensional artful being by engaging with a subset of photographs of street art collected in Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to literatures on sociological live methods by advocating for 'playing' with the concept of slow methods. Slow methods include a reflexive disposition towards the unfolding of social life in ordinary spaces (dwelling), the use of drawing as an embodied tool for understanding this unfolding (doodling) and the combination of these approaches into writing which deliberately seeks to evoke the liveness of the social world (describing). It draws on an ethnography of a joint-use public-academic library and several scenes selected from its fieldwork. I make three arguments: first, I argue for analogue methods to compliment digitally focussed live methods. Second, I explore the value of slow methods for being drawn into a scene and drawn to see its micro-happenings, particularly in spaces where the social world unfolds in mundane and uneven ways. Third, I argue the approach allows 'shy researchers' to engage attentively and reflexively in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual research methods reduce reliance on verbal communication and offer an avenue for non-verbal storytelling. Body mapping is a visual arts-based research method with its origins in art therapy and community development. It has been successfully used to explore embodied experiences of marginalised social groups. Participants engage in sensory and multimodal storytelling by tracing a life-size body outline and adorning it with fabrics, drawings and images to symbolise their views during a guided interview. This approach was used in research to explore birth family contact experiences in New South Wales, where children have ongoing direct contact with birth relatives in long-term care, guardianship and open adoption. Twelve mothers of children in permanent care took part in body mapping to explore their feelings about contact and the support they need to nurture a relationship with their children. Immersion in the artistic process of bringing a representational body to life granted these mothers access to hidden memories about their experience of child removal. They used evocative images to depict system violence and their fight against the erasure of their mother identity as well to envision a positive future relationship with their children. Body mapping potently revealed that traumatic loss resides in the body and resurfaces in encounters with child welfare systems. This has important policy and practice implications, highlighting a need for post-removal therapeutic services to process trauma and sensitive casework to rebuild parent trust and to help carers respond with empathy to their child's mother at contact. This lends support to the usefulness of body mapping not only for research with vulnerable parents, but to its enormous potential as a creative engagement tool for child welfare practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article mobilises Heather Love's writings on description to provide a novel analysis of recovery from drugs and alcohol. It discusses thin descriptions deriving from the presence of the researcher in the recovery space, and the service-users' thick descriptions of their recovery experiences, produced through one-to-one interviews and photovoice. Thin and thick descriptions of recovery are brought together with the Deleuzo-Guattarian assemblage, for the provision of an insight into the practice of recovery that focuses on its daily crafting through small practices of care. Observing and describing how phone calls and text messages, assessment forms, doorways and art materials inform the generation of caring practices, recovery is reconfigured as an amalgam of small gestures that gradually expand life possibilities. This epistemological and methodological shift has the potential to unsettle the way we understand and do policy, and to re-think it as a practice emerging organically inside the recovery assemblage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present research findings from an arts-based research (ABR) project that aimed to redress the symbolic effects of negative recognition associated with place-based stigma. Focusing on two prominently stigmatised neighbourhoods in Melbourne and Hobart (Australia), we explain the rationale for the study and how arts-based tactics were used for phenomenological explorations of familiar environments and to generate alternate, faithful and compelling portrayals of neighbourhoods that stemmed from residents' actual experiences. Our approach to ABR blended sociological concerns with socially engaged practices that emphasised creative and dialogic tactics, provocations and immersive experiences. We explain how art-based tactics were incorporated into artist residency projects that comprised four parts: local induction; excursions to art galleries; a six-week workshop programme; and exhibition events. Following this, interviews were conducted with artist-residents at the conclusion of the projects. Both the artistic outcomes and participants' reflections provide evidence that blending socially engaged art practices and participatory methods can help residents and researchers navigate the internalised effects of stigma in processes of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst a winter snow storm we drove slowly and carefully to our research site. Leaving much earlier than usual we wanted to be there to greet the indigenous youth who we had come to know in the process of inquiring into their ongoing identity making. We came to know them over several months in a junior high school arts club and had developed relationships with them that were marked by care. In attending to care, Noddings (1984) offered us a way to think about ethics. Yet Noddings did not explicitly turn her attention to an ethics for research, rather her focus was on an ethics of care in moral education. Drawing on our work alongside indigenous youth we show how these four components of an ethics of care shaped our narrative inquiry and show how a relational ethics builds on, and extends, an ethics of care in narrative inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of diagrams to stimulate dialogue in research interviews, a technique known as graphic elicitation, has burgeoned since the year 2000. Reviews of the graphic elicitation literature have relied on the inconsistent terminology currently used to index visual methods, and have so far drawn only a partial picture of their use. Individual diagrams are seen as stand-alone tools, often linked to particular disciplines, rather than as images created from a toolbox of common elements which can be customized to suit a research study. There is a need to examine participant-led diagramming with a view to matching the common elements of diagrams with the objectives of a research project. This article aims to provide an overview of diagramming techniques used in qualitative data collection with individual participants, to relate the features of diagrams to the aspects of the social world they represent, and to suggest how to choose a technique to suit a research question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the creative methods deployed in the course of a research project aimed at mapping community-based mental health service provision and other specific services migrant, refugee and asylum seeking women regularly access in London. Although the study made use of a mixed method research design, only the art-based approach deployed as part of the focus groups is discussed. The article contributes to developing embodied research methods in that it explores the bodily engagement of research participants in making a collage and unpacks the implications of this approach for collecting qualitative data involving experiential activity. The body plays a central role in generating qualitative data through the making of the collage and collage-making represents an embodied experience suggesting that how we feel, how we perceive, how we relate to our own bodies and the place they have in the order of things – is contextual, gendered, relational, historically and culturally situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a research project using arts workshops to explore pain communication, we develop a methodological reflection on the significance of the liveness of arts-based methods. We discuss how liveness informed the design of workshops to provoke novel forms of communication; how it produced uncontrollable and unpredictable workshops, whose unfolding we theorize as ‘imprography’. It also constituted affective and collective experiences of ‘being there’ as important but difficult-to-record parts of the data, which raises challenges to current understandings of what constitutes data, particularly in the context of team research and in light of directives for archiving and reuse. We explore the implications of liveness for methodological practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, archival research in the social sciences is emerging as a vibrant field of qualitative research, with contributions from a range of disciplinary fields, epistemological standpoints, theoretical insights and methodological approaches. In this article, I explore archival research strategies in life-history research, drawing on my experience of working at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas at Austin, reading the letters of Dora Carrington (1893–1932), an English painter, who lived and worked in the peripheries of the Bloomsbury group. The archive in my analysis is theorized as a spatial and discursive apparatus of experimentation, whose configuration has an impact on the type of data and the kind of knowledges that will derive from it. Drawing on neo-materialist approaches in feminist science studies, what I suggest is that the researcher’s questions, interpretations, theoretical insights and analytical tropes emerge as intra-actions between space/time/matter relations and forces within the archive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]