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Workshops provide a flexible approach to studying complex issues. This paper discusses the methodological considerations involved in doing research through workshops and aims to further the understanding of how workshops can facilitate interactive and creative knowledge practices in case study research. The paper builds on two research projects - where workshops were used to study the practices of professionals' use of digital tools at a consultancy firm and the everyday life of residents in a newly built city district. In the project about professional practices, three workshops were carried out with professionals from different disciplines and focused on their use of a specific digital tool, BIM. Post-its were used to introduce, explore and discuss different topics around everyday practices and digital tools, both individually and in various group arrangements. The three workshops built on each other and resulted in a concrete action plan for developing the company's work regarding BIM. In the research about the everyday life, the participants in five workshops were asked to draw a map of their home and other meaningful places in the city district. These individual "mental maps" were then used as a starting point for discussing the residents' everyday practices in a group setting. While the workshops in the two research projects targeted different groups and had different forms, they both made use of visual materials as a central aspect of workshops. Therefore, we analysed the workshops with a relational material framework to further understand how design choices affect research practice and research outcomes. From this lens, we analyse our choices in designing the workshops, the analytical processes and the consequences these choices have on what knowledge we create in interaction with the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rhetoric of 'nothing about us without us', motivates much disability inclusive research, but meaningful participation of the most marginalised is still rare. There is a tendency to recruit only people with disabilities who are perceived as 'easier to include'. We reflect critically on recent fieldwork in Bangladesh working with local and international NGOs on a disability inclusive employment project. We focus on inclusion of the most marginalised people with disabilities: those with complex communication, psychosocial, intellectual or multiple impairments, or those who face intersecting inequalities. During a two-stage process, we engaged with 4 small groups of people in 2 sites. The participants were involved in an adapted vocational training programme, and had either both visual and hearing impairments, or were economically disadvantaged young disabled women. We discuss how creative, inclusive, participatory methodologies were combined to explore participants' experiences of pathways to work through learning a trade. We consider the ethical, methodological rationales for our research epistemologies; including development of local research teams' and participants' awareness, confidence and capacities; and what worked and didn't to enable or constrain inclusion and knowledge generation. We synthesise insights and recommendations about engagement/recruitment, situated ethics, accommodating individual needs, challenging assumptions, building communication capacities and group agency, maintaining inclusive interaction, multi-modal communication, using visual, tactile, narrative and creative methodologies, sequencing and layering methods, generating emotional knowledge, and collective analysis. We discuss the dynamic situated, emotional, interactional, and relational enablers of inclusion, and how participatory methodologies are applicable in research contexts to move beyond working with the 'usual suspects' to effectively engage people who are most often excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on geographic scholarship around disability and drawing on a programme of arts-based research, we bring attention to the social and cultural geographies of families affected by rare disease. Seeking creative methodological opportunities, we invited families to send us postcards as a means of sharing experiences and reflections. We contextualize the emergence of the postcard as a modality of communication, situating our work within a wider epistolary and artistic tradition, before examining the opportunities postcarding might produce for geographic and broader qualitative research, noting the forms conduciveness to multimodality and recent calls for more engagement with the medium. We detail our own practices of participatory postcarding and the questions, challenges, and hopes such raised. Analysing the postcards received, we discuss how such helps understand the shifting social and cultural geographies of rare disease, reflecting on themes of (in)accessibility and exclusion, changing domestic geographies, and the importance of, and challenges associated with, family-based identities and communities in the context of rare disease. Such highlights opportunities for disability geography to engage in cross-cutting conversations and agenda-building with the nascent area of family geographies, along with further geographic inquiry into the spaces and worlds of rare disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and what do we make through method? This paper imagines the processes of designing and carrying out socio-environmental research through the lens of a slow, creative craft form: sewing a patchworked piece from hand-dyed fabric samples. In doing so, it contributes to thinking about how methodologies are pieced and stitched together from multiple parts. Based on early findings from an extended research project exploring the practice of natural textile dyeing in the UK, I offer a range of textile processes for thinking through the creative dimensions of the doing of methodological work. The quilt-like piece I am attempting to make from plant-dyed fabric is at once the object, objective, and method in this study. I draw on auto-ethnographic reflections on my attempts to begin learning natural dyeing and sewing skills, suggesting piecing, stitching, and steeping may be useful, tactile metaphors for thinking through the early, often messy and uncertain stages of multi-sited and multi-method qualitative research. As such, I build on and extend recent discussions about 'patchwork ethnography', an approach recognising that the realities of ethnographic research in practice are often fragmented, non-linear, and intricately shaped by researchers' everyday lives and commitments. The paper also offers insight into the potentials and pitfalls of intentionally 'slow' scholarship that aims to disrupt the urgent temporalities of research projects as they are often imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's perspectives are not always central to policy and practice in widening participation contexts. This article explores enablers and barriers to educational progression by considering factors that young people suggest influence how they envisage and act on their futures. The underpinning study asked students aged 12–23 in disadvantaged areas of northern England to think about their possible selves using creative methods to encourage dialogue, including an animation and board game co-designed with university students. The findings suggested that students' perceptions of their own futures are influenced by their experiences of being categorised or labelled, both in and out of school, as well as the quality of their relationships with adults and peers. The authors discuss how these factors tended to shape the young people's experiences of being at school, with a view to rethinking labelling and enabling participatory spaces that cultivate the intersecting relationships, influences, structures and self-belief that make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Collage is a modality of expression which involves repurposing and juxtaposing fragments. Our aim was to explore both how and what collage, as an arts-based research method, might contribute to enlivening understandings of the experiences of families affected by rare conditions. Methods: During 10 weeks of collaging workshops participants created artistic representations of their experiences. The methodology produced a convivial atmosphere where participants talked openly about everyday challenges. Results: The collages and conversations produced offer a means through which to consider the complex and multiple positions which families affected by rare disease interpolate. Particularly, the collages prompt cross-cutting thematic reflections on motherhood and care, the challenges of being heard, and balancing family life alongside medicalisation. Conclusions: The opportunity to convey topics and feelings through a medium which was both tentatively open yet conceptually complex allowed the broaching of sensitive and elusive themes in a safe, expressive, and non-threatening manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The findings presented here are from a qualitative research study, adopting creative research methods with seven children to provide an in-depth understanding of their lived experience of living with Parental substance misuse (PSM). The children's data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. The research also included focus groups with twenty-two professionals which added further understanding to the children's experiences. Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory was adopted as a framework to structure the research data from the micro to the macrosystem. Key messages identified the need for children living with PSM to be seen and heard and offered specialist support in their own right. The children experienced multiple risk factors, which were often enduring, and did not reduce as they grew older. This research provided an understanding of the complex needs of children and the risk factors which reach beyond their immediate home environment. This article argues for change, including improved training for front line practitioners, specialist service provision for children not reliant on their parents' engagement, and for policy change and financial resources for their implementation. It is proposed that this would bridge the gap between research and practice and lead to improved outcomes for children living with PSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores creative approaches within social work research, focusing on youth in care. This perspective-driven piece merges literature review and my viewpoints on creative methods, while also critiquing my fieldwork to highlight my application of these approaches. This article also adopts the wormhole throat metaphor to illustrate creativity as a shortcut in social work research, tying together universes—early observations and fuller understandings of youth in care. Concluding, this article advocates for the practical use of creativity in research and argues how researchers’ poststructuralist perspectives, in conjunction with creative approaches, can strengthen consciousness regarding the fragmented and often contradictory experiences of youth in care, leading to the emergence of more empowering narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Autistic children can experience challenges in making and maintaining friendships, and middle childhood (ages 6–12) may be particularly challenging as social networks become more complex. However, a large proportion of research into these experiences is based on adult reports or focuses on the experiences of adolescents, meaning that the voices of younger children are absent. Due to the exclusion of younger children from research, we have a limited understanding of their first-hand experiences of their friendships and the support they receive, which has implications for friendship support and wellbeing. This study aimed to amplify the voices of younger autistic children to explore their first-hand experiences of friendships and highlight areas of social support which may be most beneficial to primary-aged autistic children. Methods: This study used novel creative methods to support interviews with 19 autistic primary school-aged children to explore their experiences of friendship. Parent-led interviews and scrapbooks supported the children in discussing the challenges and strengths of their friendships. Results: Children discussed the challenges and strengths of their friendships including the impact of social norms on the need to have friends and their support needs in this area of life. Children also discussed gaps in their current friendships and how they would like to see these filled. It was clear that not all children required or wanted neurotypical-style friendships, with many valuing companionship and gameplay over intimacy. Analysis highlighted the heterogeneity of autistic children's friendships, especially in relation to gender and age, calling for more tailored and individualized support. Conclusion and implications: Results from the current study show that autistic children can and do have successful friendships but that these friendships may differ from those of their non-autistic peers. The study further adds to the existing literature by showing that younger autistic children can be included in research by using differentiated, accessible and creative methods, and that they are able to voice their opinions on matters surrounding support. It also calls for a tailored approach to supporting autistic children in school and speaking with children to give them autonomy over the support they want to receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this methodological article, I introduce a qualitative research method, called the visual focus group (VFG), which incorporates a collective drawing task within the structure of a focus group. The VFG was specifically developed to support engaged research about how activists conceptualize the political role of technology, by stimulating participants to reflect on their unspoken assumptions about digital technologies. After reviewing the relevant literature on focus groups and graphic elicitation techniques, the article presents two types of VFGs: diagnostic and speculative. While diagnostic VFGs are primarily a research tool meant to enable researchers to assess how people envision technology, speculative VFGs encourage participants to imagine better digital technologies. I describe the structure of both types of VFGs and offer examples of their outputs; I then discuss the limitations of this method and propose other research topics for which it might be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co‐production is a collaborative way of working which emphasises the exchange of diverse forms of knowledge in an equal partnership for equal benefits. Co‐produced research is a key strategic aim of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Transforming UK Food Systems (TUKFS) Strategic Priorities Fund; this research programme brings together researchers, policymakers, industry and communities to create positive change in the way food is produced, accessed and consumed. However, more generally, there are diverse understandings of co‐production and a lack of consensus on what 'good practice' looks like. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and map examples of co‐production methods employed across the TUKFS programme. Two creative workshops (n = 15 participants), conversations with TUKFS researchers and stakeholders (n = 15), and systematic analysis of project documents were used to critically explore co‐production activities within six TUKFS projects. A range of co‐production activities were identified. Findings highlighted areas of 'messiness' and complexity, challenges associated with applying co‐production approaches and practical solutions. Four key shared principles for co‐production were identified: (1) Relationships: developing and maintaining reciprocity‐based partnerships; (2) Knowledge: recognising the contribution of diverse forms of expertise; (3) Power: considering power dynamics and addressing imbalances; and (4) Inclusivity: ensuring research is accessible to all who wish to participate. Opportunities for reflection and reflexivity were considered crucial across all these areas. Findings contribute important insights towards a shared conceptual understanding of co‐production for food system transformation research. This paper makes recommendations for researchers, practitioners, academic institutions and funders working in this area of research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on our ongoing experiences of using co‐productive zine‐making as a creative and participatory method in a research project on public libraries as social infrastructures. Engaging different audiences, including library management and staff, patrons and urban government authorities, the project aims to simultaneously study and stimulate a sense of community in public libraries. While many libraries already deploy zine‐making programmes as a low‐cost visitor activity, we use it as both a data collection and community‐building tool. Co‐productive zine‐making offers opportunities for reflection and mutual understanding to foster education, exchange and encounter between different stakeholders. It challenges the traditional power dynamics of knowledge production in academia and beyond. Zine‐making can act as a creative tool that pushes researchers to be more (self‐)reflexive. Yet, despite these benefits, zine‐making does not come without challenges, and therefore requires a specific researchers' skillset. This paper provides insight into both practical and ethical issues we encountered before, during and after the organisation of the first out of five zine‐making workshops in our project, held with community librarians in Rotterdam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Despite increased focus on adolescence, young people’s voices are often undervalued and underrepresented in health inequalities research and policy. Through exploring young people’s priorities for their health and their community, we may begin to understand how public health interventions and policies can be more effective and equitable. Engaging with youth using art enables empowerment and self-expression on these complex topics. Methods Creative workshops, co-produced with a young artist, were delivered at three youth centres to participants aged 11–18 years (n = 30) in disadvantaged areas of Bristol, UK. Participants engaged in art and were guided by a semi-structured topic guide through focus group discussion. Thematic analysis, supported by the young artist, was used to distil key policy priorities for young people to be delivered to the local authority. Results The young people identified a list of key priorities. These were: (1) mental health, (2) feeling ‘forgotten’ as an age group and having safe city spaces to socialise, (3) the need for greater support for their education and career aspirations. I provide a brief summary of these priorities, but the focus of this article is on the critical reflections on this innovative way of engaging with young people about local policy. I provide key learning points for researchers looking to do creative public health work in community settings and involve marginalised young people. Conclusions Art is a promising way of engaging with young people in community settings and elevating marginalised voices. Co-producing with a local young artist enriched the project and partially alleviated power imbalances. This approach has potential for involving different groups within local policymaking and priority setting around health inequalities.

This paper delves into the creative methodology adopted whilst engaging in a research study with five families whose young children (aged between 8 and 10 years old) were excluded from school due to social, emotional and mental health difficulties. The complex needs surrounding these families often lead to them being labelled as hard-to-reach and therefore challenging to engage in research. This paper will explore these challenges, the ethical dilemmas that emerged, the constant observation throughout, the reflexivity and flexibility required by the researchers and the relationships forged. Using various creative methods as part of the Mosaic approach both the children and their parents were able to play a part in the meaning-making process throughout the research journey. The culmination of the research study took place in the format of a multi-family group session which provided a safe space for an intergenerational encounter allowing for the children's and parent's authentic voices to continue to be heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by posthuman, feminist materialist theory-doings in educational research, this paper maps moments in a post-qualitative research project that set out to explore what else relationships and sexuality education might become with ‘art-as-way’ (Manning 2020) in a shaky yet conducive policy context where ‘what matters’ must not be assumed in advance but co-constructed with children and young people. Progressively supported by an artist-in-residence teacher assistant, composer and filmmaker, we open up what unfolds when a diverse group of 11 young people (age 13–14) creatively unbox and make ‘what matters’ to them in an art classroom. We conceptualize what came to matter as ‘dartaphacts’ (arts-activist objects) and follow these other-worldly posthuman pARTicipants as they connect, grow, and become ‘more-than’. We speculate, that in conducive, con-sense-ual environments, the affective power of dartaphacts can unbox a living curriculum for a Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) to come, in all its Majestic Insecurity, Untitled, Freedoms, Feathers, Bruised Hearts, Consent-quakes, eQuality Vibrations and Wiggly Woos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research article examines the relationship between individuals' pro-environmental behaviors and their subjective wellbeing. Through a meta-analysis of existing research, the authors find strong evidence supporting a positive association between engaging in pro-environmental behaviors and experiencing subjective wellbeing. This information is valuable for library patrons interested in understanding the personal benefits of taking environmentally friendly actions. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract\nPoints of interestThis study examined the lived experience of disability inclusion on the University of Georgia’s main campus in Athens, Georgia using photovoice. Photovoice is a creative research approach that combines photography with qualitative methods to promote social justice and advocacy related to an issue or topic. Ten project partners from various backgrounds participated in this study for four weeks. Through qualitative analysis of focus groups, nineteen themes were uncovered, fifteen of which were featured in a culminating exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art to promote disability inclusion on campus. The themes representing the lived experience of disability inclusion on campus spanned social, emotional, physical, political, and temporal dimensions. We took the project a step further by collaborating with disabled individuals as project partners and using poetry as a method.This article explores the lived experience of disability inclusion on a college campus.The research reported here was conducted in collaboration with disabled individuals.Project partners’ lived experience of disability inclusion on campus touched on their relationships with time and social, emotional, physical, and political aspects of society.Project partners shared their lived experiences with the goal of fostering sustained conversation, thus promoting awareness, advocacy,and outreach for community-building around disability inclusion on campus.This article explores the lived experience of disability inclusion on a college campus.The research reported here was conducted in collaboration with disabled individuals.Project partners’ lived experience of disability inclusion on campus touched on their relationships with time and social, emotional, physical, and political aspects of society.Project partners shared their lived experiences with the goal of fostering sustained conversation, thus promoting awareness, advocacy,and outreach for community-building around disability inclusion on campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite increased focus on adolescence, young people's voices are often undervalued and underrepresented in health inequalities research and policy. Through exploring young people's priorities for their health and their community, we may begin to understand how public health interventions and policies can be more effective and equitable. Engaging with youth using art enables empowerment and self-expression on these complex topics. Methods: Creative workshops, co-produced with a young artist, were delivered at three youth centres to participants aged 11–18 years (n = 30) in disadvantaged areas of Bristol, UK. Participants engaged in art and were guided by a semi-structured topic guide through focus group discussion. Thematic analysis, supported by the young artist, was used to distil key policy priorities for young people to be delivered to the local authority. Results: The young people identified a list of key priorities. These were: (1) mental health, (2) feeling 'forgotten' as an age group and having safe city spaces to socialise, (3) the need for greater support for their education and career aspirations. I provide a brief summary of these priorities, but the focus of this article is on the critical reflections on this innovative way of engaging with young people about local policy. I provide key learning points for researchers looking to do creative public health work in community settings and involve marginalised young people. Conclusions: Art is a promising way of engaging with young people in community settings and elevating marginalised voices. Co-producing with a local young artist enriched the project and partially alleviated power imbalances. This approach has potential for involving different groups within local policymaking and priority setting around health inequalities. Plain English summary: This article talks about a project that was done in Bristol, UK. The project used art to help young people open up about local issues and about their health. The project involved workshops which took place in community centres and youth clubs, with a young artist leading the workshops. This article is less about what young people told us in those workshops and more about the process we went through, what the pros and cons of the study are and what other researchers can learn. The key lessons were: (1) art helps young people talk about complex and sensitive topics, (2) working with a local young artist helps young people open up and (3) it is important to work with people like youth workers and outreach workers when working in the community so we can make sure all young people have a chance at sharing their views and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trauma has become a global health epidemic which means that researching the experiences of those impacted is central to qualitative researchers' work. Subsequently, people affected by trauma may require support during the research process. In this paper, we outline how arts-based autoethnography and the methods of poetry, digital mixed media and drawing align with aspects of an evidence-based trauma-informed framework, highlighting their value when conducting qualitative trauma research. Examples of arts-based representations centring on Author 1's experiences of moving from ‘abuse victim’ to ‘abuse prevention advocate’ will show its application and potential benefits for conducting research with other trauma survivors/victims.

This paper explores the politics and praxis of ‘youth voice assemblages’ in an exploratory and pARTicipatory research project where 125 young people (aged 11–18) from England, Scotland and Wales shared what and how they are learning about relationships, sex and sexuality. Creative methods enabled us to ‘attune’ to this learning and generate ‘darta’ (arts‐based data). We then ‘animated’ these darta as dartaphacts (creative objects) including films, poetry and education cards. Finally, we ‘amplified’ these dartaphacts in a face‐to‐face launch event. We argue that a creative ontology of ‘youth voice’ is imperative to develop more relevant, responsive and ethical sexuality and relationships education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractPod Man is the rational, individual and hyper-masculine transport consumer entrenched in industry narratives focused on automated vehicle technologies and infrastructures. This article interrogates how these narratives are constituted, the futures they imagine, predict and promote, and how people and households are presented within these futures. The discussions in this article are based on a content analysis of sixty industry reports. While there is an emerging body of research engaging with the gendered and racialised dimensions of future automated mobilities, previous studies have for the most part focused on conceptual and promotional visualisations of automated vehicles. Building on this existing work, I argue that equal attention needs to be paid to the ideologies and agendas embedded in industry reports. Taken together, the visual representations and industry reports contribute to large scale anticipatory narratives about possible futures. To better understand and critique the values and logics of these narratives, I discuss how the Pod Man persona underlies visions of automated vehicles and its potential consequences for shaping potential future trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of creative qualitative research methods in psychology and other disciplines has increased over recent decades to address power imbalances within research and to centre the voices of participants. These considerations are particularly salient when conducting research with historically marginalized groups, including neurodivergent people. However, research foregrounding the first‐person perspectives of neurodivergent children is still limited. In this paper, we discuss the application of creative qualitative research methods when conducting research with neurodivergent children with a range of communication and wider skill profiles. The benefits and challenges of each method are considered, drawing on examples from the first phase of an ongoing longitudinal study. Additional considerations for working ethically and respectfully with neurodivergent children are discussed. Readers are encouraged to consider how best to adapt their research protocols when working with neurodivergent children, in order to minimize research hierarchies, build positive relationships, and produce rich and meaningful data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study demonstrates ways of teaching creative methods in order to generate ideas for a project event and reveals project management students' learning experiences and perceptions of usefulness during the process. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight students on a project management course at a higher education institution in Norway. We provide a description and a detailed illustration of how the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) model can be used as a navigation tool in the planning and implementation of idea and concept development workshops, and how different forms of creative work methods can be used at different stages of an iterative process. The students find that using different ways of working with creative methods results in high idea generation, which is then processed into different concepts to form the basis for the content of a project event. All the students see the value of and want to use different forms of creative methods in various development projects in their workplace. Following the idea and concept workshop, several students successfully used creative methods in problem solving and development work in their organization and say that they will continue to practice using more of these working methods in different work situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pregnancy apps have become a popular healthcare tool with millions of users worldwide. While branded as inclusive, they nevertheless normalise a particular pregnancy journey: one culminating in birth. Knowing that pregnancies end for various reasons – with one in five resulting in miscarriage – we seek to challenge this narrow framing. Deviating from existing literature, our paper explores the emotional geographies of pregnancy apps when birth is not the outcome. Set through a series of ‘app annotations’ by two sisters navigating pregnancy loss, our paper explores how a leading app was intimately encountered. Drawing inspiration from graphics literature, we advance a new method and activist tool that centres the body – and particularly embodied loss – in digital debates. In so doing we hope to turn geography's ‘digital turn’ towards a more creative set of tools, heeding feminist calls to engage technological intimacies. Vitally, this work illuminates those lives (and losses) systematically excluded – often in the name of life itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article relies on an ethnography of commercial divers that involves the author's training, certification, and activity underwater to propose an ecofeminist analysis of the undersea (furthermore with the undersea). It presents how feminist environmental theory engages with the ethnographic method of immersion and how underwater fieldwork grounded in feminist theory contributes, in turn, to reflections on the role of embodiment in the production of ethnographic knowledge. This article emphasizes the role of experiencing risky situations (gender-based violence and life-threatening situations) in the research process to address the reproduction of masculinity that is part of the commercial diving training supported by the profession's equipment and technologies. By doing so, the article unveils how participating in underwater activities as part of fieldwork raises issues for feminist ethics, especially regarding multispecies relationality. Overcoming these ethical limits and reconciling ecofeminism and ethnography in the study of underwater ecologies can, as the article concludes, rely on creative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers cultural probes as an experimental qualitative method in promoting collaborative and prefigurative participation in research. While the extant literature tends to frame cultural probes either as the discounted ethnographic tool or the means to gather design inspiration, such a framing also results in an irreconcilable methodological and conceptual dichotomy. Seeking to overcome this binary, this paper draws inspiration from Michel de Certeau's concept of "poaching" to contemplate how cultural probes may elicit and provoke both inspirational and analytical data. Through an empirical study of the everyday waste practices of 10 young university students in Hong Kong, this study discusses the rationale of different cultural probes designs and participants' experience in completing the probes. This paper argues that the cultural probes may offer a speculative and creative qualitative inquiry to cultivate one's "attentiveness", generate "politics of reconfiguration", and make sense of "uncertainty" in knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within social science research the complex nature of relationship-making and ‘friendship as method’ has gained enthusiasm. However, there is still a significant lack of research on ‘friendship as method’ with children and young people in participatory studies. Drawing on empirical case studies, we ask: how does ‘friendship as method’ work in research with children? The paper considers the role of vulnerability and reservations, friendship facilitator, and discusses the ethical dimensions of creating and sustaining ‘friendships’ between researcher and participants (as co-researchers). We argue that friendships in research are not a hierarchical or linear continuum, but a spectrum: friendships often mean different things to different people at different times; they can be positive and negative, both liberating and restrictive, fleeting and sustained, energising and tiresome. We recommend that participatory research with children considers not only the participatory components of power and action, but the emotionality and relationality of participatory research with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents and discusses the creation of a performance (dance and song) by 12 sanitation workers in Nepal working with artists Alice Fox (UK) and Ashmina Ranjit (Nepal). This creative work was one element within an international, interdisciplinary research programme that explored shit flow, wastewater and marginality in five rapidly developing off-grid towns. Performed at the Lumbini Peace Park as part of the 2022 Women of the World Festival, an important objective of the work was raising awareness of issues affecting sanitation workers, who are among the most precarious workers in the world. Using photos and artist commentary, 'we' (geographers and artists) show how the performance (un)seen (un)clean opened a creative space through which to engage and circulate the lived experiences of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writers, artists, activists, and others are finding creative ways to engage with, and disrupt and unsettle, commentaries on the climate emergency. In this article, we argue that the do-it-yourself ethic and aesthetic of zines (small-circulation, self-published magazines) and zine-making offers a creative and empowering approach to environmental storytelling, and that zines do different kinds of "work" around positioning, narrating, and responding to ecological problems. Through the idea of zine ecologies, we examine the entanglements between zines and zineing, environmentalism, environmental politics, literature, art, activism and protest, and more. The idea of zine ecologies has a dual existence in this article. We use this idea both as the provocation for a minizine that accompanies this article, but also to scaffold discussion of the quiet politics and activisms of student zine projects responding to, for example, an environmental writer, a piece of activist writing, or an environmental issue or scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban environmental aesthetics form a cornerstone in neoliberal development discourse in Mumbai, India. Formulated primarily on visual metrics, such as those of green lawns and modern architecture, these aesthetic sensibilities set up the horizon of what is seeable and sayable, serving to legitimize planning schemes while obscuring their social and environmental harms. This is evident in the city's elite Hiranandani Gardens township, a project heavily contested on legal, humanistic, and environmental grounds. Beginning from "waste," or spaces and perspectives that lack value in dominant discourses, I analyze how the production of developmentalist "value" relies on environmental aesthetics as well as the limits of such formulations. By way of three frames—empty buildings, an abandoned quarry, and remembered wilderness—I illustrate power structures that facilitate the conversion of waste into value, the contradictions and limits in dominant sustainability discourses, and the messy terrain of contestations that they face. The article contributes to critical development scholarship by emphasizing the significance of aesthetics in unveiling power relations entrained in the making of urban landscapes. I also extend creative engagements in geography by incorporating sensory engagements beyond the visual to interrupt dominant aesthetic sensibilities and open critical and creative ways of knowing urban nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Children and young people experience various transitions throughout their education. Theory and evidence highlight that these can be complex, and poor experiences of transitions can be associated with worsened outcomes, necessitating a need to develop and implement wellbeing support. However, children and young people's views are lacking in the literature, and studies tend to focus on specific transitions rather than on what matters for wellbeing during transitions generally. Aims: We explore children and young people's own perceptions of what would support wellbeing during educational transitions. Sample: We engaged with 49 children and young people aged 6–17 years, using purposeful maximum variation sampling to facilitate engagement of a diverse sample across a variety of education setting types. Methods: We undertook focus groups, using creative methods centred around a storybook, asking participants to make decisions as headteachers about wellbeing provision in a fictional setting. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Analysis: We constructed four themes: (1) helping children and young people understand what to expect; (2) developing and sustaining relationships and support; (3) being responsive to individual needs and vulnerabilities; and (4) managing loss and providing a sense of closure. Conclusions: Our analysis highlights a desire among children and young people for a considered, supportive approach that recognizes their individual needs and their connection to educational communities. The study makes a methodological and conceptual contribution, demonstrating the value of adopting a multifocussed lens to researching and supporting transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative research is increasingly challenged to think creatively and critically about how accounts of lived experience might be collected, collated, curated, and disseminated. In this article, we consider how forms of participatory filmmaking and animation might assist in the development of methodologies appropriate to accessing, revealing and representing the social worlds of families affected by rare genetic conditions. We trace how participatory animation, specifically stop-motion animation (a filmmaking technique involving incrementally manipulating objects to produce the semblance of motion) offers opportunities for enlivening qualitative research. We discuss the creation of a series of workshops which took participants through the process of producing their own animated film. Stop-motion storytelling as a method enabled us to encounter, and subsequently foreground, different narratives and emotions, whilst creating-together and watching-together prompted novel conversations. We move to reflect on how participatory animation can be a provocative and productive practice in the toolkit of qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

' Food on the margins in Plymouth ' is a short 'fly on the wall'-style documentary film which has captured the food stories of six individuals who are, for whatever reason, experiencing food insecurity. The film was inspired by a recent participatory food research project (Food as a Lifestyle Motivator) which aimed to explore creative methods to better understand the food experiences of vulnerable communities in Plymouth, UK. Our aim was to 'co-produce' a documentary film illustrating the realities of the lived experience of food insecurity that could be promoted by/to city leaders and policy-makers to catalyse food system change. The resulting documentary film successfully met its aim by presenting a work of public sociology that informs publics about food poverty. Here, within this 'Beyond the Text' companion piece, we critique and appraise what the film achieves, by proposing how and why film-making can engage publics through sharing food stories and conveying wider sociological discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the African continent, coloniality/modernity and the (un)freedom of queer peoples intersect in particular historically embedded and newly oppressive ways, making queerness a significant area for transformative struggles. This article draws from the learnings of a collaborative project, called the Qintu Collab, wherein queer African youth created an anthology of graphic stories and a set of podcasts based on their life experiences. The project aimed to link academic scholarship with art and activism through a specifically queer feminist perspective in an effort towards decolonising methodology; and to explore queer collaboration as an antidote to the coloniality of power of dominant western perspectives on queerness and the marginalisation of queer Africans, particularly in countries where same-sex sexuality is criminalised. Taking a feminist queer perspective, we explore the potential of participatory creative research as decolonial practice, to reveal the complex messy work of working together. Specifically, we address the question of when collaborations begin and how methodological decision-making takes place; assumptions about shared ideology and how ideological differences, in our case around notions of queer politics and personhood, are addressed within collaborative settings, as well as how the imagined audience shapes collaborative processes. Our learnings are pertinent for anyone undertaking participatory research collaboration as a transformative endeavour. We want to trouble the idea that participatory collaboration and creative methods are sufficient as decolonial practice. We found that early shared decision-making, (queer) insider research and creative methods were significant for raising and holding contestation and ideological difference, as well as enabling critical thinking and conscientisation. However, maintaining an open, collaborative process conducive to decolonial thinking and doing was hard, ongoing and imperfect work, as we constantly negotiated personal and structural conditions of coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion piece emerged out of a conversation about the words we use to describe people who are engaged in and by the criminal justice system. It is underpinned by our belief that language, including the ways we describe people, has important effects in the world. The piece consists of two parts: a brief critical introduction, and a creative dialogue which reflects upon ten key words that have been used to describe people on probation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Evidence suggests resources and services benefit from being developed in collaboration with the young people they aim to support. Despite this, patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) with young people is often tokenistic, limited in engagement and not developmentally tailored to young people. Our paper aims to build knowledge and practice for meaningfully engaging with young people in research design, analysis and as research participants. Methods We report the participatory processes from the INSCHOOL project, examining long-term health conditions and schooling among 11–18 year olds. Young people were consulted at the inception of the project through a hospital-based youth forum. This began a partnership where young people co-designed study documents, informed the recruitment process, developed creative approaches to data collection, participated in pilot interviews, co-analysed the qualitative data and co-presented results. Results PPIE advisors, participants and researchers all benefitted from consistent involvement of young people throughout the project. Long-term engagement allowed advisors and researchers to build rapport and facilitated openness in sharing perspectives. PPIE advisors valued being able to shape the initial aims and language of the research questions, and contribute to every subsequent stage of the project. Advisors co-designed flexible data collection methods for the qualitative project that provided participants with choices in how they took part (interviews, focus groups, written tasks). Further choice was offered through co-designed preparation activities where participants completed one of four creative activities prior to the interview. Participants were therefore able to have control over how they participated and how they described their school experiences. Through participatory analysis meetings advisors used their first-hand experiences to inform the creation of themes and the language used to describe these themes. PPIE in every stage of the process helped researchers to keep the results grounded in young people’s experience and challenge their assumptions as adults. Conclusions Young people have much to offer and the INSCHOOL project has shown that researchers can meaningfully involve young people in all aspects of research. Consistent PPIE resulted in a project where the voices of young people were prioritised throughout and power imbalances were reduced, leading to meaningful participant-centred data.

Life with dementia urgently needs to be reimagined. The dominant social imaginary of dementia perpetuates a story in which people with dementia cannot have a life that is ‘good’. In this Position Piece we draw from eight letters written for the Dementia Letter project, in which the letters’ authors address their potential future self with dementia. We found that using the creative method of letter writing opened up possibilities for writers to fill uncertain futures with dementia with new experiences and relations, as well as opportunities for exploring multiple temporalities and versions of themselves. We highlight five inspirations from the letters: living with what is, the future as a space of possibility, populating the everyday, folding time, and cultivating multiple selves. Through these, we argue, alternative futures, and a present, with dementia can be reimagined, and made differently.

People from refugee backgrounds experience distinctively complex situations pre- and post-resettlement and are at heightened risks of suicide. The bulk of research on refugee suicide and suicidal ideation is based on diagnostic perspectives, biomedical approaches, and quantitative measures. To explore lived experience of suicide among refugee communities in more depth, this review highlights the need for qualitative, creative methods and a different paradigm to conceptualise suicide research from a social and cultural perspective as an alternative to framing and treating suicidality purely as a mental health issue. Situational and lived experience-based knowledge can significantly expand understandings of how to curb the rise in suicidal ideation and reduce suicide risks among refugees. In this context, creative research methods can be excellent tools to uncover the deeply contextual dimensions of suicidality. When interdisciplinary research explores subjective and sociocultural meanings attached to suicidal ideation, there is a greater potential to develop culturally safe supports, which are models attuned to cultural norms as determined by those most affected by lived experience of an issue or problem. Qualitative suicide research using creative methods and grounded in sociocultural knowledge can address the multidimensional and situational factors affecting refugee communities to improve interventions beyond medical framings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]