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This autoethnographic article presents the adaptation of collage—an arts-based method traditionally used in face-to-face settings—into an online research tool. It emphasizes the increased relevance of such a transition in the wake of the digital shift and the Covid-19 pandemic. The work aims to reveal how digital collages can facilitate in-depth participant responses in a time when conventional research settings are inaccessible.

The article incorporates autoethnographic vignettes, which are identified in italics, that offer insights into my personal reflections on the transition and adaptation to an online mode. Firstly, I review how collage can be a valuable tool to include in focus groups and for elicitation during semi-structured interviews. Secondly, I review the challenges I experienced when conducting focus groups online to create the collages. Thirdly, I explore, in more detail, three examples of collages that reflect the diverse ranges that were produced and the insightful discussions that emerged from the participants describing the visual elements of their collages. Finally, the reflective nature of my autoethnographic vignettes provides an insight into the world of the researcher during this turbulent time.

Findings show that collage, whether physical or digital, remains an effective tool for eliciting nuanced understandings from participants. The research contributes to the arts-based research narrative by showcasing how the digital adaptation of collage methods can yield profound insights into participants' perspectives, therefore enriching the data beyond what traditional interviews could unveil.

These observations can provide support for other researchers who are contemplating the adoption of online arts-based research methods. Understanding how traditionally face-to-face arts-based research methods can be adapted for the digitally evolving landscape is important for shaping the future of online research.

This chapter addresses relevant academic discourses and theory development in the cross-disciplinary fields where the arts and business meet. Three specific discourses are investigated: the arts for business, the arts with business and the arts’ disruptive business (or against business). The manner of the investigation reflects the overall tone and approach of this book in that it includes an introductory review of the relevant literature as a means of distilling the key themes and theories that have emerged in this research field. The chapter will thus also add some reference value to the key questions of academic debate about the arts and businesses: where have we come from and where are we now? Some speculation on ‘where we are going’ is also included.

At the 2003 AQR Conference, like many others present, I was inspired by Stuart Hill’s presentation that candidly described his approach to research and as he termed it, ‘extending boundaries’ through his evolution as a social ecologist. I refer particularly to his ‘status quo accommodating’ comment, his challenge not to ‘monitor our extinction’, and his appraisal of the real value of funded research (Hill, 2003). These remarks have remained with me and in no small amount they have influenced the development of the idea that inspired my research and the presentation today.

Interdisciplinary approaches to health education are becoming increasingly common. Here, the authors describe an arts-based approach designed by academics and artists to both supplement the study of mental illness and support the individual mental health of undergraduate and postgraduate university students, by raising the visibility of mental illness in an innovative way.

Through workshops, university students were guided in a sensory and physical way to discuss psychological health and vulnerability. This was followed by the creation of physical representations of mental distress through art pieces.

Students were able to design their own art pieces and discuss mental health issues in an open and creative way. Students reported that the arts-based initiative was beneficial to their practice as future professionals and provided a holistic learning experience. At the same time, artists were able to generate powerful images which facilitated further discussions within the faculty.

This project provides an innovative model for workshops which could be employed to raise the visibility of common mental health disorders among university students while providing a safe space to discuss and support wellbeing. Additionally, variations could be implemented to enhance the teaching of affective disorders within a university curriculum.

This paper presents the results of collaboration between academics and artists, who together generated an innovative way to both support students' mental health and provide an alternative way to supplement experiential learning about common mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

The purpose this paper is to consider festivals as sites for inquiry and learning.

The research employed a pluralistic approach to the inquiry drawing on critical African-centred pedagogy, participatory action research, and performance as research inquiry. These arts-based research methods allowed insights to be gained in ways that were congruent to the arts and participants who enacted them. In total, 12 young people and six elders of diverse African heritage as well as two artists were participants in the research.

The research revealed that the festival as a research methodology was both dialogic and performative and a rich site for the exploration of identity negotiation. Through these arts-based approaches the aesthetic elements often missed by traditional social science methods were highlighted as key in exploring acculturation socialistaion experiences and deconstructing exclusionist discourses emanating from the dominant culture.

The research affirmed the power of multi-modal approaches to research and the importance of evocative discourses in identity exploration and development.

This research is the first known attempt to theorise an arts-based festival as a research approach in reference to enculturation and cultural memory.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the first stage of an innovative developmental study addressing the educational and emotional needs of dementia care home staff using arts-based materials.

The arts workshop was developed using a mixed methods approach. This included ethnographic observation within a dementia care home, in-depth interviews with senior care home managers, a thematic analysis of focus groups and the development of a comic. At all stages, the multi-disciplinary project team collaborated closely with the care home staff. A comprehensive literature review of the policy, practice and academic background to dementia workforce education provided a contextual framework for the study. Perspectives from the medical humanities informed the project.

Despite the high prevalence of people living with dementia in care homes, there is a lack of appropriate training for the workforce that provides their care. This study found that an arts-based workshop offering an interactive mode of education was an effective way to engage this workforce. The workshop empowered participants to recognise their skills and focus on person-centred care; reflecting current recommendations for dementia care.

The workshop was delivered in a single dementia care home and therefore findings may not be generalisable. In addition, the management did not take a direct part in the delivery of the workshop and therefore their views are not included in this study.

The arts-based approach can offer a means of engaging the dementia care workforce in education linked to their experience of caring.

The paper identifies the gap in relevant education for the dementia care workforce and outlines one possible way of addressing this gap using the arts.

This paper aims to report on findings and methodological approaches of the artistic project “Sites for Unlearning (Art Organization)” in collaboration with the Team at Casco at Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht/NL, through which processes of unlearning are tested against the backdrop of established institutional structures. This paper constitutes a transdisciplinary contribution to the discourse, exploring its relationship with organizational unlearning, organizational change and feminist, decolonial trajectories.

This paper proposes a feminist, decolonial, arts-based approach to discuss “unlearning institutional habits” by means of the long-term project – Sites for Unlearning (Art Organization). This complements the organizational unlearning literature with an arts-based approach, which draws on alternative education and feminist and decolonial literature. This paper responds to the call of this special and introduces a new perspective to the discourse.

This paper gives insights into and elaborates on the findings of the artistic project “Site for Unlearning (Art Organization)” through which processes of unlearning are tested against the backdrop of institutional structures.

This methodology puts in evidence that there are two major areas of concern for those who desire to break established structures in contemporary life increasingly defined by economic, socio-political and ecological pressures – institution on the one hand and learning on the other; the artistic project Sites for Unlearning attempts to challenge both. It builds on the insights and energies developed in and around the studies on unlearning in the fields of alternative education and feminist and decolonial theory and connects them with organizational learning, knowledge management and theories of transformation (Andreotti, 2011; Spivak, 1993; Tlostanova and Mignolo, 2012).

This paper critically examines the development and direction of the Fabricating Future Bodies (FFB) Workshop. Troubling notions of co-production as enacting equality or empowering participants, it draws on feminist posthuman and new materialist concepts to understand it as an eventful process that occurs in unpredictable and shifting affect-laden assemblages.

The FFB Workshop formed part of the final phase of my Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded doctoral study, titled “Exploring young people's digital sexual cultures through creative, visual and arts-based methods”. With additional support from Wales' Doctoral Training Partnership, the workshop provided sixteen young people (aged 11–13 years) from one fieldwork school with the opportunity to work with two professional artists in order to creatively re-animate research findings on the digitally networked body. In a three-hour workshop, participants produced cut-up texts and life-size body fabrics that re-imagined what bodies might do, be and become in the future.

This paper finds that co-productive practices cannot flatten out the institutional and societal power dynamics operating within schools, highlighting how adult intervention was necessary to hold space for young people to participate. It also observes the agency of the art materials employed in the workshop in enabling young people to articulate what mattered to them about the digitally networked body. While the workshop was limited in its ability to renegotiate institutional and peer power dynamics, it produced rich data that indicated how carefully choreographed arts-based practices offer generative possibilities for digital sexualities research and education.

By employing speculative fiction, cut-up poetry and textiles to explore the digitally networked body, this paper outlines an innovative methodological-pedagogical approach to engaging with young people's digitally networked lives.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the potential use of creative, arts-based methods to address child sexual exploitation (CSE) through connecting with and supporting young people affected by CSE; and engaging the wider community through awareness-raising and education to help keep young people safe. The use of the arts in building understanding, promoting agency, educating and countering negative portrayals of those affected by CSE are also explored.

A literature review identified that there is currently a limited evidence-base surrounding the use of arts in addressing the negative outcomes for young people affected by CSE and promoting the inclusion and safety of young people in the community. To explore the potential use of the arts in engaging young people and the communities they inhabit, this paper draws from research with other “hard to engage” and stigmatised groups, and learning from efforts to tackle other sensitive and challenging issues that impact on communities.

The paper suggests that despite the relatively young evidence base concerning the role of creative, arts-based methods to tackle CSE, there is relevant transferable learning that suggests that there is potential in utilising the arts to help prevent CSE and promote community safety.

There is a clear need to consider the ethical implications of this work and to further examine how the arts may be utilised to tackle CSE and bring about positive outcomes for both individuals and for the wider community.

The paper brings together bodies of literature from other fields to explore the potential use of creative arts-based methods to tackle a significant contemporary issue of community safety.