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Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Mark Vicars and Tarquam McKenna

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the drama space is a way of inquiry in its own right and as a complex “way of knowing” has a capacity to be a profitable location from…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the drama space is a way of inquiry in its own right and as a complex “way of knowing” has a capacity to be a profitable location from which to artfully thread and critically interrogate the performances of lives-as-lived.

Design/methodology/approach

The autoethnographic discussion has an overlay of histography as it brings the “real-life” word to the drama space and builds on naturalistic and experimental research moving the reader through transformational inquiry to what they name as drama as a post-foundational research method.

Findings

In using drama as artful practices, intra-reflexivity – interior focused – felt as artistic “process” leads “psyche” to an empathic space for acceptance of the fugitive selves and demonstrates “queerness” through the narratives as monologues.

Research limitations/implications

The vignettes presented as monologue attest to the authors’ life histories and their “fugitive” ways of being as gay men.

Practical implications

The authors consider how drama as methodological practice can re work the notion of text-to-life or life-to-text, as an expression of a will to knowledge, of the authors working dramatically with their participants and students to find a way to articulate experience and place at the centre of research an agentic voice in relation to psychological, socio-cultural and historical interpretations.

Originality/value

Drama, as a methodological approach, has, the authors suggest, the potential to move beyond disembodied and abstract mental processes and to draw out of the closets the interpersonal relationships that have historically been seen as dangerous or disturbing.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Kate Pahl and Tarquam McKenna

515

Abstract

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Article
Publication date: 2 February 2015

Marcelle Cacciattolo, Mark Vicars and Tarquam McKenna

The Ethical Borgs are a fictional panel of a set of people who have the task of attending to the manner in which research “should” occur. The scenario is a series of…

Abstract

Purpose

The Ethical Borgs are a fictional panel of a set of people who have the task of attending to the manner in which research “should” occur. The scenario is a series of “fictionalised encounters” between two researchers presenting their research proposals to the panel for approval. The purpose of this paper is to revisit and play out two researchers’ individual and collective experiences of gaining ethical clearance as emergent researchers. The tension of their place and status in academia drives their identity.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is presented in the form of a short play. The focus is on the manner in which the performance of the academic self as researcher can be impeded or assisted by the deliberations of the “Ethical Borgs”. These fictional encounters demonstrate the tension of being located in the in-between worlds of researchers in-waiting who need to negotiate their roles and whose ethical anxieties are critiqued through the lens of the “naive inquirer” the “too hard don’t touch inquirer” and the “medicalised” lens inquirer.

Findings

The major themes examined in this paper address how the Ethical Borgs increasingly exercise power and have authority to authorise social inquiry.

Originality/value

Questions that are also raised include what academic approval is required to inquire? How does a naive inquirer manoeuvre his or her way through institutionalised and bureaucratic procedures?

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Paul Gilchrist, Claire Holmes, Amelia Lee, Niamh Moore and Neil Ravenscroft

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential and durability of arts practice as research through developing a new approach to arts research that challenges the…

2594

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential and durability of arts practice as research through developing a new approach to arts research that challenges the conventional association between dominant constructions of community and dominant modes of research.

Design/methodology/approach

A co-design approach, situated in arts practice, has been used to generate a conceptual framework that offers potential to open up the workings of communities by examining them from the standpoint of those who have everyday experience of these communities.

Findings

The paper argues that there can no longer be clearly demarcated boundaries between “academics” and “community partners” in a genuinely co-designed arts research process. Rather, there are “research partners” who share mutual recognition of skills and experiences that allow them to commit to a durable “new creative scholarship” that reflects their collective identities.

Social implications

The conceptual framework celebrates the life stories of individuals at the expense of the grand metanarratives favoured by empirical sociology and mainstream humanities. The framework reflects the commitment of the authors to create accounts of communities that do justice to their collective wisdom, dynamism and connectivity, as well as their transience, their needs to transform and their responses to change, in ways that reflect the lives of those involved rather than the needs of externally imposed disciplinary regimes.

Originality/value

The conceptual framework is a new approach to qualitative research; its value lies in putting the participants at the heart of the research process where they not only generate narrative, but also situate, mediate and remediate it in ways that extend conventional participative research practices.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Abbey MacDonald and Timothy Moss

The purpose of this paper is to offer a picture of the relationship the researchers perceive between the art and research practices, unravelling the ways the authors shape and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to offer a picture of the relationship the researchers perceive between the art and research practices, unravelling the ways the authors shape and inform enactment of a purposeful nexus between art making and research.

Design/methodology/approach

A hybridised methodology is adopted, where methods integral to narrative inquiry and a/r/tography are drawn together to generate a series of “pictures” of the interplay between research and artistry. Through exploration of critical events, creative prose and artefacts, the paper unfolds the parallels perceived and tensions encountered between the approaches to making art and conducting research.

Findings

Borders can create a sense of calm and safety in allowing us to organise and contain information or matter, but they are also provocative in their potential to be crossed. Through this work, the authors chart the borders of the art making and research, and how, why and when these borders might be traversed to augment the integrity of both practices. In unfolding and examining the experiences and the perceptions thereof, the authors articulate ways in which the authors find arts practice to enrich and inhibit the research, and vice versa.

Originality/value

Of particular value in this paper is the way in which the authors not only tell of the experiences as artists and researchers, but also show these experiences through a/r/tographic methods. As such this paper presents an approach to research that is generative, suggesting rather than concluding and challenging rather than resolving, and ultimately offering multiple avenues for artistic and analytic insight.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Bethan Marshall and Kate Pahl

– The purpose of this paper is to consider the dynamics of submitting arts-based research in a climate that is dominated, in the UK, by the social sciences.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider the dynamics of submitting arts-based research in a climate that is dominated, in the UK, by the social sciences.

Design/methodology/approach

It begins by taking a view on arts-based research, considering mainly Eisner and Dewey but exploring the possibilities of other forms such as baroque research. It goes on to look at some examples of arts-based research that has been carried out, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The authors conclude by saying that interdisciplinary research, while being encouraged by research councils, is also made more difficult by these same research councils’ funding structures.

Findings

The authors consider that this has an effect on defining what educational research is and could be. The authors argue that this is important not only in relation to the range of disciplinary perspectives that can be drawn upon within educational settings, for example, the need to engage with disciplines such as English, History, Philosophy, Music and Fine Art, but also in relation to methodological understandings of how research should be conducted within educational settings.

Originality/value

The research studies are arts based but with an original educational orientation.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Anne Douglas and Melehat Nil Gulari

The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: in what sense does experimentation as improvisation lead to methodological innovation? What are the implications…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: in what sense does experimentation as improvisation lead to methodological innovation? What are the implications of artistic experimentation as improvisation for education and learning?

Design/methodology/approach

The paper tracks the known concept within research of “experimentation” with a view to revealing how practice-led research in art works distinctively with experimentation. It proposes experimentation as improvisation drawing on a research project Sounding Drawing 2012 as an example. The paper situates art experimentation as improvisation in art (Cage, 1995) anthropology (Hallam and Ingold, 2007; Bateson, 1989) and the theoretical work of Arnheim (1986) on forms of cognition.

Findings

Arts research as improvisation is participatory, relational and performative retaining the research subject in its life context. The artist as researcher starts with open-ended critical questions for which there are no known methods or immediate answer. By setting up boundary conditions from the outset and understanding the situatedness and contingencies of those conditions, the artist as improviser seeks ways of not only avoiding chaos and the arbitrary but also being trapped by what is already known.

Originality/value

This approach is important within and beyond the arts because it consciously draws together different forms of cognition – intuition and relational knowledge and also sequential knowledge. It is also significant because it offers a different epistemology in which new knowledge emerges in the relationship between participants in the research taking form in co-creation. These qualities all position improvisation as a research paradigm and a counterpoint to positivism.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Abigail Hackett, Steve Pool, Jennifer Rowsell and Barsin Aghajan

The purpose of this paper is to report on video making in two different contexts within the Community Arts Zone research project, an international research project concerned with…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report on video making in two different contexts within the Community Arts Zone research project, an international research project concerned with the connections between arts, literacy and the community.

Design/methodology/approach

At one project site, researchers and parents from the community filmed their children making dens with an artist. At another site, a professional film crew filmed young people engaged in arts practice in school settings.

Findings

In both cases, researchers, artists and community participants collaborated to do research and make video. This paper discusses the ways that this work was differently positioned at the two sites. These different positionings had implications for the meaning ascribed to video making from the point of view of the participants, researchers and artists involved.

Originality/value

By drawing on perspectives of researchers and artists, the paper explores implications for video making processes within ethnographic research. These include a need for awareness of the diversity and fragmentation of the fields of both visual research and visual arts practice. In addition, the relationship between research and the visual is unfolding in a context in which the digital is increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life. Therefore the authors argue for the need for researchers and artists to explore their epistemological assumptions with regards to video and film, and to consider the role of the digital in the lives of their participants. The coming together of these positions and experiences is what constructs the meaning of the digital and visual in the field.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Helen Graham, Katie Hill, Tessa Holland and Steve Pool

This paper comes from workshop activities and structured reflection by a group of artists and researchers who have been using artistic practice within research projects aimed at…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper comes from workshop activities and structured reflection by a group of artists and researchers who have been using artistic practice within research projects aimed at enabling researchers to collaborate with communities. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Three out of four in the group have a practicing creative background and their own studio/workshop space.

Findings

Artists are often employed – whether in schools or research projects – to run workshops; to bring a distinctive set of skills that enable learning or collaboration to take place. In this paper the authors reflect on the different meanings and connotations of “workshop” – as noun (as a place where certain types of activity happen, a bounded space) and a verb (to work something through; to make something together). From there the authors will then draw out the different principles of what artistic practice can offer towards creating a collaborative space for new knowledge to emerge.

Research limitations/implications

Key ideas include different repertories of structuring to enable different forms of social interaction; the role of materal/ality and body in shifting what can be recognised as knowing; and the skills of “thinking on your feet”, being responsive and improvising.

Originality/value

The authors will conclude by reflecting on aspects to consider when developing workshops as part of collaborative research projects.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 June 2023

Janine Aldous Arantes and Mark Vicars

The purpose of this paper is to examine how automation in the ever-changing technological landscape is increasing integrated into, and has become a significant presence in, our…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how automation in the ever-changing technological landscape is increasing integrated into, and has become a significant presence in, our personal lives.

Design/methodology/approach

Through post qualitative inquiry, the authors provide a contemplation of automation and its effect on creativity, as a contemporary expression of dis/locations, the simulacrum, performative work and a toxic digital presence in socio-cultural-technical spaces.

Findings

The authors discuss how we behave, contribute, explore, interact and communicate within and across automated digital platforms, has salience for understanding and questioning the ways that dominant discourses in the contemporary construction and enactment of subjectivity, creativity and agency are being modulated by the machine.

Originality/value

This paper offers a nuanced consideration of creativity, by considering the way creativity is being performed and situated within the effects of automation and its role in dis/locations, performative work and its potential as a the simulacrum in socio-cultural-technical spaces.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 23 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

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