A Practical Guide to Arts-related Research

A Practical Guide to Arts-related Research

Maggi Savin-Baden Coventry University, UK

and

Katherine Wimpenny Coventry University, UK

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6209-813-8 (paperback) ISBN: 978-94-6209-814-5 (hardback) ISBN: 978-94-6209-815-2 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2014 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

For our supportive husbands John and Steve and our patient children Anna, Zak, Thomas, Harry and Elliot

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction xiii

Chapter 1 Arts-related Research 1

Chapter 2 The History and Development of Arts-related Research 15

Chapter 3 Undertaking Arts-related Research 27

Chapter 4 What Are Arts-related Methods? 45

Chapter 5 Issues of Analysis, Interpretation and Representation 63

Chapter 6 Ethics in Arts-related Research 81

Chapter 7 Using Arts-related Research in Different Disciplines and Contexts 97

Chapter 8 Digital Art(s) and Digital Métissage 113

Chapter 9 New Cartographies for Arts-related Research 127

Conclusion 143

Notes on Contributors 145

References 149

Index 163

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank all those artists, researchers and practitioners from around the globe who have added their contributions to this book, which makes it a much richer text than our voices alone. Our thanks are also due to John Savin-Baden for proof reading the text and Gemma Tombs for checking and formatting it. Any mistakes are thus our own .

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep

Shakespeare (1610) The Tempest Act 1V Scene 1

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INTRODUCTION

This book emerged out of our interest in, and encounters with, those working in arts-related fields wanting to undertake research in a variety of ways. As researchers our stories both overlap and collide with arts-related research and it was the troublesomeness and challenge of such intersections that prompted us to write this book. At the same time, our stories and researcher lives also sit at the interstices of inquiry-based learning, arts-informed research and more traditional forms of qualitative inquiry:

Maggi: My interest in research methodology stemmed from teaching a research methods course at Glasgow University in the early 1990s, just after a number of new textbooks had been published. As a lecturer, the challenge I faced was working with Master’s students who were undertaking collaborative and participatory research in areas of poverty, homelessness and low literacy, and yet the texts available provided little practical guidance or help. As a result I spent many years studying what was on offer and trying to make it inspiring and useful, particularly for first year students who hated learning about research. Today, having been a researcher for over 25 years, I tend to use the most appropriate methodology for the issues I am studying, but I remain convinced that qualitative studies needed to be positioned and located properly in terms of methodology and philosophy. My interest in arts-related research began through colleagues in medicine in the late 1990s. More recently I was asked to evaluate an arts-based intervention for older people that was being introduced by our local theatre in Coventry, UK. This evaluation was the catalyst for exploring how I might use arts-related research to evaluate an arts-based intervention. As I devised the evaluation and read around the subject, it became apparent that there are many examples of arts-related research, but relatively little philosophical positioning, methodological stance or guidance on how to undertake it in practice. Although I realised that those in the arts focus strongly on process and the creation of the work, and perhaps more importantly do not wish to be pinned down and boxed in, what did seem to me to be important was that they could argue their position in rigorous ways. For me this has been the focus of this text, to provide clear arguments and rigorous places to stand for those undertaking arts-related research. Yet I have been concerned that leading edge researchers and artists continue to struggle to have their work valued. Researchers such as Harrison, Leggo and Weaver Hightower, all mentioned in this text, have found that the rigours of expectation and academic life have often stood in the way of their creativity, which seems to me to be creating spaces of confusion and injustice in arts-related research.

Katherine: Having worked as an occupational therapist for 10 years in health followed by 10 years as a lecturer and now as a research fellow in higher education, my interest in arts-related research has arisen from multiple layers of experience, not

INTRODUCTION

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least through my own creative practice and insights from arts processes that have informed my belief, following Reilly (1962), in how the use of our hands, mind and will can influence our health and creatively can deploy our thinking, feeling and purposes.

I have a particular interest in participatory and collaborative approaches within qualitative inquiry whereby learning with co-participants is reciprocal, where participants are not kept at a distance and where perspectives and viewpoints can be explored through the research process to address, question and promote issues about, for example, social justice and citizenship. I have realised how the written word alone restricts what can be known and shared about a phenomena, especially when as the researcher I have appreciated the complexity of data gathered. Using the arts and the artistic process has enlivened my research practice and enabled me to enrich, deepen and expand the ways in which I explore, question and open up conversations with research participants, whilst also leaving space for the viewer to add to the picture, which sits well when considering the complexity of human life and experience. For me this text has provided opportunity to further explore and share my enthusiasm and practice in conducting robust arts-related research and importantly to provide support to other researchers considering its use.

As two women writers, both with husbands and children, who work full time, as well as run, cook and create, we seek to make our values as researchers evident. We share common ground in terms of valuing the importance of researcher stance, reflexivity, diversity of meaning and ways to celebrate diverse means of expression.

This text will outline the principles and practices of arts-related inquiry and provide both suggestions about conducting research in the field as well as case study examples. The ideas presented here have emerged from our own experiences of undertaking arts-related research and the challenges of implementing these approaches with little guidance. The book therefore draws on personal research, practice and experience. This book also addresses the concerns academics increasingly appear to be voicing, about developing the scholarship and practice of arts-related research. There is a need for greater attention to, and clarity on, issues of theoretical positioning, methodology and methods when conducting robust and reputable art-related research, which this book undertakes. Through this book we will therefore argue that arts-related inquiry:

– Is a rich, creative, exciting, yet complex field of inquiry which requires greater consideration of the art / research / researcher and researched relationships than it has done to date.

– Is an area that requires further depth and detail to support those new to the field of inquiry in questioning theoretical and methodological fits, and adopting the most appropriate methods.

– Requires greater consideration of the process and products of inquiry, including issues of analysis, interpretation and representation of arts-informed inquiry, and the extent to which it lends itself to collaborative inquiry.