Democratizing Knowledge through Teaching, Collecting, and Disseminating Arts-Based Research

Arts-based research methods (ABMs), which encompass methodologies ranging across photovoice, poetry, dance, applied theatre, digital storytelling, and puppetry (among others), often involve co-development of data generation alongside research participants to foster community building and sustainable community-researcher partnerships. ABMs offer creative opportunities across data collection and dissemination, inviting research participants and researchers to engage with findings in relatable, innovative, and transformative ways. As ABMs gain traction and recognition as democratizing and engaging forms of social work research, we see need for discussion on education and implementation of ABMs in social work research (especially as such methods span multiple artistic methods, purposes, and project contexts. In this roundtable, four social work scholars who have engaged in ABMs will share about their experiences across the spectrum employing AMBs from teaching, data collection, dissemination, and action. A longtime ABM scholar will serve as a discussant.

Education. Education for arts based and collaborative research requires decentering conventional approaches to scholarship that rarely incorporate movement, sound, or visual methods. Presenter one will share experiences teaching ABMs to students, practitioners, and community members that use participatory learning and co-learning approaches.

Data collection. Game-based inquiry involves the use of games as an innovative data collection method. Presenter two will share experiences of using game-based inquiry to involve recently housed young people in (re)imagining supportive third place (community) settings of the future, and the potential of game-based inquiry as both a data collection and community planning tool. This work further suggests that evaluations of rigor in ABMs should include engagement of participants.

Dissemination. Headphone verbatim theatre is a style of documentary theatre that seeks to transform narratives into performances often in the communities where the story is derived from. The third presenter will describe the process of translating interview data into short headphone verbatim theatrical pieces to engage and educate community members about how neighborhood change is impacting people's relationship to their neighbors and their community.

Action. Photovoice is a qualitative research method rooted in participatory action research that incorporates photography, analysis, group discussions, and action. While taking action is a key aspect of Photovoice projects, there is a limited understanding of what this action can and should look like. The final presenter will describe their own political action following photovoice projects as well as data from a mixed-methods study that delineates the program changes, policies, and outcomes university and community researchers implemented using photovoice data.

After sharing case examples, the discussant will facilitate dialogue around the challenges and possibilities of ABMs in social work research as a means to recenter and democratize knowledge. We will then invite roundtable attendees to engage in a discussion and gallery walk on ABMs: both sharing their own experience of employing ABMS, and the ways they imagine engaging them in the future (doing and dreaming gallery walk). Finally, we will end with identifying actions for our respective institutions and our field broadly, in meaningfully center ABMs; this may include the potential development of an ABM special interest group.