Arts-based Research and Participatory Research

Arts-based Research

If you have a passion for the arts and/or a creative spirit, whether you are a practicing artist or not, the prospect of integrating art in your educational research process, either at the master’s or doctoral level, might intrigue you.

Arts-based research is an emerging approach to qualitative research that brings together scholarly inquiry and creative processes. Arts-based research makes use of artistic processes and forms in one or more stages of the research process – as a topic of inquiry: inquiring into an art work or a creative process; or for generating, interpreting or representing research. Researchers in various disciplines have found in the arts, be it theatre, film, painting, poetry, drawing, sculpture, photography, dance, play writing, music, digital arts, design, quilting, weaving, beadwork, or any other of the myriad of available art forms, appropriate methods for addressing the questions they are compelled to ask. The arts allow researchers and/or participants to explore questions and express understandings not necessarily accessible or re-presentable through other means. Arts-based research is particularly suited to human inquiry where human experience and interaction are valued. It allows for personal, emotional, experiential and embodied expressions of knowledge. Art is seen as a way of knowing and the creative process as a way of making meaning. Arts-based research values alternative ways of knowing, indigenous knowledge and the participatory creation of knowledge.

The Department of Secondary Education offers a course in arts-based research (EDSE 612) open to graduate students across disciplines.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation funded Interdisciplinary Arts-based Research Studio (4-104 Education North) is a newly renovated state-of-the-art facility suitable for various forms of arts-based research creation and presentation.

Participatory Research

Participatory research is a new paradigm approach for community-based research ideally involving participants as co-researchers in all stages of the research process. Participatory research is viewed as a means of producing knowledge as well as a tool for education, the raising of consciousness, mobilization for action and for the amplification of perspectives from the margins. Grounded in a participatory worldview, participatory research is concerned with developing practical knowing for human purposes with a focus on social action and social justice. By bringing together action and reflection, theory and practice in participation with others, participatory research produces reflective knowledge, which helps people to name their world and so to change their world.

Note: A combined participatory arts-based research approach is also possible.