Art/Research International (Journal)
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Social Practice as Arts-based Methodology: Exploring Participation, Multiplicity, and Collective Action as Elements of Inquiry
No full textClaims that the arts are a kind of research is nothing new, finding relevance for scholars in the social sciences and the arts (Barone & Eisner, 2011; Cahnmann Taylor & Siegesmund, 2018; Leavy, 2019, 2009; Sullivan, 2005). Given that art is continuously being reimagined, it follows that arts-based research takes into account contemporary artistic processes and materials and the theories, aesthetic philosophies and contexts that shape them. In this paper, this author considers socially engaged art in the context of arts-based research and raises the question, what can be learned from social practice as an arts-based methodology? The work of three socially engaged artists are referenced to demonstrate how distinct qualities associated with social practice, such as shared participation, multiplicity, and collective action offer new considerations for arts-based research that aims to bring about social change
A SET OF VILLANELLES IN RESPONSE TO: (RE)BIRTHING THE FEMININE IN ACADEME (EDITED BY LINDA HENDERSON, ALISON L. BLACK, AND SUSANNE GARVIS)
No full textIn this review of (Re)birthing the feminine in academe: Creating spaces of motherhood in patriarchal contexts (2020) edited by L. Henderson, A. L. Black and S.Garvis), I take a poetic-is-personal-is-political approach in the form of a series of villanelles. Villanelle is a highly structured poetic form comprised of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The fixed form of the villanelle is taken in this review to represent the highly structured and strictured institution of the university and yet turned around and made subversive through a creative and critical feminist language of maternity—much like the villanus origins of the word itself
THE TWO FACES OF LEADERSHIP: AN (ETHNO)DRAMA OF THE PRINCIPALSHIP
No full textLeadership has two faces: an outward-facing, public, performative dimension as well as an inward-facing, private aspect. The emotional labour performed ‘behind the scenes’ by leaders often remains hidden from observation. Nevertheless, it exacts a toll on their wellbeing. Opportunities to gain insights into the socio-emotional toll experienced by leaders are therefore limited. This arts-based research stages that oft hidden drama in the form of a five character one-act play, or ethnodrama, created from anonymized data generated from semi-structured interviews with school principals in Canada. The data was first coded using emotional codes developed from the positive and negative affect schedule [PANAS] (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The most pronounced affects were incorporated into an original ethnodrama using the interview data and were subsequently validated by readers of the final artistic product. Stakeholders in education, leadership or the arts might engage in ethnotheatre, through performing or witnessing this work, to understand the hidden dynamism of the socio-emotional toll of school leadership. This article offers insights into the transdisciplinary intersections between leadership education and arts-based research, followed by the full script of the ethnodrama, and concludes with a description of the unique process through which data generated from classic, qualitative methods was artfully fashioned into The Two Faces of Leadership
Exploring the Transformative Effects of Flow on Children’s Liminality and Trauma
No full textThe process of creating art seems to be a healing as much as an expressive practice for children. Not only are art activities recognized as a necessity for children’s cognitive development, but also as a voice to express the trauma of their distressing experiences. The following article is based on art making as an effective trauma intervention therapy, adding to previous knowledge of childhood trauma and liminality for teachers and health community services. In our diverse, fast changing, challenging times, we need to encourage reflecting and utilising social justice in professionalism to achieve lasting changes in society. Therefore, the authors investigated the concept of “liminality” (a phase of change, transition and transformation) as a framework for understanding how the process of art making soothes “childhood trauma.” Recent research has revealed that the beneficial effects of drawing are due to children entering a time and phase of liminality. Emotions and states such as despair, depression and fear, accompanied by intuitive knowledge, memory, resilience and wellness might be experienced. This leads to an integrative process: while children are drawing, they are completely engaged in a non-verbal activity which needs their total involvement, concentration, imagination and creativity. The healing effect of drawing while in the flow, which helps children with trauma, has been translated from research findings into a poem. This unique contribution to the literature on art therapy’s transformative effects summarizes the results of the above study
With (Violent) Love: Seeing Mental Images Getting Lost and Resurface
No full textConcepts fundamental to our (personal) systems of belief and behaviour are crumbling and falling to dust — just because we truly exit our comfort zone. These lost ideas then do transform and, after being newly informed, become as such unfamiliar but promisingly altered concepts. In our correspondence we want to acknowledge the following: that what is getting overwritten through communal and multi-perspective experience is always more promising (not yet better!) than what vanished the moment when it mismatched (our individual) ideas and lost its capacity of sense-making. Our conversation is a plea for considering mental images as going through a process of “getting born,” consolidating, dominating, corrupting and eventually losing any (convincing) agency altogether. Such a consideration is never free of devastating frustration, deep disappointment and the possible darkness of depression darkness of depression but has the power of freeing us up — moreover — freeing us from previously functioning ways of doing and thinking. Those ways might have held something in our place that freakishly doesn’t make sense in other places. We end with a call for not only rethinking and redefining authorship in discussions and on paper but finally act accordingly
HOME AS POEM: THE ARTISTIC AND METHODOLOGICAL POSSIBILITIES OF A POETICS OF SPACE
No full textWhat does it mean to be home? We began asking this provocative question well before COVID-19, well before the collective crisis the world experienced which sent both of us back into our current homes. Exploring such a question through poetry writing may provide insights about individuals’ lived experiences, and, therefore, we contend it is worthwhile for scholars, artists and educators to widen possibilities for poetic method and craft related to writing about home. In this paper, we, two poets, arts-based education scholars, and Pittsburgh natives, offer pathways into exploring notions of home through the writing of poetry grounded in the ideas of Gaston Bachelard’s (1958/1964) seminal text, The Poetics of Space. To do so, we each offer and discuss two original poems on the topic of home to illustrate a number of compelling avenues scholars and research participants; educators and students might explore as they write poems evoking their own unique conceptions of home
TRAUMA-SENSITIVE PEDAGOGY & PRACTICE NEWSLETTER 2 (OF 2)
No full textThis publication is the second of two newsletters published in this issue of Art/Research International. This newsletter is followed by a commentary and references for both newsletters.
Funding from Research Impact Canada, VP Research & Innovation University of Alberta and the Kule Institute for Advanced Study mobilized evidence-informed knowledge from “Image, Body, and Voice: Supporting Girls’ Sense of Wellbeing,” a participatory poetic inquiry with grade-6 girls in an inner-city school in Alberta, through professional community engagement. At an afternoon workshop, held during spring break with in- service teachers, leaders, and parents/guardians, activities central to the research were shared for the goal of generating mutual benefit skills and knowledge. It offered experiential opportunities, including the creation of mini body maps, and a combination of strategies to support mental wellness, including culturally aware methods for diverse populations, intended for social inclusion and freedom from discrimination and violence.
Newsletter 2, as research creation artifact, sought to support teachers, leaders, and families during the onset of COVID-19, when K-12 education moved to on-line delivery and health regulations required social distancing. The content shared beyond “Image, Body, & Voice” sought to support school staff and families through information about compassion fatigue, soul weariness, the power of play, the centrality of the body in healing, emotional regulation and traumatic events. This newsletter is one of two research documents provided as follow up to the attendees of both funded events
What Can Art Do? A Review of Bridging Communities through Socially Engaged Art Edited by Alice Wexler and Vida Sabbaghi
No full textMy review of Bridging Communities Through Socially Engaged Art (2019), looks at this collection of case-studies and practical examples, mainly from the United States, read by a Northern-European reviewer. The book presents twenty-seven inspiring project examples from artistic practice, art education, art dissemination and art therapy. This review looks at some chapters, representing different sections of the book: Museums and Cultural Institutions in Diverse Communities, Art Pedagogy in Diverse Communities, Critical Race and Gender Perspectives, and DIS/ability Justice and Outsiders. The included chapters of the volume are mainly authored by practicing professionals and offer both concrete descriptions and reflections. The dire situation of charged political and contextual conditions was a sub-text in my reading. As a conclusion, I found this book a rewarding and inspirational experience to be recommended for students and decision-makers
An Ekphrastic Review of Ilona Pappene Demecs and Evonne Miller\u27s "Woven Narratives: A Craft Encounter with Tapestry Weaving in a Residential Ages Care Facility
No full textThe visual poem, “The loom,” is an ekphrastic response to Ilona Pappne Demecs’s article “Woven Narratives: A Craft Encounter with Tapestry Weaving in a Residential Ages Care Facility.” By drawing words and phrases from Demec’s article, the author wove a word tapestry, in a technique learnt from a child in a South Auckland primary school in New Zealand
Teaching Writing: Fragments of a Poet’s Credo
No full textAuthor’s abstract: I have been in school since I was four years old. Now, at the age of sixty-five, I look back on a long life spent in classrooms, as a learner and a school teacher and a professor of education, and I am filled with amazement that I have grown old! I was probably in my thirties before I began to understand how education always occurs in communities of teachers and learners who teach and learn from one another, who search and research together. As a beginning teacher, I wavered between feeling powerless and powerful. On the one hand, I assumed that I was in control in the classroom; I was the primary decision-maker. But, on the other hand, I typically expected educational experts to tell me what I should do. I depended on the stipulations of school administrators, the publications of professors, and the professional development workshops of school district consultants to guide, convince, and inspire me in my teaching. And, now that I’ve been a professor for a long time, I also know that professors don’t really know very much. They might profess a lot, but they know the searching is always in process, returning to the beginning of the search again and again in order to know the quests and the questions in lively other ways. As scholars, theorists, artists, and educators, we need to attend to language. We need to attend to etymology, diction, grammar, syntax, metaphors, and interpretation. All my life I have been enamoured with the necromancy of the alphabet, the magic of spelling, the alchemy of grammar, the mystery of books—the potent fecundity of language. I am always seeking connections to scholars who are committed to provoking scholarship with heartful and artful dedication.
Editor’s Preface: With the permission of his family, we are honoured to publish posthumously “Teaching Writing: Fragments of a Poet’s Credo” by Carl Leggo. Carl submitted this piece to Art/Research International on January 28, 2019, only five and a half weeks before he passed from his physical being and life on Earth. Even as he “dwell[ed] daily in the space between living and dying” with cancer, Carl graciously offered earnest reflections about writing, poetry, and living well in the world: “fragments and suggestions from [his] credo …what [he has] given [his] heart to.” His wise words, always inspiring, are ever more precious now, a living reminder of the poet, teacher, and scholar he was and always will be to so many of his colleagues, friends, and students: thoughtful, erudite, generous, kind, courageous, vulnerable—and steadfastly hopeful. “Teaching Writing: Fragments of a Poet’s Credo” is rich ground to return to again and again: a succinct articulation of Carl’s ways of living poetically in the world, all threaded through with insights from some of his favourite authors. May “Teaching Writing” reverberate among Carl’s many poems, articles, and books—and more widely, among the writings of those who share his he(art)ful path in the academy. May these ever widening and deepening reverberations bring healing and benefit to many.
- Susan Walsh, Ph.D