The power of narrative storytelling: How podcasts as an arts-based practice enhance solidarity and social activism in adult education

Abstract

This article emerges from a podcast hosted by a Centre for Migration at a Canadian University in 2021. In this discussion, we explore how podcasts offer a unique and often under-researched arts-based medium that can be used as a form of creative expression to tell stories, build dialogue, and create solidarity. We argue that podcasts offer benefits and learning not only to the listeners but also to participants who are part of the creation process. Drawing upon direct quotes from the podcast and qualitative reflections from the podcast interviewees, this collaboratively written article examines how the podcast stimulates activism and access to deeper understandings and collectively made meanings around the lived experiences of migration. It sheds light upon the less-researched emotional and participatory dimensions of arts-based podcast-making, teaching, and research in adult education. We conclude that the podcast created spaces of disruption, public pedagogy, and praxis.

Keywords:

• Participatory meaning-making
• arts-based research
• podcasting
• migration
• solidarity and adult education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).