Engaging with arts-based research: a story in three parts

ABSTRACT

Qualitative psychology researchers of today face numerous practical, ethical, political, and theoretical challenges. We have often asked ourselves how we might respond to these multiple and complex challenges. On our evolving research journeys, we have found that arts-based methodologies offer one effective response. In this article, we explore our experiences of doing arts-based research in psychological contexts, by sharing and reflecting on three short stories. The stories illustrate how each arts-based project has required of us three distinct waves of engagement: interdependent engagement with people and place, aesthetic engagement with sense making processes, and emotional engagement with and of audiences. We use the story form to evoke each wave of engagement because it allows us to communicate the qualities of that engagement without finalising, foreclosing, or restricting the variety of ways arts-based research might be conducted.

KEYWORDS:

• Arts-based research
• creativity
• critical psychology
• filmmaking
• qualitative research methods
• music
• narrative
• performative research
• songwriting

Acknowledgments

We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their generous and supportive responses to an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. Lyrics © D Carless 2005. See Douglas, K & Carless, D 2017, ‘We crossed the Tamar’, viewed 2 August 2017, <https://youtu.be/R4EGRN_bIw8>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kitrina Douglas

Kitrina Douglas is director of the Boomerang-Project, a member of the National Anti-doping Panel for Sport, and a part-time faculty member at Leeds Beckett University. Her research explores physical activity and mental health through narrative and arts-based methodologies.

David Carless

David Carless is a professor of narrative psychology at Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom. His research uses a range of arts-based, performative, and narrative methods to explore and communicate critical aspects of human experience such as identity development and mental health.