Arts-based co-production in participatory research: harnessing creativity in the tension between process and product

Abstract

Background: In participatory research approaches, co-researchers and university researchers aim to co-produce and disseminate knowledge across difference in order to contribute to social and practice change as well as research. The approaches often employ arts-based research methods to elicit experiential, embodied, affective, aesthetic ways of knowing. The use of arts-based research in co-production in participatory research is embedded in a contested discursive terrain. Here, it is embroiled in political struggles for legitimacy revolving around what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts.<br/>Aims and objectives: The aim is to present and illustrate the use of a theoretical framework for analysing the complexities of co-production in the nexus between arts and research – with a focus on the overarching tension between cultivating the collaborative, creative process and producing specific research results. The article maps out the contested discursive terrain of arts-based co-production, and illustrates the use of the theoretical framework in analysis of a participatory research project about dance for people with Parkinson’s disease and their spouses.<br/>Methods: The theoretical framework combines Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue, Foucault’s theory of power/knowledge and discourse, Wetherell’s theory of affect and emotion, and work in arts-based research on embodied, affective, aesthetic knowing.<br/>Results: The analysis shows how arts-based processes of co-production elicit embodied, emotional, aesthetic knowing and with what consequences for the research-based knowledge and other outputs generated.<br/>Discussion and conclusions: Trying to contribute to both research and practice entails navigating in a discursive terrain in which criteria for judging results, outputs and impact are often defined across conflicting discourses.<br/><br/>Key messages<br/>There is a dearth of detailed analyses of the potentials and challenges arising in arts-based co-production.<br/><br/>The article offers a theoretical framework for analysing the tension between cultivating collaborative, creative processes and generating specific results.<br/><br/>It explores how arts-based co-production elicits embodied, emotional, aesthetic knowing, and with what consequences for the results.

Exploring the value and role of creative practices in research co-production

“…A few papers framed their notions of co-production and creative practices within the social justice work of Paulo Freire (Leonard and McLaren, 2002). Among these, some built on the traditions of participatory action research (MacGregor et al, 2022) and participatory arts-based methods (Phillips et al, 2022) or creative action research (Potts et al, 2022), while another drew on Freire's political activism by using Forum Theatre (one of three participatory drama methodologies known collectively as 'Theatre of the Oppressed') (Beckett et al, 2022).…”

“…The penultimate research paper (Spaa et al, 2022) takes a slightly different slant, picking up on the reflective qualities of creative practices used in design, suggesting that these are important qualities to bring into policy co-design. The final research paper (Phillips et al, 2022) presents a theoretical framework for analysis of arts-informed co-production methods.…”

“…We can go back to the work of Henderson (1991) to see a fantastic articulation of the boundary-spanning value of drawings and illustrations, and the origins of these modes of sharing knowledge within the design and engineering disciplines. Yet this issue reveals much broader modes of creative expression, with examples in almost every paper from Beckett et al's (2022) use of Forum Theatre, creative writing or haikus used in Phillips et al (2022) or storytelling used by Thom et al (2022) and Adelle et al (2022) to projects that gave co-design partners freedom and variety in the choice of creative media, as in Webber et al (2022). The authors of this editorial had a real sense of the liberation and freedom that came with methods of expression that moved away from the restrictive idiom of words alone, and a sense of the expansion of thought and learning for those expressing and those taking it in.…”

“…Creative practices engage the whole body in forms of extended and affective cognition. As people perform, role play, or make images or artefacts to represent experiences, processes, systems or ideas, they inherently think with their whole body, all their senses and their emotions, perhaps more reflective of ways evidence would be employed in real-world behaviour and practice (Phillips et al, 2022;Beckett et al, 2022).…”

What “Coproduction” in Participatory Research Means From Participants’ Perspectives: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Inquiry

“…The project had two main aims: one was to generate knowledge about the possibilities and challenges which arise in the tensions in processes of co-production in participatory research; the other was to generate knowledge about the multiple meanings of Parkinson's dance as an integral part of everyday life. This article is one of several publications geared to the first aim (see also Phillips et al, 2022;. For publications geared to the second aim, see Christensen-Strynø et al (2021;Christensen-Strynø, Frølunde, et al, in press;Christensen-Strynø, Phillips, et al, in press) and Frølunde et al (in press).…”