Arts Methods with Young People

1. 6 . A R T S M E T H O D S W I T H Y O U N G P E O P L E
• This section develops your understanding of Participatory Arts-
Based Research (PABR) approaches, specifically in relation to their
uptake with youth groups.
• Secondly, it outlines (some of the many) creative methods that can
potentially be used with young people.

2. PA R T I C I PAT O R Y A R T S -
B A S E D R E S E A R C H
From the openings that are created by arts research, people – just ordinary
people, you and me, researchers as participants and audiences – can implement
new visions of dignity, care, democracy, and […] ways of being in the
world. (Finley, 2005:689)
• PABR draws on the ideals of PR and Arts-based research, and thus views those
participating in arts-based inquiry as social activists (Finley, 2005).
• Arts-based methods have worked successfully for researchers working in PR
paradigms because of the inherently participatory, collaborative nature of
numerous arts practices (Leavy, 2017). Such practices include theatre, film,
photography, visual arts, narrative writing, music, and collage. There are a range
of methodologies and practices connected to these, such as
photovoice, videovoice, photo elicitation, videography, visual
ethnography, ethnocinema, ethnodrama, ethnotheatre, and art journaling (Leavy,

3. • Arts-based methods, art inquiry and creative orientations to producing research data are popular in
projects with excluded or traditionally marginalised groups. This is because of their potential for
emancipatory outcomes, and the way they enable develop alternative knowledges to be developed
and articulated through multimodal resources (Nind et al., 2012; Finley, 2005).
• The variation of multimodal resources offered in PABR offer more potential to engage with meaning
beyond the verbal practices of more traditional qualitative research methods such as interviews and
questionnaires (Leavy, 2017).
PA R T I C I PAT O R Y A R T S -
B A S E D R E S E A R C H : E M A N C I PAT O Y
P O T E N T I A L

4. • In terms of expressing and legitimising marginal knowledges (Freire, 1996),
arts practices are argued to connect and develop embodied knowledge
drawn from sensory experience (Fox, 2016).
• In this way, arts provide a new dimension through which to explore
individuals’ subjective realities, and when used with excluded
or marginalised groups, open up new discourses to challenge established
ones that may work to exclude or marginalise people in the first place.

5. PA R T I C I PAT O R Y A R T S - B A S E D R E S E A R C H
W I T H Y O U N G P E O P L E
• PR studies with young people have identified the liberating potential of arts-based practices in traditional education
contexts, where the different communication media of creative activities allowed young people to ‘try on’
new selves, and explore important aspects of their lives which the paradigm of their education context did not allow
for (Goessling, 2017; DeJonckheere et al., 2014; Nind et al., 2012; Holloway & Lecompte, 2001).
• The process of using art in research can provide alternative spaces which enable participants to critically inquire
into their contexts, and to express developing identities in relation to these (Goessling, 2017; Nind et al., 2012).
• Arts-based research projects with marginalised groups have also noted the benefits of creative activities as
cathartic ways to engage with emotional experiences (Finley, 2005). As outlined above, young people are a group
who can experience marginalization through the dominant social discourses that justify their regulation.

6. PA R T I C I PAT O R Y A R T S -
B A S E D R E S E A R C H A N D E D U C AT I O N
C O N T E X T S
• As mentioned earlier, education contexts are argued to be particularly fertile ground for arts-
based participatory methods with young people, because of the connections PABR has with the
interests of arts pedagogy.
• Finley sees an integral point of arts-based methods to be how they enable new ways of
understanding people and their contexts:
‘As an educator, I want children to learn early to become lifelong activists who are equipped for
guerilla warfare against oppression […] Performing social change begins with artful ways of seeing
and knowing ourselves and the world in which we live.’ (2005:692)

7. A C T I V I T I E S
Activity 1: Watch the first 3 sections of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rFa-wH6Gkc
• Note the advantages of arts-based research.
Activity 2: What are the connections between PABR and other PR
approaches you have learnt about in the previous sections?