AED 815 – Exploration 2 – Arts-based research – Blog Entry 2

Collaborative visual inquiry is an ideal tool through which to activate social change. On Page 4 of Arts-based Research as Social Justice Activism (2011), Keifer-Boyd notes, “ It may be that arts-based inquiry offers visual language forms that crack the hermetic seal of hegemonic perceptions.” In other words, visual language can transcend cultural and socio-economic barriers when people are faced with subordinate social positions. Through arts-based inquiry, these people can be given voice. In the aforementioned article, Keifer-Boyd (2011) identifies five perspectives from which to approach arts-based research as social activism. Here, I will examine two of these perspectives in relation to Karen Hutzel’s Participatory Action Research in Art Education: Possibilities for Social Change Through Collaborative Visual Inquiry (2014). These two approaches have been chosen particularly because together they will constitute my Arts-based research method.

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a “research methodology that seeks transformation and social change through collaboration and community building” (Hutzel, 2014 In M. L. Buffington & S. Wilson McKay Eds. 2014 p. 266). PAR is a moral approach to problem driven research that puts researchers/educators and community/students on par with each other. By gaining local knowledge, you can become more intimately familiar with the problem. Here, participants are setting the agenda giving them control. Thus, you gain the trust of the participants and forge an alliance with the classroom or community. Keifer-Boyd’s arts-inquiry approach serves this mission well. Arts-inquiry involves “a reconstitution of self, by listening to and witnessing another’s experience.” (Keifer-Boyd, K. (2011). Arts-based research as social justice activism: Insight, inquiry, imagination, embodiment, relationality. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(1), pg.9). The basic premise is that by researching a particular artist’s work, process and overall practice in a collaborative setting you can learn more about each other and the final project will reveal results that can lead to social change. It is proposed by Hutzel (2014) p. 267 that to affect social change in the classroom on an issue like bullying, perhaps making a collaborative art piece could be an option. She suggests a quilt. Here, the arts-inquiry model is applied by identifying an artist who uses quilting as their medium and studying their particular process as a group. “Collaborative artmaking shares common ideals with PAR due to its emphasis on collaboration, social critique, activism and social justice.”(Hutzel, 2014 In M. L. Buffington & S. Wilson McKay Eds. 2014 p. 270).

Likewise, Keifer-Boyd’s fifth face of Arts-based research, arts-relationality can be used in the context of a PAR approach. Arts-relationality is simply “living one’s research as artist/teacher/researcher.” (Keifer-Boyd, K. (2011). Arts-based research as social justice activism: Insight, inquiry, imagination, embodiment, relationality. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(1), pg.14). At the outset of the project, it should be stressed by the artist/educator/researcher that the lessons learned through the PAR approach can be applied to life outside of the classroom. By relating to the work you created together in this micro setting and sharing it publicly, you can find common ground with others on a macro level. With this approach, there is no separation between artist/researcher and everyday living. Returning to the quilt project proposed by Hutzel (2014) p.270, the final quilt could be displayed in the community to promote positive messages about diversity. On display, it is a living example of the results of the research that apply to a larger social issue. Response from the community at large will stand to prove that art and life are interchangeable.

It should be addressed that although I focused on just two of five facets of arts-based research identified by Keifer-Boyd (2011) there are many intersections between all five that can be explored. To finalize, “the stances toward arts-based research diverge in how aesthetic inquiry is understood, and in how the contiguous relationships between art, research and teaching are performed.” (Keifer-Boyd, K. (2011). Arts-based research as social justice activism: Insight, inquiry, imagination, embodiment, relationality. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(1), pg.15).

References

Keifer-Boyd, K. (2011). Arts-based research as social justice activism: Insight, inquiry, imagination, embodiment, relationality. International Review of Qualitative Research, 5(1), 3-19.

Hutzel, K. (2014). Participatory action research in art education: Possibilities for social change through collaborative visual inquiry. In M. L. Buffington & S. Wilson McKay (Eds.), Practice theory: Seeing the power of teacher researchers (pp. 266-270). Reston, VA: The National Art Education Association

Problem Statement

Through a collaborative visual inquiry into my own studio practice, I, as collaborative mentor will expose diversity issues in a classroom of upper level high school art students over the course of two weeks or the expanse of time required to create individual pieces of an ultimately collective installation. The final product will document the diversity of the group and uncover similarities in order to bring attention to diversity issues in the larger community.