My initial reflection on the workshop was that it went ok. Students were engaged, we covered the areas I had outlined in the workshop plan, made decisions about next steps and how we were going to collect our reflections. I wrote a feedback column alongside the workshop plan immediately after the session. See document below.

Further Reflection

After speaking with my tutor, I reflected again on the workshop and how the process has been structured. While initially I thought I was using a loose framework of brief, design and make, which is a structure I have used in a lot of co-design projects, was allowing students/ participants to take ownership of the process. I think however, the first workshop failed to break down the student teacher relationship and rather than being a participatory research project, it felt like any other workshop.

My tutor gave me a useful reading, Participatory Action Research: Towards A More Fruitful Knowledge by Tom Wakeford and Javier Sanchez Rodriguez.

‘Rather than simply observing and studying, PAR tries to make sense of the world through collective efforts to transform it ‘

I found this sentence particularly helpful in adjusting my expectations from the process. I think I was perhaps too focussed on the output, what we would co-create, what we would show for our work, would it transform how we use the studio.  What we are really trying to achieve in this PAR, is just to make a small change in our studio – what that is, almost doesn’t matter. It is the process which counts. 

I think this is something I struggle with in general, particularly in academic style research. A lot of my work is action and results based, I quantify success based on results and fail to see the value in the process.

 This may seem obvious but has revealed how I value myself in the world around me, I quantify success based on results and fail to see the value in the process. In doing this I not only limit myself, but prevent myself from the freedom to explore, make mistakes and actively engage due to fear of failure. This is something I often see in students and try to correct, it is funny that we sometimes cannot practice what we preach.

In the text, they outline 4 guidelines and 15 practical questions for researchers engaging in PAR. I am going to apply these to my project in the hope that they might inform how I can adapt my approach to the workshops.

Guidelines:

i) Do not monopolise your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers.

ii) Do not trust elitist versions of history and science which respond to dominant interests, but be receptive to counter-narratives and try to recapture them.

iii) Do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, traits, beliefs, and arts for action by and with the research organisations.

iv) Do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly

understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals.

15 practical questions for institutionally-based researchers considering participatory and transdisciplinary approaches:

1. Where can I find a mentor in my use of participatory approaches who is trusted by those in the communities with whom I would like to work and, preferably, by sympathetic colleagues in the university?

I have my tutor from PGCert, my tutor group and my course leader. I also approached a collegue, Bridget Harvey, who has a practice based PhD in Repair-Making: Craft, Narratives, Activism, and runs workshops around materiality with students. In terms of those with experience in PAR, my tutor is my only source of direct advice.

• Who is ‘I’ or ‘we’ that is undertaking the participatory research?

I suppose this project is operating on two levels. I, who is undertaking this project as part of my ARP for the PG Cert. The ‘I’ is me creating a framework for these workshops and will be evaluating them for my ARP.

We, is self-selected students from the BA ISD course and myself. We are 15 in total. The ‘we’ part of this project is engaging in the three workshops which respond to the research question.

• Have those who have traditionally been excluded from research been included at the earliest possible stage?

Unlike many of the examples of PAR, I would say students as part of an academic institution are not traditionally excluded from research. Their involvement in the project is important because the research question relates to the space they inhabit as students. They are the users, hence why I think it makes sense for them to be co-researchers.

4. Can I persuade those with power over me to let me resist applying off-the-shelf research

methods and instead use creative forms such as visual arts, dance, performance, Theatre of the Oppressed, and folklorica?

I think the person with power over me, is me. We have been actively encouraged to explore other research methods. I think the problem is my own lack of understanding about what counts as research and being unable to guide the students in this, we seem to fall back to the methods we know. Perhaps I should find 5 examples of unconventional research methods, which I can show to the students in our next session.

Standing back from the detail above, our activities resonate with the wider field of creative research methods, which often aim for “combining both verbal, textual and visual” in “an integrated way” (Mannay, 2016, p. 3). Across our journey, we variously gathered, made, and used a range of creative materials including objects, personal stories and memories, hand-drawn sketches, artifact assemblages, video and audio recordings, photographic images, reflective fieldnotes, and interview transcripts. Collaborative acts of gathering, making, and displaying these materials—with each other and participants—were both prompts for facilitating, and outcomes arising from, the research process. These materials, and the acts of jointly crafting them, prompted people to discuss what and what not to keep from material and digital profusion and the kinds of futures selections were oriented toward. Our experience chimes with that of anthropologists Lupton and Watson (2022), who similarly found value in using arts-based methods to inspire conversation and communication of practices in relation to future-orientated “speculative imaginaires” (p. 754) or “people’s everyday experiences of and feelings about futures” (p. 755).

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10778004231176280

Studio Orta – Nexus Architecture

https://www.studio-orta.com/en/artwork/789/nexus-architecture-cop26

Carbon Out! Public engagement tool

https://graduateshowcase.arts.ac.uk/project/496790/cover

Exquisite corpse – could this be used?

• What can I learn from the history of the past use of research in this area and of participatory approaches in particular?

I am finding it difficult to find ARP projects that are of a similar scale to mine. The case studies I have read about are much larger projects involving larger numbers of participants.

• Are the sources for this history inclusive of all relevant voices or just of elites?

I have been reading about a current exhibition about a shift in attitude towards repair rather than creation of new designs. It has been a source of inspiration for the workshops. Part of this exhibition highlights the lack of attention given to the voices of those who manage our waste, such as cleaners. In this project, I have included the students as users of the studio space, however there are other users of the space. Should they be included in this research?

https://archplus.net/en/the-great-repair/

• If the latter, how can I help widen the range of voices that can be heard?

In the next workshop, I might suggest that we identify all the studio users and think about how we might include them in this research project? Can we have a suggestion box for both other students, academic staff, technical staff and cleaning staff?

• Could there be a retelling of the history, this time highlighting the stories of the people who were previously excluded?

I’m not sure this question relates to my project so I am going to skip it.

9. How can I remain accountable to, and guided by ethical processes devised with

diverse members of popular movements and other communities, whilst also fulfilling any obligations I may have to my institution?

The community involved in this PAR are already part of the university community.

10. Who will own the data produced by the research (Colston et al. 2015)?

The university.

11. Who decides what are the products of the research? Is there a commitment to there being products:

1. for and by movements?

1. for transforming how researchers think about expertise and knowledge?

I don’t imagine we will be doing anything ground-breaking, that has not already been done.

12. Whose language is being relied upon?

The language commonly used in a teaching setting.

13. Who gets the money and credit associated with the project?

No one.

14. Who may be vulnerable and how can they be protected?

Students and myself. Covered in Ethics Form.

15. How can the participatory approach influence structural change, such through shifts in public policy, whilst still maintaining its humility as just one part of wider struggles?

Perhaps too big a question for this short ARP!

Reflection:

How has this informed my approach the next 2 workshops of the ARP. I think it is interesting to think about including other voices from our community. I think also finding examples of research outputs might help guide what we expect from this project.