Engaging youth in post-disaster research: Lessons learned from a creative methods approach

Children and youth often demonstrate resilience and capacity in the face of disasters. Yet, they are typically not given the opportunities to engage in youth-driven research and lack access to official channels through which to contribute their perspectives to policy and practice during the recovery process. To begin to fill this void in research and action, this multi-site research project engaged youth from disaster-affected communities in Canada and the United States. This article presents a flexible youth-centric workshop methodology that uses participatory and arts-based methods to elicit and explore youth’s disaster and recovery experiences. The opportunities and challenges associated with initiating and maintaining partnerships, reciprocity and youth-adult power differentials using arts-based methods, and sustaining engagement in post-disaster settings, are discussed. Ultimately, this work contributes to further understanding of the methods being used to conduct research for, with, and about youth.Keywords: youth, disaster recovery, engagement, resilience, arts-based methods, participatory researc

‘It stays with you’: multiple evocative representations of dance and future possibilities for studies in sport and physical cultures

This article considers the integration of arts-based representations via poetic narratives together with artistic representation on dancing embodiment so as to continue an engagement with debates regarding multiple forms/representations. Like poetry, visual images are unique and can evoke particular kinds of emotional and visceral responses, meaning that alternative representational forms can resonate in different and powerful ways. In the article, we draw on grandparent-grandchild interactions, narrative poetry, and artistic representations of dance in order to illustrate how arts-based methods might synergise to offer new ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘seeing’. The expansion of the visual arts into interdisciplinary methodological innovations is a relatively new, and sometimes contentious approach, in studies of sport and exercise. We raise concerns regarding the future for more arts-based research in the light of an ever-changing landscape of a neoliberal university culture that demands high productivity in reductionist terms of what counts as ‘output’, often within very restricted time-frames. Heeding feminist calls for ‘slow academies’ that attempt to ‘change’ time collectively, and challenge the demands of a fast-paced audit culture, we consider why it is worth enabling creative and arts-based methods to continue to develop and flourish in studies of sport, exercise and health, despite the mounting pressures to ‘perform’

Building Forts and Drawing on Walls: Fostering Student-Initiated Creativity Inside and Outside the Elementary Classroom

The arts embody one of the oldest forms of knowledge and knowing and action research provides opportunities to experiment with art as an integral part of the creation and dissemination of knowledge.This report is a personal account of a teacher with 16 years' experience as an elementary classroom teacher, who found that young children are drawn to an arts-based approach of inquiry, one that is grounded in arts practices. He describes many incidences inhis classroom where there have been many instances of students using methods to enhance their learning experiences that were similar to those found in artsbased learning and arts-based educational research settings

Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections -- A Report of the Task Force on Children's Learning and the Arts: Birth to Age Eight

Provides guiding principles and recommendations to organizations to support the development of arts-based early childhood programs and resources

Eclectic styles and classical performance: Motivation and self-efficacy belief at two summer music camps

String teachers and scholars have suggested that classically-trained students may be motivated to engage in eclectic (e.g., rock, pop, jazz, groove, folk) styles. However, we do not fully understand the ways in which students’ motivations to engage in new musics might be influenced by their perceptions of competence in those styles. In this mixed-method study we draw upon quantitative, qualitative, and arts-based data from 120 middle and high school students at two camps (one emphasizing classical music, the other emphasizing eclectic styles), to explore various ways in which students develop self-efficacy beliefs and motivation to perform in a variety of musical approaches. According to analysis of all data, students at both camps generally expressed having positive musical and social experiences. Negative experiences, while less common, stemmed from confusion or frustration with music learning, boredom with music that was too easy or not interesting, and competitive comparison with others. Based on findings from qualitative and arts-based data, we suggest that these students may have benefitted from additional teacher support when encountering new musical technique

Community Transformations: The Promise of Arts-Based Community Development

The Twin Cities is recognized across the country as a hotbed for the arts, which not only enhances cultural life but strengthens the region in other ways. Dozens of art galleries, theater companies, music venues, design firms, and other arts organizations attract talented workers, high-paying firms, and growth industries to this area. This natural relationship between cultural abundance and economic prosperity is a cornerstone of the influential "creative class" theory that explains why some cities thrive and others wither. Yet creativity is not limited to privileged, upper-middle class circles. The arts make a substantial impact in low-income and minority communities by knitting community bonds, inspiring young people, animating a new sense of possibility, bolstering economic development, and forging a positive identity for challenged neighborhoods

Challenging Perceptions of Disability through Performance Poetry Methods: The "Seen but Seldom Heard" Project.

This paper considers performance poetry as a method to explore lived experiences of disability. We discuss how poetic inquiry used within a participatory arts-based research framework can enable young people to collectively question society’s attitudes and actions towards disability. Poetry will be considered as a means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people with direct experience of disability can be empowered to develop new skills that enable them to tell their own stories. Discussion of how this can challenge audiences to critically reflect upon their own perceptions of disability will also be developed

The Art of collaborative storytelling: arts-based representations of narrative contexts”

Draft for: ISA Research Committee on Biography and Society. The author analyses several theories about science and arts converging in a new point of view. Also talks about the functions of storytelling. He starts his work with these phrases: 'Art and science have a common thread - both are fuelled by creativity. Whether writing a paper based on my data or filling a canvas with paint, both processes tell a story' (Taylor 2001) 'Science and art are complementary expressions of the same collective subconscious of society' (Morton 1997:1

Seen But Seldom Heard: Creative Participatory Methods in a Study of Youth and Risk

This paper presents a discussion of the methodologies used in a small scale ‘popular education’ project involving young people in creative activities. The goal of the project is to explore their experiences and feelings about risk and safety and their ‘connectedness’ to their local community. A number of different methods are discussed as ways of empowering marginalised young people, including the use of visual methods, and new media in the form of blogs and Twitter Scripts, within an overarching participatory methodology. Arts-based and multimedia activities are powerful tools to enable young people to collectively question the nature of their historical and social situation and have the potential to raise sensitive issues, therefore, encouraging wider debate, producing new understandings, and facilitating social change. Building on insights gained in earlier research, which suggested that young people felt that they were not listened to or had enough influence in their neighbourhoods, this paper discusses the use of multimedia and creative means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people can learn new skills to enable them to tell their story. In keeping with Bourdieu’s General Theoretical Framework, consideration is given to the ways in which such participatory and arts-based approaches can demonstrate value for the social and cultural capital of young people. Keywords: youth, risk, empowerment, co-production, creative media, Bourdie