Social Work Research Using Arts Based Methods

This book explores the rationale, methodologies, and results of arts-based approaches in social work research today. It is the first dedicated analysis of its kind, providing practical examples of when to choose arts-based research, how the arts are used by social work researchers and integrated with additional methods, and ways to evaluate its efficacy. The multiple examples of arts-based research in social work in this book reveal how arts methods are inherently connected to the resilience and creativity of research participants, social workers, and social work researchers. With international contributions from experts in their fields, this is a welcome overview of the arts in social work for anyone connected to the field.

Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice. This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods: • arts-based research • embodied research • research using technology • multi-modal research • transformative research frameworks. Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research. Creative Research Methods has been cited over 500 times.

This book showcases a selection of arts-based research methods used in the empirical study of business, organisation and the humanities. Each chapter presents a discursive analysis and a detailed how-to guide for a range of methods including poetry, drawing, photography and social media, film, food, knitting, letter writing and dance. Consideration is given to a variety of steps in the research process, from research design and data collection to analysis and publication. Using Arts-based Research Methods is a unique resource for experienced researchers and students looking to broaden their palette of qualitative research methods.

In an effort to challenge the ways in which colonial power relations and Eurocentric knowledges are reproduced in participatory research, this book explores whether and how it is possible to use arts-based methods for creating more horizontal and democratic research practices. In discussing both the transformative potential and limitations of arts-based methods, the book asks: What can arts-based methods contribute to decolonising participatory research and its processes and practices? The book takes part in ongoing debates related to the need to decolonise research, and investigates practical contributions of arts-based methods in the practice-led research domain. Further, it discusses the role of artistic research in depth, locating it in a decolonising context. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design, fine arts, service design, social sciences and development studies.

In the first dedicated analysis of its kind, international experts review the rationale and results of arts-based approaches to research, teaching, and practice in social work. The book presents examples of their use and methods to evaluate and theorise results and shows how arts can form outputs from research too.

This book offers a practical, methodological guide to conducting arts-based research with children by drawing on five years of the authors’ experience carrying out arts-based research with children in Australia and the UK. Based on the Australian Research Council-funded Interfaith Childhoods project, the authors describe methods of engaging communities and making data with children that foreground children’s experiences and worldviews through making, being with, and viewing art. Framing these methods of doing, seeing, being, and believing through art as modes of understanding children’s strategies for negotiating personal identities and values, this book explores the value of arts-based research as a means of obtaining complex information about children’s life worlds that can be difficult to express verbally.

Social Work and the Arts: Expanding Horizons is a collection of writings that explores how expressive methods are used in social work education, practice, research, and community action. Edited by Shelley Cohen Konrad and Michal Sela-Amit, the book aims to answer the question: What do the arts offer social work education, research, and practice? This query is woven throughout the four sections of the book: first, on the various ways the arts are used in social work education; second, an examination of art-based social work research; third, a compilation of narratives by social workers who are artists in their own right; and finally, the future of the social work profession and its relationship to the arts. Written by authors from diverse backgrounds, each with a unique perspective on the benefits of the arts in their respective areas of expertise, Social Work and the Arts is a must-read for anyone interested in the arts and social work and for those who are just beginning to explore its relevance in the field.

This book examines research using anti-oppressive, arts-based methods to promote social change in oppressed and marginalized communities. The contributors discuss literary techniques, performance, visual art, and new media in relation to the co-construction of knowledge and positionality, reflexivity, data representation, community building and engagement, and pedagogy. The contributors to this volume hail from a wide array of disciplines, including sociology, social work, community psychology, anthropology, performing arts, education, medicine, and public health.