The question of what is artistic research is relatively new and according to the historical canon of artistic research in education can be traced back to 1993. In 1993 Elliot Eisner held a dis-tinguished presidential address to the annual meeting of the american educational research as-sociation and challenged the community to broaden their conception of how humans create knowledge to include artistic and expressive methods as well, particularly for the purposes of educational research. Soon after this address, the Arts-Based Educational Research Special In-terest Group (ABER SIG) was formed and grew (Cole and Knowles 2008, 58). In all, eight institutes were held from 1993 to 2005 (Barone & Eisner 2011, ix). The research group is, in fact, still active and has a web presence at http://www.abersig.com/.
In their broad text published in 2011 called Arts-Based Research, Barone and Eisner ask whether we should at all try to find a place for theory in arts based research? Yes, they argue, we should, since “we are interested in expanding our understanding of the varieties of ways in which explanations are given.” (Barone and Eisner 2011, 157). Further, Barone and Eisner wish to equip the world of research with new perspectives on how research can be undertaken. They argue that arts based research primarily seeks to ask questions, open up discussion and invite a broader audience to partake in the knowledge creation process, rather than to find a swift, correct and true answer to a problem. (Barone and Eisner 2011, 158, 166).
Moreover, arts based research is meant to allow readers and viewers to percieve and interpret, in particular, aspects of the social world and its social phenomena, which they may otherwise
have overlooked. (Barone & Eisner 2011, 166) This is particularly true in the case of why arts based research is employed in this project, both as a method of working with the volunteers and guiding them in their own artistic process and product and as a method of “speaking about”
volunteering through an art product with a wider public audience. Some participating volunteers later told me that they kept on thinking about the question, kept coming up with new answerd and deeper layers of themselves which they discovered through reflecting on why it is that they’ve volunteered their own selves with the migrants.
Arts-Informed Research
In 1998, Professor Ardra Cole and Professor (emeritus) Gary J. Knowles founded an informal working group at the University of Toronto to explore how to bring together art and social re-search. In 2000 the working group became formalized under the name Center for Arts-Informed Research (CAIR). This group has asked, in particular, how can the arts inform inquiry and knowledge development in a broad sense.
The central tenet of arts-informed research is to ground the research process and representational forms of the research in one or several of the arts. The idea is to enhance understanding of the human condition through alternative, artistic processes and ways of presenting research findings.
Meanwhile, the researcher may in tandem also employ conventional qualitative methodologies alongside the artistic methods. A central defining element is that through an artistic medium, the research findings will be more broadly accessible to a wider audience, reaching the “hearts, souls and minds” of viewers and working magic through art for gaining insights into the complexities of the human condition. (Cole & Knowles 2008, 59, 61, 67.) This is why I wanted to create
“the button”. I wanted to create an interactive artwork where anybody could push the button and think about how some people talk about why they volunteer with the migrants.
The central intention and purpose of arts-informed research is social responsibility and knowl-edge advancement through research, not the production of fine art works. The quality of the artistic elements of the arts-informed research project is defined by how well the artistic process and product serve the research goals. The artwork is thus not made for arts’ sake. An arts-informed research project yearns to both inform and engage, the art product explicitly intends
“to evoke and provoke emotion, thought and action” (Cole & Knowles 2008, 61, 66). This is particularly evident through the selection of the subject matter for this work. Europe has seen an increase in the number of migrants over the last few years and the question of how how and whether to receive these people is one which a vast majority of Europeans has thought about and
perhaps formed an opinion about. This project strives to present a turn of speech in this argu-ment through a (playful) artwork. Although a fine art may not be the objective of arts-informed inquiry, I have nevertheless done my best in creating an aesthetic piece of work because I believe that the art will stand better chances at capturing its audience this way.
The Centre for Arts-Informed Research was established in 2000. According to Cole and Knowles, it was “important to distinguish [Arts-informed research] from other companion methodologies established and evolving at the same time, such as arts- based research, art-based inquiry, image-based research, and visual sociology.” (Cole & Knowles 2008, 59). Further, Cole and Knowles argue that arts-informed inquiry is important because although positivism has traditionally gov-erned the way that research is defined, conducted and communicated, it does not reflect how a person actually expriences and processes the world (Cole & Knowles 2008, 59). Hence, there is space for an artistic expression of knowledge.
Marit Dewhurst (D.Arts in Art Education) is known for her work in relation to art for social change or socially engaged art and touches upon the ideas of arts-informed inquiry as far as presentation of research result goes. Dewhurst points out that art can invite reflection, commen-tary and understanding of the issues it deals with, but when combined with an explicit drive for social change around a specific issue or community, “artworks have the capacity to enlarge an audience’s understanding of a focused issue or community, drawing them into a more critical understanding of themselves and the world around them”. (Dewhurst 2013, 149). Dewhurst thus echoes some of the tasks which Cole and Knowles set for what they call arts-informed inquiry.
While traversing the complexities of the world of art based research, there were several schools of thought which seemed to coincide with the thinking in this project. However, of them all I found arts-informed inquiry to sit most appropriately with what was going on with the button, the art product produced on one of the roads along this project. This is because the art product, the button, was created with a solid intention to use the art as a means of presenting the minds of the volunteer community to a broader public. The multitude of voices found in the button represents the community and shows that young and old, male and female, have united to come into helpful contact with the migrants. The concepts that the voices speak can serve as a starting point for self reflection for anybody who presses the button.
Although this final art product, the button, was created in my hands as an artist, as a way of communicating about why we volunteers help, the art product does have another role in the art pedagogical process. In fact, contributing to the art product was at the heart of this process for the volunteers. We engaged in a cycle of workshops where the focus of action or activity was in the art, both in the dialogue or conversation in the workshop around the given topics, as well
as in contributing to the art product. The meat of the artwork, the mantra of eight sentences, were on one hand material for the art product, but also a standalone work of art, written and performed by each of the participants.
Find below an image (Illustration 5) which presents the relationship between the volunteer com-munity, the “Give me a Reason” -button and the wider public. Notice the strands of colored string leading from the minds of the stuffed animals into the heart of the button. The plastic toys wait for somebody amongst them to dare push the button.
Illustration 5: The role of the artwork in this project for communicating about the values of the community with a wider audience: Why do we help?