FRAMEWORK FOR REFLEXIVE ARTS-BASED RESEARCH In Griffiths’ chapter on the self in research, the artist Simon Jones talks about

a “mood of together-aloneness in contemporary experience of self” that is enabled by the media, which facilitates both “apparently increased intimacy and exposure and exacerbated feelings of disassociation and isolation” (Griffiths, 2010, p.176).

This is a valuable observation on both reflexivity and empathy that, despite being considered virtues in qualitative research in human contexts, are not necessarily inherent qualities for every qualitative researcher. Degarrod (2013) defines empathy as a type of emotional reasoning, both cognitive and imaginative, in which one “emotionally resonates with the experience of another while simultaneously attempting to imaginatively view a situation from that person’s perspective” (p. 406). The narratives and occurrences of empathy and care have surfaced implicitly and explicitly throughout the planning, fieldwork and writing up of this study. I explain here how specific arts-based and reflexive processes facilitated the forming of empathy and shaped the framework for reflexive ABR with communities.

Building researcher-participant empathy has been an underlying objective and one of the enablers of meaningful research encounters throughout this study, although a framework for empathy was put into words only during the third stage of fieldwork and discussed in detail in Article 2. I am including here the visualisation of that first framework for the convenience of the reader, even though this figure is presented in Article 2 (Figure 20). The formulation of this revised framework was preceded in Article 1 through presenting a framework for wellbeing and empowerment via artistic practices that relied on a similar methodological setup with an ethnographic approach, with sensitising through narratives and storytelling at its core. Empowerment can be regarded as an important step in gaining control of circumstances that communities and individuals have to live with (Rappaport, 1984). The practice of storytelling has been identified as one of the key mechanisms for empowerment (Rappaport, 1995; Michlin, 2006; Garretson, 2015).

The framework for researcher-participant empathy in Article 2 is related to research and collaborative processes in human contexts and relies on an established psychological framework for empathy with four principal phases:

discovery, immersion, connection and detachment (Kouprie & Visser, 2009). In the article, my colleagues and I included planning as a crucial phase preceding the said four stages and acknowledged the complexity of the final phase of detachment during research with communities, namely the need for sensitive and ethical “exit strategies” both for the sake of the communities and the researchers.

Translating these phases further into the context of reflexive research implies also detachment from the self of the researcher in order to process the data, which is even more complex (read: nearly impossible) for obvious reasons.

Figure 20. Visualisation of the process for researcher-participant empathy.

Taking the findings of the two articles further and comparing the way every research encounter eventuated, I altered the framework with an objective to make it scalable and applicable in a variety of contexts. The framework is envisaged and represented graphically in Figure 21 as an open-ended and self-shaping system where any number of components and actors can be included at any stage. The phases of planning, discovery, connection, immersion and detachment remain the same. Below I will explain the steps each phase encompasses. I will attempt to write this finding in a neutral third person case, as opposed to the majority of the dissertation written in first person, so that the reader can view this framework as applicable to other contexts than my own research experience. I will, however, give examples from my own study in-between. The figure is titled Research framework, because it depicts accurately the stages and process of the fieldwork encounters in this study. However, by formulating this finding I aim to contextualise it in a more general way for the sake of its applicability in other contexts that will be outlined in the end of the section.

The stage of planning here implies two or more artist-researchers conceiving a research project together, as often happens in participatory community-based setups. In all the case studies comprising my research I collaborated with other artist-researchers from the moment of ideation, except for the case study Shop around the corner, where I was a commissioned artist-researcher and was joined by collaborators, local artists, already during the stage of connection, whereupon empathy building process had to occur nonetheless.

Figure 21. Visualisation of the framework for reflexive ABR (E=Empathy).

In the process of familiarisation with each other, identifying common research interests, themes and strategies, the first cycle of empathy is expected to happen between the researchers as pictured by a diamond with the letter E in the diagram.

Due to empathy being a fragile and unguaranteed category, there is not really a criterion to measure whether the empathy, indeed, has formed and to what extent.

In my subjective experiences, previously established connections with colleagues, acquaintances or friends allowed for the pathways into research/project groups, but even then empathy between us was not a given.

The same methods for empathy building that are used with research participants are valid during the planning phase, among the researchers, namely narrative sharing and arts-based practices, for example, visualising research themes and design through mind maps or graphic representation. In a situation where a researcher works on her own, the planning phase happens nonetheless, but may be merged with that of discovery.

From that place of empathy and shared understanding of the inquiry, the researchers enter the phase of discovery, which in many cases coincides with the beginning of the fieldwork. The fieldwork starts with in situ research, familiarising oneself with the chosen place through walking, observing, taking notes, photographing. This was usually the case for me, although I started “Google-walking” through North Main Street prior to entering the field for the case study Shop around the corner due to time constraints placed on the in situ discovery.

Getting to know the place before getting to know its people is important. While it is still a “no man’s land”, an uncharted territory, before the researcher starts relating to it through the gaze of her research participants and practise it into shared spaces together with them, she has this one opportunity at looking through the

“reflexive lens” of her own perceptions, through a stranger’s gaze. The place itself soon starts sharing narratives. For example, in Leith Walk in Edinburgh where my colleagues and I ended up working most of the time, we could not help but acknowledge the ubiquitous visuals that narrated—through symbols, image and text, such as signboards, advertisements and other elements—less familiar places and cultures. curious visual culture of the street and the shops encouraged us to approach the shop owners as our research participants, and later on those same visual narratives prompted some of the storylines in the spatial intervention.

This type of exploration also prepares the researcher to the encounter with her research participants, as the explored place in many ways bears indirect inputs and artefacts of their life worlds. This process launches a new cycle of empathy—

between the researcher and the place—and it is then when she proceeds to the next phase.

The connection phase is usually a brief one in comparison to the rest of them.

It encompasses getting to know the community of participants by introducing oneself and inviting them to introduce themselves. The act of opening up about herself and her research process is crucial for the researcher, as trust and consequent empathy are not a given during this sensitive phase. It is then and there where the ethical procedures come into play: being transparent with the community regarding shared activities and their further implications, ensuring informed consent from every research participant and implementing the approach of radical inclusion I wrote about in Section 3.1.4. All of this involves being open to the unexpected, even to a possibility of “disconnection” in this connection phase.

In most of the cases in this study, the groups of research participants were invited to join through previously established connections that came about through professional and informal networks, except for the case study Have you heard?, where approaching the participants relied largely on improvisation. This enabled faster understanding of the contexts as at least one of my colleagues or myself was more familiar with them from the start. This impacted on the dynamics of empathy mostly positively, although a degree of bias needed to be accounted for, as was established in Section 3.1.2. Reflexive research.

Empathy does not come about to stay, it is fragile and ephemeral and requires continuous work, almost reaffirmation. Thus, having achieved a degree of empathy during one of the phases does not mean it cannot be withdrawn by one of the parties at a later stage. This is to say that the researcher must bear in mind a possibility of an overlap between the different phases of this framework, for example, due to the need to go back to the connection phase and reaffirm the empathy that has faded away for one or another reason.

When the researcher-participant empathy comes about in the connection phase, the place of their encounter starts to be practised into a shared space.

This third cycle of empathy and establishing of a shared space enables the beginning of narrative and artistic processes in the phase of immersion. Those processes enable the next cycle of empathy between the research participants including the researcher herself, as has been exemplified throughout fieldwork situations. The same shared narrative and artistic processes enable creation or transformation of spaces. These vary from creating intimate spaces for interviews to transforming studios, old churches, and former train station spaces to accommodate both collective and individual art-making. Video-documentation of the place and the processes in it, too, reinvents and recreates the observed space through a documentalist gaze.

The processes pictured by the first three rows of diamonds in the phase of immersion in the diagram can repeat themselves any number of times, as every utterance of a narrative can enable a new cycle of empathy that, in its turn,

prompts the next cycle of narration. (Or destroy the mere possibility of that new cycle if empathy does not come about.) During the very engaged immersion phase, the ethical inclusive procedures must be upheld even more thoroughly than in the phase of connection.

In the same way creating an art piece, collectively or on one’s own, can evoke empathy in the viewer or fellow maker and facilitate new space for art-making. In other words, narratives, art, empathy and space of their occurrences are generative of one another, and “to the extent that art can generate empathy, and empathy can bridge the differences between us, art is implicitly ‘mediative’” (Cypis, Oetgen, & Vander Giessen, 2013, p. 1).

The phase of immersion usually corresponds with data collection in the field, although the researcher can start collecting data already during the stages of discovery and connection.

The phase of detachment implies in simple terms a transition towards analysis of the data, as has been explained in Article 2 in relation to the framework for researcher-participant empathy. Detachment, if implemented with care, does not result in broken links and the “undoing” of empathy. It serves rather for processing of the lived and shared experiences, thoughts, and life that happened and goes on.

It may also hold a promise of return and continuity, an objective elaborated on in Article 5. encounter. The generative processes, however, do not cease at this stage. Placed in public display, narratives and artworks generate new spaces of viewership, as well as new narratives: curatorial and mediative. The mere presence of a viewer transforms the said space yet again. The viewer’s engagement with the narratives and artworks generates yet another cycle of empathy and yet another narrative process, a dialogic one to be more precise—a dialogue happens between the communities and their audiences.

I attempted to illustrate the framework as a living responsive diagram that shapes itself throughout the process of fieldwork. As the diamonds can be added, they can also be taken away. As new narrative, spaces, audiences, occurrences of empathy are welcome, it can also happen so that a link is removed, or even has to be removed in order to narrow down the focus of the study. In this case the framework does not fall apart. It only means that one might have to navigate the diagram in a flexible adjustable manner, for example, to revert to earlier steps in previous rows, to reshape or reorder the diamonds of previous phases of the framework and repeat.

The value of this framework lies in its applicability as a practical tool guiding a researcher’s or practitioner’s action in the field, including any participatory practices, be they project planning, project implementation or dissemination, as it guides emphatic processes. If the art component is removed from the equation, the disciplinary field of its application can spread towards social work, participatory policy making, and social and service design. As the framework is living and flexible, showing dynamic relationships and processes, it may not only guide planning and project design, but also adapt through change and ongoing processes.

5.2. NARRATIVE IDENTITIES OF INDIVIDUALS AND PLACES