Participatory Biographies:

Walking, Sensing, Belonging

British Library

8th June 2015

Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences

Transformative Research Frameworks (Bronte Room)

2.25-3.45

Maggie O’Neill [Durham University]

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In this talk I will…

1. Discuss the Transformative role and power of art

and walking as a biographical method /

developments in biographical /narrative sociology

2. Share an example-research that undertakes a

critical recovery of women’s biographies of

belonging, well-being and community in Teesside.

3. Share a film that offers multi-sensory, dialogic and

visual routes to “understanding” as performative

praxis.

4. Impact, Issues and Challenges?

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Why participatory, arts based and

biographical methods?• A commitment to: PAR and PA – inclusion,

participation, valuing all voices, action oriented/interpretive interventions.

• We lead ‘storied lives’ (Phoenix; Roberts, Riessman…)

• Use of arts based walking methods -sensory and phenomenological; deeply relational and performative (O’Neill 2006, 2008, 2015).

• Transformative - Ethno-mimesis (O’Neill/Cantwell)

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Walking as arts based method• Explore the importance of being-in-place among

trans national group - dialogue, biographical

remembering, relational, embodied engagement –a

collective story-collaborative knowledge production –

empathic witnessing.

Women’s Lives, well-being and community

• Small project – follow on from regional research Race, Crime and Justice

• 10 women from different countries –as/undocumented or refused

• In partnership with the Regional Refugee Forum and a women’s group -- ways of seeing women’s lived experiences, well-being and sense of community in the context of their lives in the North East. Walking/Stories

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Research Project Aims

a) conduct a critical recovery of women’s lives, journeys and histories;

b) use storytelling and visual/photographic and walking methods to help make visible women’s lives, experiences, issues and what community means;

c) exhibit the work, producing exhibition, short film, a collaborative report –

https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/directory/view/?mode=project&id=503

What we did

• Phase 1. workshop – share stories –Draw a map from a place called home to a special place in Teesside.

• Phase 2 – collective walks/storytelling –photographs/film/sound recording [Myers/Ingold].

• Phase 3 – workshops / narratives/ share images, stories and explore video footage/ agree themes

• Phase 4 - Exhibition/film production• Launch/celebration/outcomes

Inspired by arts practice of Misha Myers - ‘conversive wayfinding’ (2007)

The Maps: spaces and places of community

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5/27/2015

Arts based biographical methods

• Create space for voices/narratives/images of women

• Counters exclusionary processes and practices

• A potential space for transformative possibilities – radical

democratic imaginary

• Supports principles of social justice, recognition –

struggle for recognition – migrant trajectories –

• Is not without its challenges, ethical issues and

dilemmas

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjT5lENga_M

5/27/2015

Some References Kara, Helen (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide Policy Press

Ingold, T. (2010). 'Ways of mind-walking: reading, writing, painting'. Visual Studies, vol 25, no. 1, pp. 15-23.

Pink , S. (2012) Advances in Visual Methodology London :Sage

Banks, M. (2001) Visual Methods in Social Research London: Sage

Rose, G (2000) Visual Methodologies London: Sage

Prosser, J. [ed] (1998) Image-Based Research: a sourcebook for qualitative researcher London: Falmer press

Some references from Maggie’s research:

• Asylum, Migration and Community (2010) Policy Press

• Transgressive Imaginations: crime, deviance and culture (2012)

• O’Neill, M and Perivolaris, J. (2015) A sense of Belonging: walking with Thaer through migration, memories and space in

Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture Volume 5 Numbers 2 & 3 pp327-338.

• Haaken, J. and O’Neill, M. (2014) Moving images: Psychoanalytically-informed visual methods in documenting the lives of

women migrants and asylum-seekers in Journal of Health Psychology 19(1): 79-89

• O’Neill, M. (2012) Ethnomimesis and participatory art, in Pink, S. [ed] Advances in Visual Methods London: Sage

• O’Neill, M. (2012) Making Connections: art, affect and emotional agency in Svasek, M [ed] Moving Subjects, Moving

Objects: Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions Oxford: Berghahn

• Pearce, L. and O’Neill, M. (2011) A Special Edition of the journal Crossings: Migration and Culture on ‘The Arts of

Migration’ Volume 2. ISSN: 20404344 http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=2044/

• O’Neill, M. and Hubbard, P. (2010) ‘Walking, Sensing, Belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis’ in Visual Studies

Vol,25, No1

• O’Neill, M. (2009) Making Connections: Ethno-mimesis, Migration and Diaspora in

• Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Vol. 14, 3, 289–302

• O'Neill, M. (2008) Transnational Refugees: The Transformative Role of Art? Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum:

Qualitative Social Research, 9(2), Art. 59, http://nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802590

• O’Neill, M. and Harindranath, H. (2006) Theorising narratives of exile and belonging : the importance of Biography and

Ethno-mimesis in ‘understanding’ asylum in Qualitative Sociology Review Volume II, Issue 1, p 39-53.