Arts-based research (ABR) is a rapidly growing methodological genre. Arts-based research adapts the tenets of the creative arts in social research to make that research publicly accessible, evocative, and engaged. This chapter provides a retrospective and prospective overview of the field, including a review of some of the pioneers of arts-based research, methodological principles, and robust examples of arts-based research in different artistic genres. We include literary forms such as poetic inquiry and fiction, performative forms such as playbuilding, ethnodrama, ethnotheater and film, and visual forms such as photography, collage, art journaling, and mixed media. We note researches also use multiple art forms, and evolving and innovative forms of art. We provide suggestions for (contested) assessment criteria, such as utility, aesthetics, authenticity and valuing participatory and transformative approaches. The chapter closes with our thoughts regarding the future of the field, which includes ABR’s potential to improve public scholarship.
