scholarly journals You can’t eat art! But can arts-based research challenge neighbourhood stigma?

2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412092768
Author(s):  
Deborah Warr ◽  
Gretel Taylor ◽  
Keith Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Participatory Methods ◽  
Art Galleries ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Research Challenge

We present research findings from an arts-based research (ABR) project that aimed to redress the symbolic effects of negative recognition associated with place-based stigma. Focusing on two prominently stigmatised neighbourhoods in Melbourne and Hobart (Australia), we explain the rationale for the study and how arts-based tactics were used for phenomenological explorations of familiar environments and to generate alternate, faithful and compelling portrayals of neighbourhoods that stemmed from residents’ actual experiences. Our approach to ABR blended sociological concerns with socially engaged practices that emphasised creative and dialogic tactics, provocations and immersive experiences. We explain how art-based tactics were incorporated into artist residency projects that comprised four parts: local induction; excursions to art galleries; a six-week workshop programme; and exhibition events. Following this, interviews were conducted with artist-residents at the conclusion of the projects. Both the artistic outcomes and participants’ reflections provide evidence that blending socially engaged art practices and participatory methods can help residents and researchers navigate the internalised effects of stigma in processes of meaning-making.

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cultural heritage in UNESCO legal instruments: a corpus-based study

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Bouvier ◽  
Zhonghua Wu
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Negotiation ◽  
Heritage Studies ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
International Instruments

Abstract The past few decades have seen a plethora of interest in heritage studies in international law, as the legitimization of cultural heritage is a significant aspect of protecting the legacy of humanity’s collective memory, which is fully reflected in a series of international instruments on culture. This paper examines the meaning-making process of UNESCO legal documents on cultural heritage from a sociosemiotic perspective. The data for the corpus-based study were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by applying the securitization theory to heritage studies. Research findings reveal three significant shifts in cultural heritage, i.e., from property to heritage, from tangible to intangible, and from material-centered to human-centered, which embodies the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, a philosophical idea embedded in traditional Chinese culture. As noted, terms targeting cultural heritage in UNESCO international instruments are the sign vehicle, generally mediated and shaped by social values, cultural beliefs, and conventional wisdom, etc. as a part of the interpretant, making different categories of heritage meaningful and interpretable. Characterized by temporality and spatiality, cultural heritage is subject to multiple interpretations. The meaning-making of international instruments for consideration is a sociosemiotic operation that can be construed through contextual factors and a process of social negotiation. This paper argues that a sociosemiotic approach to heritage studies is conducive to explicating the construction and deconstruction of heritage as discursive practices while offering some implications for future research.

The Impact on Well-Being of Experiences at Cultural Events

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Gorchakova ◽  
Kenneth F. Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emotional Engagement ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Art Galleries ◽  
Special Events ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Favourable Environment ◽  
The Impact

Major international cultural exhibitions, often referred to as touring ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions (TBEs), are arguably among the most stimulating and engaging event experiences. The role of orchestrating an experience that is meaningful and memorable has captured the attention of scholars in the events literature over recent decades. The aims of this paper are to re-conceptualise major international cultural exhibitions as special events, present a framework of the experiences these exhibitions generate for visitors, and explore the roles such experiences play in visitor well-being. The study draws on the findings of qualitative research conducted in Australia and New Zealand. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of art galleries and museums in Melbourne, Canberra, Auckland, and Wellington involved in hosting ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions, as well as representatives of regional cultural, tourism, and events organisations. This paper presents a ‘3Es’ experience realms framework, which comprises the key experiences that a major cultural and arts event generates for visitors: entertainment, enrichment, and emotional engagement. The first realm of the 3Es framework, entertainment, has encountered scepticism in the museum field; however, research findings here corroborate the arguments of those scholars who hold that entertainment may help to engage visitors and facilitate education. Enrichment comprises the creation of a favourable environment for new knowledge to be processed, and the enhancement of knowledge. The third realm is an emotionally engaging experience that results from social interactions, activities, and contemplation of and learning about unique exhibits. The framework demonstrates an interplay of these three major experiential dimensions and visitors’ hedonic and eudaemonic well-being. Exhibition and event organisers can utilise this framework to plan the delivery of memorable experiences for visitors and explore the ways in which their event can be made enjoyable, enriching, and emotionally engaging.

GENDER AS A DOMINANT DRIVING THE ENACTION AND (RE)FRAMING OF THE PERSPECTIVE IN LITERARY TRANSLATION

2021 ◽  
pp. 32-42
Author(s):  
K.I. Leontyeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Literary Value ◽  
Literary Structure ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Practical Concern ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Research Findings

The paper explores cognitive mechanics of «doing» gender in literary translation and aims at providing a cognitive account of gender as both a function of the translator’s self and the translator’s practical concern, i.e. a meaning-making feature of the literary structure which is to be somehow relayed in the translator’s text. Having initially defined the notions «cognitive dominant» and «perspective», constitutive of the research framework, the author reflects on the instrumental role of gender, integrating biological, cognitive, sociocultural and discourse dimensions of the translator’s activity, as a meta-dominant of the translator’s cognition and discourse, which shapes 1) the translator’s phenomenological perspective, from which the text world is mentally construed and 2) strategic (re)framing of the narrative perspective in the translator’s text. A number of English-Russian translations are discussed to illustrate inherent dynamicity, fluidity, multiplicity, performativity and pervasiveness of gender as a dominant driving translation. Certain cognitive and aesthetic modes of doing and (re)framing gender in translation are distinguished as well. Overall, the research findings evince the urgent need for the translators to adopt and implement a gender-sensitive translation strategy, which is likely to considerably enhance the literary value of their translations.

Poetry and Mixed Methods Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-165
Author(s):  
Mandy M. Archibald ◽  
Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Hermeneutic Circle ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
Poetic Representation

Integration—or the meaningful bringing together of different data sets, sampling strategies, research designs, analytic procedures, inferences, or the like—is considered by many to be the hallmark characteristic of mixed methods research. Poetry, with its innate capacity for leveraging human creativity, and like arts-based research more generally, which can provide holistic and complexity-based perspectives through various approaches to data collection, analysis, and representation, can offer something of interest to dialogue on integration in mixed methods research. Therefore, in this editorial, we discuss and promote the use of poetry in mixed methods research. We contend that the complexities and mean-making parallelisms between poetry and mixed methods research render them relevant partners in a quest to complete the hermeneutic circle whose origin represents experiences, phenomena, information, and/or the like. We advance the notion that including poetic representation facilitates the mixed methods research process as a dynamic, iterative, interactive, synergistic, integrative, holistic, embodied, creative, artistic, and transformational meaning-making process that opens up a new epistemological, theoretical, and methodological space. We refer to this as the fourth space, where the quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and poetic research traditions intersect to enable different and deeper levels of meaning making to occur. We end our editorial with a poetic representation driven by a word count analysis of our editorial and that synthesizes our thoughts regarding the intersection of poetry and mixed methods research within this fourth space—a representation that we have entitled, “Dear Article.”

Collaborative challenges: Negotiating the complicities of socially engaged art within an era of neoliberal urbanism

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilie Sachs Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Urban Politics ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Neoliberal Urbanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Collaborative Art ◽  
Urban Contexts

This article provides a close and practice-led investigation into the complexities and complicities of politicised collaborative art within an era of neoliberal urbanism. In addressing these complicities from a practice-led perspective, the paper provides a nuanced account of the social functions of art based on critical perspectives relating to issues of urban politics as well as politics of collaboration, participation and representation. Reflecting on experiences with facilitating socially engaged artistic projects in Basel, Monthey and London, I demonstrate the challenges faced when struggling to adhere to the artistic aims of providing transformative experiences, while at the same time working within various neoliberal and institutional constraints and expectations. Rather than succumbing into totalising narratives about how art practices are inevitably instrumentalised as they become part of neoliberal structures, logics and ambitions, the paper emphasises the need to think more carefully about the politics of this practice in terms of how it constantly negotiates and reflects the subtle power relations that exist between artists and their collaborators in urban contexts.

Question Bridge: Black Males: Socially Engaged Art and the Politics of Dialogue

1969 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Fruchtman
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Black Males ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
The Public ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Media Narratives

Question Bridge: Black Males is a 'trans-media' art project created by Hank Willis Thomas and Chris Johnson in collaboration with Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair. The artists travelled throughout the United States for four years to engage more than 150 Black men in an intercultural dialogue about identity and representation. These exchanges are part of socially engaged art practices that Grant H. Kester calls "dialogical aesthetics," in which artists adopt a collaborative, process-based approach to facilitate a dialogue within communities. As an artwork that is based on conversation, collaboration and community engagement, Question Bridge offers an opportunity to explore the potential for creative expression to engage social issues and stimulate change. This article uses Kester‘s dialogical aesthetics to examine the relationship between dialogue and identity formation. Drawing on postcolonial theorists Frantz Fanon and bell hooks, as well as Jürgen Habermas‘ conception of the public sphere, I argue that Question Bridge creates an opportunity for transformational dialogues that challenge and ultimately deconstruct dominant stereotypes and popular media narratives.

Understanding the ‘bigger picture’: Lessons learned from participatory visual arts-based research with individuals seeking asylum in the United Kingdom

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelli Stavropoulou
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Meaningful Participation

This article presents reflections from a participatory visual arts-based research study with individuals seeking asylum in the north-east of England. This study invited participants to represent their lived experiences through biographical and visual methods. In doing so, they engaged in a process of ethno-mimesis, accomplished through the production of images that function as sites for meaning making, self-representation and social critique. This article demonstrates how an arts-based approach can stimulate change and transformation in individuals’ lives by supporting meaningful participation in the knowledge production process and providing a safe space where participants are empowered by sharing stories that challenge, subvert and reimagine what it feels like to be an asylum seeker. Furthermore it suggests that in contrast to interview settings, through the process of ethno-mimesis participants were offered the time and space to consciously engage with their experiences and invest in their creativity and storytelling capacities in order to render their worldviews visible. Although the findings from this study reinforce an existing rich body of ethnographic work on lived experiences of asylum seekers, this study recognizes that the identified themes highlight the enduring impact of immigration policies on individuals asylum-seeking trajectories and focuses instead on how such experiences are creatively negotiated by participants.

Multimodal map making with young children: exploring ethnographic and participatory methods

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Clark
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Participatory Methods ◽  
Professional Boundaries ◽  
Mosaic Approach ◽  
Cultural Brokerage ◽  
A Site

Researching the ‘insider’ perspectives of young children requires a readiness to not only tune into different modes of communication but also to create opportunities for this knowledge to be communicated to others. This research is based on a longitudinal study involving young children and adults in the design and review of learning environments. This article first explores mapmaking, one of the methods used in the Mosaic approach as a site of multi-modal communication. Second, it investigates how the maps, as informant-led representations can promote ‘cultural brokerage’ (Chalfen and Rich, 2007) by facilitating the exchange of meanings within learning communities and beyond. This applied ethnographic and participatory research raises questions about the importance of making visible these opportunities for meaning-making across generational and professional boundaries.

scholarly journals Navigating Socially Engaged Documentary Photographic Practices

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (s1) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Gemma-Rose Turnbull
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
General Public ◽  
Red Light ◽  
Art World ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Collaborative Strategies ◽  
Dark Room ◽  
Made In

AbstractAs Documentary Photographers increasingly introduce the collaborative and participatory methodologies common to socially engaged art practices into their projects (particularly those that are activist in nature, seeking to catalyse social change agendas and policies through image making and sharing), there is an increased tension between the process of production and the photographic representation that is created. Over the course of the last five years I have utilised these methodologies of co-authorship. This article contextualizes this kind of transdisciplinary work, and examines the ways in which the integration of collaborative strategies and co-authored practice in projects that are explicitly designed to be of benefit to a primary audience (the participants, collaborators and producers) might be usefully disseminated to a secondary audience (the general public, the ‘art world’, critics etc.) through analysis of my projects Red Light Dark Room; Sex, lives and stereotypes made in Melbourne, Australia, and The King School Portrait Project made in Portland, Oregon, America.

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