Together a Catalyst: Learning From Our Co-Creative Arts-Based Inquiry About Our Teacher Selves During the Transition to Online Teaching

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated many adjustments to everyday teaching at higher education institutions. While face-to-face lectures were the preferred teaching method of teacher educators prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to online teaching was heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper draws attention to the shifts we transitioned to as teacher educators teaching and researching via online platforms-specifically Zoom-in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explored how three teacher educators used co-creative arts-based inquiry to deepen their understanding of their shifting teacher 'selves' as online users. Object-inspired narratives and poetic inquiry were employed to co-flexively engage with our shifting teaching experiences and question our feelings of discomfort teaching online. Framed conceptually by an ethics of care and collaborative-creativity, we discuss the tensions and possibilities we experienced, and shared through our scholarly online conversations via Zoom to think through the shifts in our teacher selves and teaching. We highlight our online teaching experiences amidst the uncertainty and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. We then share the methodological insight of collaborative arts-based inquiry and how it facilitated reflexive dialogues and deep conversations that ignited self-learning and collective insights into the potential and possibilities of online teaching. Findings highlighted that co-creative, online engagement enabled sharing of emotional experiences and offered possibilities for transforming teacher selves. In addition, co-creative, online engagement enabled the cultivation of relational scholarly thinking. The article highlights the methodological insight of co-creative arts-based research in productively disrupting instrumental university discourse of online teaching.

Children and young peoples' lyrics and voices capturing their experiences within youth justice services

Purpose: This paper aims to explore young peoples' authentic experiences of youth justice services (YJS) during the Covid-19 pandemic. By adopting the creative arts-based method of lyric writing, the research team sought to empower participants through collaboration and participation and to facilitate them leading the narrative (Deakin et al., 2020). Design/methodology/approach: This research adopted a creative arts-based method in which participants worked alongside an artist to generate lyrics that captured their experiences within YJS. Such an approach demonstrated a commitment to participatory, child-first approaches. Findings: Two main themes were identified: identity and relationships. The young people vocalised resistance to frequent labelling and their ambitions to move away from past criminal identity and behaviour. Relationships with practitioners could be a source of frustration within this but were also highlighted as valuable and supportive. Research limitations/implications: As data collection was remote, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, the opportunity to develop relationships with young people within the YJS prior to conducting the research was restricted. This approach may have also impacted recruitment of participants. The sessions presented short-term interventions and whilst follow-up sessions were offered, many did not take them up. Although the research sample is small and cannot be considered representative, it allows for a valuable insight into the experiences of young people at a particularly challenging time. Practical implications: Upon receiving our findings and recommendations, the first YJS research site has sought to further embed a relationship-based practice model and greater creative/participatory socially prescribed psychosocial therapeutic interventions, including music groups and spoken word artists to work with children and young people. Originality value: This research adds to the growing literature base surrounding creative arts-based research with children and young people for their value towards communication, pro-social identity and development. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Channelling discomfort through the arts: A Covid-19 case study through an intercultural telecollaboration project

In this article we argue, in the context of the current dominance of the performative and instrumental drives characterizing the accountable university, that language and intercultural communication education in universities should also be humanistic, addressing ‘discomforting themes' to sensitize students to issues of human suffering and engage them in constructive and creative responses to that suffering. We suggest that arts-based methods can be used and illustrate this with an intercultural telecollaboration project created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. In this way language and intercultural communication education can become a site of personal and social transformation albeit modest and piecemeal as part of a longer process. Through arts-based methodologies and pedagogies of discomfort, Argentinian and US undergraduates explored how the theme of the Covid-19 crisis has been expressed artistically in their countries, and then communicated online, using English as their lingua franca, to design in mixed international groups artistic multimodal creations collaboratively to channel their suffering and trauma associated with the pandemic. This article analyses and evaluates the project. Data comprise the students' artistic multimodal creations, their written statements describing their creations, and pre and post online surveys. Our findings indicate that students began a process of transformation of disturbing affective responses by creating artwork and engaging in therapeutic social and civic participation transnationally, sharing their artistic creations using social media. We highlight the powerful humanistic role of education involving artistic expression, movement, performativity, and community engagement in order to channel discomforting feelings productively at personal and social levels.

Bringing out leaders in dementia (bold): creating the conditions for persons to flourish as social leaders

Background: bold (Bringing Out Leaders in Dementia), funded by the Life Changes Trust, is a creative and innovative social leadership project for people in Scotland living with dementia. Aim: A key part of bold is the bold programme, which takes a person-centred focus to help people empower themselves to flourish through creative methods and personal development. bold brings together people with a diverse range of skills and abilities on an equal footing in a safe and supported space, in which they can explore themselves as ‘social leaders’. Methods: An interdisciplinary team from the University of Edinburgh and Queen Margaret University collaborated with creative artists from the outset to develop the programme that uses a mixture of arts-based methods to encourage creativity, innovation and imagination to explore and develop leadership potential. These include creative writing, working with clay and collage, improvisation, movement, reflective walking, singing and song writing, voice and breathing, and performing arts. In this article we provide an overview of the programme’s design from its outset and of how the creative methods have been adapted and developed to work online as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Results: A brief overview shows how bold has evolved beyond the online programme and how those who take part continue to find ways to create spaces for people living with dementia to flourish as they become part of the bold community. Implications for practice: * A programme for encouraging and empowering individuals to flourish requires a reflective and person-centred approach in a safe and supported environment * Successful outcomes depend on multiple factors, including careful programme delivery planning, good facilitation, and commitment and belief from those who take part * An inclusive and accessible approach is beneficial when using creative methods for people living with dementia

Rethinking Visual Arts–Based Methods of Knowledge Generation and Exchange in and beyond the Pandemic

This inaugural special issue of ‘Beyond the Text’ brings together a collection of visual arts (animation, creative and fine art, film, photographs, and zines) produced by children, young people, families, artists, and academics as part of co-created research during the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic. Our aim, in making these pieces available in this new publication format, is to illustrate the potential of visual arts as a form of co-creation and knowledge exchange which can transcend the challenges of researching ‘at a distance’, enable participants and co-researchers to share their stories, and support different ways of knowing for academic, policy, and public audiences. This is not to suggest that such methods offer transparent windows into participants’ worlds. As the reflections from the contributing authors consider, visual arts outputs leave room for audience interpretations, making them vulnerable to alternative readings, generating challenges and opportunities about how much it is possible to know about another and what is ethical to share. It is to these issues of ethics, representation, and voice that this special issue attends, reflecting on the possibilities of arts-based approaches for knowledge generation and exchange in and beyond the coronavirus pandemic.

What Do Arts-Based Methods Do? A Story of (What Is) Art and Online Research With Children During a Pandemic

This comic draws viewers behind the final product and into the process of arts-based research. Specifically, we focus on research produced over Zoom during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on a study of asthma caregiving, we illustrate how a 10-year-old study participant, Becca, and researcher Hannah connected in embodied, sensory and material-spatial ways across digital space through the making and unmaking of art forms using simple sensory-sculptural materials (pipe cleaners, play-doh, balloons). We consider what arts-based methods do: for the participant, the researcher, their relationship, and ethical knowledge production. And we show what research processes can look like as unpredictable, messy and patient communing.