Artful Collaborative Inquiry

Making and Writing Creative, Qualitative Research

Davina Kirkpatrick, Sue Porter, Jane Speedy, Jonathan Wyatt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000410808
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Artful Collaborative Inquiry comprises essays created collectively by a group of scholars and artists, the majority of whom have several decades of experience of working together. The book challenges commonly-held, individualistic beliefs about ownership, authorship and scholarly and artistic ethics and practices.

The essays exemplify the entangled kinds of scholarly and artistic works that emerge in a post-human world, where humans, other species, environments, things and other matters, all matter and are of equal concern in the conduct of ethical artful scholarship. Situated at the (messy) crossroads where contemporary scholarship and artistic practice converge, the seamless mo(ve)ment and interplay between text and image make up the main body of the work in this book.

The chapters combine the playful use and merging of time, space and place, researcher and researched, to give a unique exemplar of research and creativity in the rapidly emerging field of collaborative scholarship. It will be of particular interest to creative and qualitative scholars wishing to conduct more artful research, and artists engaging with scholarship.

Part one

Keeping the Inquiry Space Open.

Introduction to part one.

Jane Speedy and Artemi Sakellariadis.

The phrase ‘open space’ has its origins in organisational studies and participatory inquiry movements. Delegates to organisational studies conferences (like delegates to many conferences) began to find the open discussions between the formal agenda items the most fruitful and inspiring spaces to meet. Gradually, ‘open spaces’ began to be inserted into the timetables of organisational studies, group and community work (and other) conferences (see: https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/) and advocates of ‘open space’ and similar practices (see, for example the ‘world café movement’) began to form a participatory movement. Open space meetings began to have an agreed (lack of) structure, whereby:

‘Whoever comes are the right people; Whatever happens is the only thing that could have; Whenever it starts is the right time; When it’s over, it’s over’ (Deutsch, 2018).

For many reasons, some documented elsewhere (Speedy, 2015), the artful/narratively informed teaching and research programmes at the University of Bristol were gradually phased out during 2012/3 and replaced with a less formal network: the artful narrative inquiry network (ANI-Net).

One of the disadvantages of the previous research centre (CeNTraL: the centre for narratives and transformative learning) was its adherence to the hierarchical university structures and formalities, which were perhaps not the best fit for participatory, collaborative artful, storied forms of inquiry, or for thinking with feminist, post-structural and post-human ideas. Once this centre had been replaced by a more loosely defined network, the people (some university staff and students, plus other people interested in these ideas) who presented themselves as the ‘movers and shakers’ at the start of the network’s life wrote the text that defined the interdisciplinary network’s interests:

‘ANI-net scholars are committed to exploring interdisciplinary ways in which artful and collaborative practices of narrative research can extend and enhance the parameters of qualitative inquiry with people; environments and communities. We are informed by post structuralist, post-human, post-colonial and feminist ideas, as well as cooperative and participatory inquiry practices.’ⁱ

They were eager to open as much of the network’s space as possible to anybody interested in its ideas and practices. They were particularly interested in emergent, facilitative and iterative inquiry forms; in all forms of collaborative art-making and writing and in creating atmospheres of accessibility and inclusivity: thus, alongside more formal annual lectures and scholarly seminars, the monthly ‘narrative open space’ was started. Anybody who came was welcomed, and given the space on the timetable if they so chose, to speak and/or present their work and ideas to the group at some juncture. Rather akin to Manning’s ‘senselab’ⁱⁱ in Montreal, the members of ani-net were ‘drawn and held together by affinity rather than by any structure of membership or institutional hierarchy’ (see: Manning and Massumi, 2014).

This was not a chaotic, ‘anything goes’ atmosphere, but rather a welcoming, inclusive space, conducive to experimentation, whereby each month, one person was invited to present their work or practice or ideas as a way of opening the space for conversation, then at some point the whole group would write and /or make visual images collaboratively into the space that had been offered by that conversation/presentation.

Subsequently, each person would read out what they had written, or show what they had made. Sometimes this collaborative process of talking/writing/reading/talking was repeated several times, which gradually, iteratively, became the network’s culture of collaborative working/writing/art-making/ book making.

The two chapters in part one of this book offer an insight into this practice: chapter one shows a group meeting to witness the struggles that an established, founding member of the network was having with a book she was writing and includes collaboration with whoever turned up that evening: some established scholars, some people passing through, some others. Chapter two demonstrates the use of the same, or similar, practices over several sessions (lasting about a year) by a scholar from another local university who was not initially as familiar with this process. Both chapters document the response-ability and responsibilities of the group of inquirers. Contemporary university scholarship offers people very few non-competitive, non-hierarchical open inquiry spaces that encourage creative expression and experimentation in making, writing and/or speaking together. The liveliness and creative, scholarly atmosphere of these monthly meetings would be hard to find elsewhere within the contemporary academy.

Endnotes

i. see: http://aninetwork.wordpress.com

ii. see: https://senselab.ca/wp2/

Chapter one. Everyday Fragments on the Ceiling of Room 407: An Open Narrative Inquiry Space.

Jane Speedy with Prunella Bramwell-Davis, Jan Filer, Lynn Maddern, Jelena Nolan Miljevic, Sarah Nymanhall, Sue Porter, Bubukee Pyrsou, Malcolm Reed, Artemi Sakellariadis, Peggy Styles, and Goya Wilson Vasquez.

A GROUP OF SCHOLARS INTERESTED IN COLLABORATIVE/NARRATIVE INQUIRY HAD GATHERED IN ROOM 407 to listen to Jane Speedy talking about her latest book Staring at the Park. Jane talked about how she had come to write/draw this work by setting down the fragments of her everyday life, as she had experienced/imagined it after having suffered a severe stroke. Disconnected experiences had seemed to blow about all around her. The fragments that make up this article consist of Jane’s call (Gale, 2014) and some of the responses to her writing/drawing that were evoked in the atmosphere of an ‘open narrative inquiry space.’ This text offers/ invites us not so much into a ‘stream of consciousness’ as to invite us across the threshold into a uniquely fragmented experience of life. But as Wyatt (2014) reminds us, thresholds are multiplicitous and always present. Like Wyatt, these authors ‘argue for scholarship that embraces the discomfort – the terror – of the threshold’ (p. 8).

(Jane Speedy reads from her book, 2015:45)

A PROCESS OF WRITING DEVELOPED EVENTUALLY/OR AT LEAST A METHOD OF PLACING ALL THE SCRAPS TOGETHER; alongside, in juxtaposition emerged/staring then writing or drawing/staring again/blatant scrutiny of a local habitation with a name/St. Andrews Park/chronicled/

Scraps and fragments of work from Sappho, written on papyrus, float in on the red dust of a wind from Africa: ‘they arrived. But you, O blessed one smiled in your deathless face and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why (now again) I am calling out’ (Carson, 2003:3).

I write these scraps and fragments from my life and toss them to the Westerlies, in imitation of a heroine long since dead, unlike her Gods, who cannot, do not, ever die, presenting us with deathless face/ We grasp at Sappho’s words between the silences and blanks across the centuries/ I imagine into her spaces/ I imitate these scratchings with my justifications/borders/edges/verges that draw lines down and across my scribbled notes from times in hospital/etched onto the scraps where I start to write my musings on the park/she has papyrus that we will yet find/I have an iPad that justifies the edges of my text/

AND SOME OF YOU ARE CONCERNED/

With how my words sit on the page/

This work in stanza form/

squeezed into the centre of the page/

You try to work out reasons for these line breaks which some

times chop WO RDS in half/

Funnelled down the page/

Is this intentional or just a formatting error, you ask?

OLD BITS OF CLOTH, LEFT ON AN ISLAND BY SAPPHO/

‘Breaks are always’, to quote Derrida (1981: 24), ‘and fatally, re-inscribed in an old cloth that must continually and interminably, be undone.’

Translators, like Anne Carson (2003:xi) use square brackets ‘to give an impression of missing matter’ or ‘the presence of letters not quite legible’ …

Not every gap or space or illegibility is indicated as ‘this would render the page a blizzard of marks and would inhibit reading.’

Similarly, I leave an uneasy silence when you ask for justifications of all my margins, verges, and justifications as this would render the text awash with justifications for my formatting/narrow margins are probably

just that/equally wide verges/

The gaps...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements.
• List of figures.
• Introduction(s) to this body of works/bodily workings/works of these bodies.
• Part one: Keeping the Inquiry Space Open.
• Part two: Inviting Other Scholars Into Our Space.
• Part three: Playing in Other/Outside Spaces.
• Part four: Coming Together and Falling Apart.
• References.
• List of contributors.
• Index.