Lived Experience, Solidarity, and the Arts in Participatory Research


Naomi Nichols, Trent University; Jayne Malenfant, McGill University; Thamer Linklater, Trent University, Research for Social Change Lab

It is increasingly accepted that research on social problems should involve the perspectives, insights, and expertise of those most directly impacted by the social problems we are studying (LEAC, 2016; Levac et al., 2022). But not all social science research paradigms are inclusive of, and responsive to, lived and living expertise. A positivist legacy in social science research reverberates as a preoccupation with generalizability and replicability which pushes researchers to manage and subdue the particularities of a study context and the subjective knowledge of the researchers involved in a study. For this reason, researchers have developed specific methodological and paradigmatic approaches for incorporating experience in research, building from the early theoretical insights of feminist (D.E. Smith, 1984; Hill-Collins, 1991), anti-colonial (Fanon, 1952), anti-oppressive (Freire, 1970), and critical race scholars (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas, 1995). The result is a range of participatory (Fine et al., 2003), solidarity-based (Yarborough, 2020), and activist (G. Smith, 1990) approaches to research. We situate our own approach to social science inquiry along this trajectory, having been informed and inspired by the insights of scholars who paved the way for us. The approach we will describe in our presentation also reflects the first author’s experiences of being transformed by more than a decade of collaborative research with people (like her three co-authors) who have direct experiential knowledge of the social-political problems that have been her preoccupation: inequalities of opportunity and punishment, homelessness, educational exclusions, policing and incarceration, child welfare, and (mental) health inequities. As such, our presentation will centre methodological and relational transformations in our collective work. Together and separately, we have participated in the creation of research that centres the experiential knowledge of people who are directly impacted by social problems – and over the years we have experimented with the use of the arts to destabilize epistemic hierarches often reproduced in participatory research contexts. In doing so, we create opportunities to expand our imaginative and expressive capacities – capacities that are key to the co-creation of just futures. For example, in projects with youth, we have drawn on the visual and dramatic arts, as well as poetry and music making during team-building, research training, project evaluation, and the continued development of youth researchers’ critical social consciousnesses. Sometimes youth were invited to engage in modes of artistic expression vis-a-vis the research topic because they were unable to attend weekly meetings (e.g., because of periods of hospitalization). Youth researchers wanted to stay connected to the project and adult researchers wanted to ensure they continued to be paid. Artistic modes of engagement and expression were used intermittently – and to differing degrees – throughout these projects. Similarly, collaborative and participatory projects with a range of adult stakeholders, differently touched by the institutions and organizations we are investigating together, have involved experimentation with arts-based strategies to facilitate project development, data collection, analysis, and communication. This experimentation was initially fuelled by a desire to build team-members passions into our shared projects; but the inclusion of more arts-based modes of expression throughout the research process has been fundamentally driven by the researcher-artists (like Linklater and Narcisse) with whom Nichols and Malenfant collaborate. In our presentation we will share several ways we have infused the arts into social justice research, from project iteration to research communication. We will reflect on these experiences from our multiple perspectives: professor, graduate student, community-based researcher, person with experiential knowledge of our research foci (e.g., child welfare and homeless-serving systems), artist, advocate, activist, caregiver, partner. We conclude by centring the conference theme: challenging hate and sustaining shared futures. We observe that we undertake this work together as means of experiencing joy and offering one another care as we undertake the difficult work of researching social problems. We pursue inclusive strategies for knowledge generation and research communication because we are seeking ways to engage in collective work that builds from our varied experiences, passions, and capacities. Finding ways to continue to ground research in our diverse experience, while participating in our own consciousness raising, represents a meaningful way to build knowledge (and relationships) that resist the status quo.

Non-presenting author: Shayana Narcisse

This paper will be presented at the following session: