Such creative practices can themselves ‘be the data’ or may be accompanied by verbal or written reflections. As such, as several members of the group said, it felt therapeutic. Working alongside each other on a creative activity gave us the space to express some of our, at times differing, reactions to the talks but was also a safe space for each of us to work quietly if we wanted to. All of these were emotional as well as instructive. One of my roles during the three days was to chair the talks given by our invited guests. We also at times worked in comfortable silence. As we searched and shared and cut and placed and edited and finally pasted we talked about our lives at home and at work and about the construction of our pieces. In creating pieces that reflected our auto/biographical private and public selves, we were each able to reflect on the images and words that felt significant to our interests, values and passions. The actual experience of making individual and group collages (zines) was, I believe, valuable in many ways. For me this is still a fairly new way of working and I learnt a lot from working with Sarah Hodge who helped me to think differently about how to ‘be creative’. Participatory research of any kind necessitates an empathic relationship between all concerned and therefore ‘playing’ with the approaches that we as researchers ask respondents to engage with can only be beneficial in our understandings of the research experience for all. Increasingly creative methods are being used both in the collection and presentation of data in social research and when Julie asked me to work with Sarah Hodge to facilitate the first three days of the residential I was keen for us to explore what it might ‘feel like’ to be involved in such practices. ![]() it insists upon a working artist who engages in aesthetic performances as a methodological starting point” (Pelias 2008: 186). ![]() This claim, axiomatic for performers, rests upon a faith in embodiment, in the power of giving voice and physicality to words, in the body as a site of knowledge. Recently I have also become more and more interested in the value of creative methods and approaches not least because performance, whether visual, verbal or written: Thus, in addition to an acknowledgment of the significance of the personhood of the researcher I have been concerns with issues of power, emotion and embodiment in research both for researcher and researched and the relationships between them. Gayle: As a feminist sociologist, and a methodologist, I have long been concerned with the relationship between the process and the product of research: how what we do impacts on what we get.
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