Development Days 2020 Conference

Description

Panel: Decolonising Participatory Research through Arts-Based Methods?
As calls for more egalitarian and democratic research practices are becoming more widespread, the relevance of participatory research has been manifested through the emergence of concepts such as research partnership, co-creation and co-production of knowledge. It is also connected to the growing popularity of arts-based methods in research. While the transformative potential of participatory and arts-based methods has been discussed from various perspectives, not yet enough attention has been paid to decolonial perspectives. As such, discussion on decolonising practices that draw on arts-based methods is not a recent phenomenon – consider, for example, the iconic works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1981) on the role of the arts in decolonising the mind. However, later the term decolonise has become a widely used term in Western academia, one that too often serves as a metaphor instead of contributing to concrete practices of decolonisation (Tuck & Yang 2012; 2014; Tuhiwai-Smith 1999). Premised on the necessity to contest the ways in which colonial power relations and Eurocentric knowledges are (re)produced in Western epistemologies, this panel explores whether and how it is possible to use arts-based methods for creating more egalitarian and democratic research practices in participatory research. In discussing both the transformative potential and challenges of arts-based methods, the panel asks questions such as: What can arts-based methods contribute to decolonising participatory research, its processes and practices? How can arts-based methods, for example, lower hierarchies, foster pluralism, increase multivocality, and facilitate dialogue? What kinds of tensions and concerns may arise when using arts-based methods in participatory research, and how can they be addressed?

Period	27 Feb 2020
Event type	Conference
Location	Helsinki, FinlandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International