‘My Piece of Heaven’: Explorations of resources in arts-based research and making environments

The articles discuses improvisatory processes through the recognition and actuation of affordances within specific environments and situations. The synergistic relationships between resourcefulness and improvisation, and people’s interactions within their given environments, will be addressed through two arts-based activities that were conducted with a student community in Arctic Murmansk, Russia, as part of the Margin to Margin project. The article will discuss and analyse the role that affordances play in intricate, familiar and unfamiliar environments, especially those that are associated with making, the arts and improvisation. The arts-based activities drew from varied art-based methods and narrative approaches to data collection and analysis, such as storytelling, textile arts practices and making, narrative analysis, self-reflection and diarising. The outcome of the article explores the dynamic role of improvisation to address challenges by recognising and actuation affordances within the environments in which art and design makers, but also researchers, work and function.