the future with libraries’ and started with the following questions: What is the core meaning of a library that could be lifted up in today's society? How can we create a meaningful future where libraries are seen as exciting? How can we help libraries remain adaptive in a digital, fast-moving society?
The research followed the Imagineering design methodology by first posing the questions above and understanding the central features of libraries (Inspiration – A phase). To tap into these features, the researchers also explored the main role libraries have in society and the elements that have always attracted people to libraries. The researchers invited librarians, visitors, and students to bring their own views on the topic in order to make it more complex and to embrace different perspectives. The results indicated that participants viewed libraries as institutions that foster openness, transparency and diversity (Inspiration – B phase). With this information, some creative sessions with different social actors were organized in order to evoke the collective creativity of all involved in designing a generative image or word that would invoke emergence (Ideation – C phase).
Some narratives were created. One of them was, ‘From Collection to Connection’. This phrase was an attempt to bridge the traditional view of libraries (collections of books) to a new vision of hyper-connection. This high concept had the goal of reframing the mindset of all actors involved with the libraries (Ideation – D phase). This short, easy to remember narrative provoked new ideas for services and activities, thereby facilitating the emergence of a new, inviting library for today's societal context. From there, the management of the library started to consider new initiatives for the emerging ideas in order to create new actions (Implementation – E–F phases, see Table 3.1).
Table 3.1
Source: Adapted from Nijs (2019).
Imagineering research is an illustration of research as innovation as it has the fundamental goal of engaging and inspiring research participants to bring novelty into a system. Attention is given to the creation of new mindsets that have the potential to create new forms of action. Research, in the Imagineering context, is about promoting an iterative and creative process, embracing the challenge of creating high concepts, appealing narratives, a creative tension engine and orchestrating processes of emergence in order to reframe existing situations into more desired ones (Nijs and Terzieva, 2015).
Arts-based Research
Arts-based research is a participatory approach combining art and research together. It uses the creative arts, such as dance, painting, and photography to address social questions (Leavy, 2009). It focuses on engaging ways of promoting a participatory research path where new ideas and articulations might emerge. The arts can be used to collect or analyze data or as a way to represent findings. When we embrace the transformative potential of inquiry, the integration of the arts and participatory methods contribute to our understanding of social issues, largely through their relevance and accessibility. For example, we might explore how visual art serves as a method of exposing and altering unequal relations of power, privilege, and oppression. How might researchers use the visual arts for studying race, class, gender, and sexuality? There are several good examples, but to identify one, we can note how the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe – largely in the 1980s – raised social awareness concerning homosexuality and the AIDS epidemic (Smith, 2010).
Other art forms such as theater, drama, poetry, dance, and music provide powerful means for engaging communities in the full participation of social transformation. Capturing the sentiment of what is happening in a given community through artistic expression can be experienced as quite different from collecting the same information through surveys, questionnaires, Likert scales, or interviews. We tend to think of the arts, by definition, as vehicles for creativity and imagination. When recognized as a form of research, we invite broader participation that is likely to result in collaboratively achieved transformation.
One example of a method within arts-based research is photovoice.
Photovoice
Photovoice is a method where participants are supported to produce their own photographic work in order to help them to understand, define and communicate in images and stories about the issues that are affecting them (as the Mapplethorpe example above achieved). Through photographs a variety of perspectives emerge, thereby adding complexity to a topic as opposed to teasing out the singular answer.
In 2014 a photovoice research project called ‘Discovering the Beauty of Uganda’ was developed in Entebbe, Uganda, with two local partners: Hope for Youth Uganda and Health Nest Uganda (Camargo-Borges, 2018b). The goal was to engage in an exploration of the community through the youth's positive experiences and impressions of Uganda. The researchers first introduced participants to the Photovoice method (Griebling et al., 2013) and trained them in the context of the research topic. Participants were prompted to take photos of something that was meaningful to them, that had a meaningful story or represented an important experience in their lives.
The data collection unfolded, as the participants were absorbed with the topic, the method, and co-created meaning together. Digital cameras were given to around 20 young people, aged 8 to 26. They moved around the city and took pictures of what they saw/interpreted as the beauty of Uganda. The method of photographing enabled and encouraged participants to be creative and reflect on the topic. With their cameras, participants were able to explore locations, documenting and revealing what they appreciated about Uganda and what they wanted to share.
During the data collection, participants were actually generating (creating) data. The participants–method–team interaction promoted the emergence of new ideas and material with which the researchers and participants worked afterwards. The arts-based method used here involved all participants in the research, enabling them to tap into their creativity and inviting interaction among themselves as well as with the researchers and their own city, promoting a sense of ownership with their locality (Camargo-Borges, 2018a).
The next phase was to collect all the pictures taken. The participants sat together in small groups and told the stories their photos portrayed. Their stories became richer as they shared them with each other. After choosing some pictures to be printed, they managed to find shared meanings and also find what was special about their own experiences and stories. The research project ended with a final public exhibition in the community park of the pictures together with the stories written. By sharing the pictures and stories with community members and leaders, their meanings were further extended, and new stories emerged from the interaction.
‘Discovering the Beauty of Uganda’ shows the potential that arts-based research can bring to innovate by using arts, visual arts and narrative to develop shared and coordinated meanings. Young people from two villages developed stories from their experiences in Uganda. They invited people from the community to visit their Photovoice exhibit. The wider community could better understand the experiences of the young people, and could also, in turn, share their own experiences about Uganda. These shared stories began a rich weaving of meaning and a strengthening of relationships.
According to Patricia Leavy:
Arts-based research (ABR) was developed in a transdisciplinary context and merges scientific and artistic ways of knowing. ABR practices have posed serious challenges to methods conventions, thus unsettling many assumptions about what constitutes research and knowledge. With the tools of ABR, we are able to ask a host of new questions and to ask old questions in new ways. ABR researchers tap into a range of skills, both scientific and artistic – such as thinking metaphorically, symbolically, and thematically. (Leavy, personal communication, October 21, 2019)
Appreciative
