In this episode, Dr. Patricia Leavy discusses her pioneering work in arts-based research methods. She explains how her lifelong passion for the arts led her to develop innovative approaches like using fiction and poetry to represent research findings in more accessible and engaging ways. Dr. Leavy argues that traditional academic publishing reaches very few people, and that the arts can help communicate important ideas to broader audiences. She believes interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for addressing complex societal issues. While arts-based research still faces some skepticism and barriers in academia, Patricia sees growing acceptance and argues that all research methods have their strengths and limitations. Ultimately, she believes scholars have an obligation to share their work in ways that can make a real-world impact.
In the third episode of season 3, Dr. Patricia Leavy discusses the transformative power of arts-based research. She shares her journey from traditional sociology to pioneering arts-based methods, emphasizing the importance of making research accessible beyond academia. Patricia advocates for the use of art in research to create emotional connections and foster public engagement. She addresses the challenges of subjective interpretation and the need for a balance between artistic expression and scholarly intent. Leavy also highlights the potential of digital platforms for disseminating arts-based research, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She underscores the value of community-based participatory research, integrating arts to communicate complex issues effectively. The episode concludes with Leavy's insights on the role of art in addressing societal issues and her latest works, including a novel inspired by the pandemic and a guide on writing and publishing qualitative research.
This episode is hosted by Dr. Stella Micheong Cheong. Please subscribe to the podcast through Apple, Google, Spotify, or Amazon Music. You may also follow @c4c_ed on Twitter. We look forward to hearing your feedback. If you would like to explore participating in our podcast and submit your blog post to the C4C, do not hesitate to reach out through the online participation form or email us at conversations4citizenship@gmail.com
Stella Micheong Cheong 00:00
Hello, Listeners! Welcome to Conversations4Citizenship. I am your host, Stella Micheong Cheong. In today's episode, we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Patricia Leavy, a pioneering scholar who has made significant contributions to the field of innovative research methods. Dr. Leavy is a prolific author, having published over 40 books and more than 500 articles, essays, and interviews. She is best known for her groundbreaking work in arts-based research, which she introduced in her seminal book "Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice." This text has been widely adopted across disciplines and has been instrumental in establishing arts-based research as a legitimate paradigm. Dr. Leavy has also pioneered the method of social fiction in her book, entitled “Re/Invention:Methods of Social Fiction,” merging scholarly and literary forms of writing to create a new genre that allows for greater accessibility and public engagement with research. Her commitment to social justice and inclusivity is evident throughout her work, as she consistently amplifies marginalized voices and tackles complex societal issues. Today, we are looking forward to learning Dr. Leavy's expertise to explore how arts-based research methods and social fiction can be applied to the fields of citizenship and human rights education, fostering empathy, critical consciousness, and social change.
Patricia Leavy 01:58
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for that lovely introduction.
Stella Micheong Cheong 02:04
Thank you so much! So let's get started. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your research journey? Why you became interested in arts- based research.
Patricia Leavy 02:14
So when I was a child, and I always start by talking about my childhood, I was just in love with the arts and I was passionate about the arts from a very young age. My mother is a painter. I have other artists in my family. So I spent a lot of time going to art museums and art galleries and art openings. We had season tickets to the ballet, and I took ballet classes myself for 14 years starting when I was five years old, I was involved in theatre in high school, I was in a theatre company and I really loved acting and all the behind the scenes aspects of the arts. And I've been writing creatively writing stories for as long as I can remember, my mother has found some of my earliest short stories that say I was six years old on the back. And not only did I write and illustrate the stories, but I would bind them with old wallpaper and glue so that they would look like books, and she has found some of these from my childhood. So I was absolutely in love with the arts for as long as I can remember. And then when it was time to go to school, I sort of panicked, I started school as a theatre major, I auditioned, I was accepted, and I sort of panic, you know, what am I going to do with this? I'm never going to get a job. Everybody thought I was crazy to be studying the arts. And so I did what I think a lot of people do. And I changed my major to sociology, I had taken an elective intro course. And I was fascinated, I loved it. So I ended up changing my major and the arts became something I did on the weekends and in leisure time, I think like a lot of people and I went down at that point, a very traditional academic path. And I got my bachelor's degree, my masters and my PhD in sociology. And I was doing very traditional research, mostly qualitative methods, but still traditional. So traditional in depth, interviews, focus group interviews, content analysis, that sort of stuff. And I was mostly interviewing women about their lives, their relationships, their identities, body image, self-esteem, eating disorders, gender identity, all kinds of topics. And I was writing traditional research articles and presenting my work at academic conferences, and I have what I think a lot of people thought was a stellar career. You know, I had a lot of publications. I got tenure early, I was called on by the media to comment on things constantly. And I think it looked impressive on the outside, but on the inside, I started to feel like it felt pointless to me, it felt like all the work I was doing was accruing lines on my CV for my own professional advancement, but I wasn't really contributing to knowledge building in a meaningful way. And I started to feel that way, because I started to think about would women and girls like those I had interviewed ever have access to any of my research? And the answer was no, they wouldn't. Because only academics have access to peer reviewed journal articles, journals, circulating university libraries, they're very expensive. They're filled with jargon. Only academics attend academic conferences. So all the ways that I was doing my work, and then sharing my work, were basically designed to speak to a very small group of my peers. And I started to really have sort of ethical issues with that. My mother is a refugee, she came to the United States as an immigrant after living in a displaced persons camp for two and a half years. English is your second language, she only has a high school education. And I feel like she is and people like her are as entitled to information and knowledge as I am, and my academic peers were. And the way I was sharing my work would never get to somebody like my mother, or many, many other people in different circumstances. And so I started to do some research about are there other ways to do research than what I had learned, I had learned quantitative methods, qualitative methods and mixed methods, all very traditional, but there had to be other ways. And at the time, I was actually editing a book with a colleague who had been a mentor of mine in graduate school, and it was about emergent research practices. So basically innovative or cutting edge research methods, and all different kinds. And while we were doing that research, I stumbled across what I later learned was called arts-based research. And it immediately resonated, it was like, all the puzzle pieces of my life sort of came together, which is why I always begin by saying, I always loved the arts since childhood. And I always felt like you create emotional connections through the arts. I'm a person who, from childhood on can sit in a theatre, crying or laughing, I have an emotional response. I remember things. I remember novels I read 30 years ago, because they introduced me to a life different than my own. And I remember the impact of those things. So when I discovered that people are doing what's called Art-Based Research, it immediately resonated. So I started reading as much as I could, I started writing about it. I started dabbling with my own art-based research actually started with poetic inquiry, I started taking my interview transcripts. And instead of writing up traditional articles, I would write poems, which I just want to say poetry is an incredible craft and skill, and one I'm not very good at. But that was my starting point. And I ended up switching over time to writing fiction, which has really been my first love since childhood. I do want to give people who might be listening who are unfamiliar with arts-based research, maybe just a working definition, just so everybody's on the same page, I think of arts-based research, as a set of methodological tools that adapt the tenants of the creative arts and can be used in the research process at any phase are all phases. So part of data collection, a part of data analysis, representation, or is a part of the entire inquiry. And I share this because I think when some people say here arts-based research, they think that means you're studying the arts, and it's not the same as studying the arts, you can study the arts with quantitative methods, you can study the arts with qualitative methods, art being the subject or the object of your research is different than using the arts to conduct that research. And or to represent that research. And so to me, that's what art-based research really is. It's about using the arts in your inquiry process.
Stella Micheong Cheong 08:42
Oh, wow. Patricia,already blown my mind. Thank you for sharing your long journey as a researcher. But, you know, it's there's some pushback within academia against using arts-based methods in research. For example, some argue that autobiographical narratives where researchers tell their own stories cannot be strong evidence, so they see them as limited compared to more traditional data. So what kind of changes do you think are needed to make arts based research method more widely accepted in social sciences?
Patricia Leavy 09:24
Well, I would say when you're talking about autobiographical narratives, to me, that's I mean, you're really talking about autoethnography, I think, which is a qualitative method. So that's not necessarily an arts-based method. It could be used in an art space methodology, but it isn't necessarily. Now that being said, I think auto ethnography, the use of personal narrative, and all different forms arts-based research are all valid. You know, it's interesting because we talk about the limitations but really all research methods have limitations. That's just the reality of it. They're all different tools. That's how I think of it. Like, if a plumber came to your house to fix something that was broken in your home, they would have a toolkit. And they would have different tools in that kit, they would have a wrench, and they would have a screwdriver, and they would have all different kinds of tools. And the tools they have are only useful for certain things for certain problems. And so some of the tools they have in their toolkit will be useless for what your plumbing issue is, and some of them will be very helpful. And that's how I think about research methods as well. I think that they're all important and valid. People have asked me over the years, are you against quantitative research? Not at all. I think quantitative research is hugely important. But it's also hugely limited, as is qualitative research, as is arts-based research, they all have certain things that they're good at, they all have strengths and advantages. And they all have limitations. And I think that when we talk about research methods in general, and different ways of knowing we tend to focus on the limitations of arts-based research, whereas we don't do that as much with the other forms, but they all have a limited applicability. So what do we need to make arts based research more widely accepted? I think I think a lot of things are needed. I think, first of all, we need to look honestly at the history of the arts in knowledge building, because in actuality people have been using the arts as part of inquiry for hundreds of years long before my work long before the people who coined the term arts based research long before any of us the arts have been used in knowledge building, even the way we've created disciplines in universities. It's problematic, it was just structure people's work life and their educational life. It's not because the disciplines aren't connected, they are connected. I mean, we are we're moving back towards interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. But really, that's what we started. And we've had we created these sorts of silo to make people's work lives function better. So I think we need to look realistically at the fact that we need different ways of knowing to ask different questions, and to answer different questions. One of my favourite experiences in my entire career was I was invited to the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria, probably about eight or nine years ago now. And it was for a one-week session on neuroscience and art, and 50 of us were curated and brought from around the world to spend five days together in a castle in Austria, which was very cool. But that's not important right now. But we spent five days in a castle together, and it was mostly neuroscientists, or artists, including some social scientists who do things with the arts such as myself. And this so you know, neuroscience is about as hard science to use that term as you can get. I mean, it was just fascinating because a lot of the neuroscientists there study the arts, but they don't use the arts to communicate what they've studied. So that's what my presentation ended up being about is that you can do your highly scientific research. But if you want to communicate that research to broader audiences, and not just speak to 100, other people who have the same degree as you, maybe you should turn to the art, and actually, there was a group of neuroscientists there that after hearing my presentation, they all got together, and they created a song and dance to educate the rest of us about their work. And it was one of the best moments of my professional life, and just as a human being to hear this and see this. So I think that, you know, the different ways of knowledge can work together, we can strengthen one another. I think what we see right now is a lot of people in academia who are fearful or feel threatened by art space research, as if that's going to take something away from them, as if that's going to make their work look less rigorous, or their work will get less attention, or I just think there's this thing that happens in academia with anything that's perceived as new comes along where people get very uptight about it. But in reality, we can actually strengthen each other. We can work together that what I do is very different than what a survey researcher does. I think the world needs both. It's not either or, and, and, you know, if we really want to make an equal playing field, what we'll have to do is look at how we structure funding opportunities, because that's where you really see the difference is, I mean, at this point, there are a lot of journals that publish art space research. There are a lot of conferences that are about art space research. Most major professional organisations like the American Educational Research Association, which is the largest Educational Research Association, they're about to have their conference that starts later this week. So I'm thinking of them. They have multiple special interest groups in arts-based research. They give awards and Arts-based research. So I think we really where we're lagging behind in is in funding and in some institutions is in tenure and promotion criteria, because I'm constantly getting messages on Facebook and emails from graduate students, or early career folks who are going up for tenure who are worried, even though they've done the research, they have enough publications, they're worried that it won't count, because it's our space research. So that's something that that needs to be worked on in a lot of places. I'm sorry, that was such a long answer. It's a big question you asked.
Stella Micheong Cheong 15:33
Really informative and helpful. Thank you so much. And well, you already talk about the interdisciplinary approach. So I wonder how does the interdisciplinary approach incorporating elements from sociology, literature, and as you said, even science, neuroscience and arts in which this research is citizenship and human rights education? I just wonder your thought.
Patricia Leavy 16:00
It's a great question. I mean, the reality is that I think that any problems or issues of import anything significant is not going to be solved by any one discipline. You know, every major issue of our time has multiple dimensions, and thus is in need of us to pool our resources and our wisdom and our expertise. You can take any issue, you can take sustainability, you can take the environment, you can take poverty, it doesn't matter, whatever the big issue is that you want to look at that affects human beings and affects our planet, you can see that there are different dimensions, there are sociological dimensions, there are psychological dimensions, there are health dimensions, there are economic dimensions, I could go on and on, there are always multiple dimension, again, universities and the way that disciplines were structured that was entirely to organise our professional lives. But the real world does not live where our problems are in these discrete silos problems are multi-dimensional. I think that our best shot of addressing the huge topics and crises of our time is by pooling our resources, which means we need more interdisciplinary research, more transdisciplinary research, we need more people willing to work collaboratively and not to be the sole or the lead researcher or author. If we're really committed to solving these problems, and we need to write in formats that get out to more than three to eight people. And I say three to eight people because over 90% of journal articles have an audience of three to eight readers really stop and think about that less people than are on this zoom running this podcast 90% of journal articles, think how much wasted resources that is Think how much time researchers put in, think about funding that might go into that. Think about the time of participants, if you're dealing with parties think about all of that for basically nobody to read the vast majority of it. And to me, that's the biggest waste of all, and especially since a lot of people are doing research on important topics, topics that I think we could all agree are important we need to know more about we need solutions. But the problem is one, they're not always working together. They're not pooling resources and knowledge. And two, they're not communicating to the outside world. If you're writing a jargon filled journal article that circulates in university libraries, you know, you're likely to get three to eight readers. And if you get more if you get 50. If you get 100. Those are folks just like you, it's not making it out into the world where it can have an effect. And to me, that's one of the real shames in academia and I love academia. I was an academic for a long time, I still write for academic audiences. But I think a lot of people in academia feel the way I do and are disheartened by the fact that they're doing all this work. They're often the most educated on certain subjects, and yet they have the least effect in the public realm. Usually no effect. And that's a huge shame. And usually, the only time you hear about a research study in the news, it says something like sensational, like if it's like something that was highly sensationalised controversial, but that's probably not the research that we need to be hearing about. And so the question is, how do we communicate better?
Stella Micheong Cheong 19:26
Yes, I do agree. And Patricia, maybe this question is related to my personal research, but I really wonder your own thoughts. So at the moment, I'm doing my research about the Korean pop artists and pop lyrics. I assume this Korean pop rebirth after political polarization intensified, especially the young woman who were fan of K-Pop artists like BTS or Blackpink, also became politically active supporting a specific presidential candidate in 2022, and arouse the political fandom member of Generation Z. So I interpret that this unique phenomenon gives hope or cultivating their stay-positive agency what I call in the context of Korea's political polarization. However, this also lays the concern, namely, the capabilities can be misinterpreted as a direct cause of political engagement. In this respect, how can researchers studying the impact of arts including pop music or any other music minimise misinterpretation due to subjectivity or their own biases?
Patricia Leavy 20:55
I mean, it's a really interesting question. And it's very challenging because one of the strengths of arts-based research doing so if I if I do a study, and then I write a novel that's inspired by that study, obviously, different readers can have very different reactions to the novel and interpret in different ways. There is no novel that can't be interpreted in myriad ways. So I can't control how people are going to interpret, I can control what I put on the page. And I can control my intent, but I know that people will interpret it very differently than I have. And I experienced that all the time. When readers tell me something they saw on one of my books, sometimes it's something I didn't even think of not only did I not intentionally put it in there, sometimes it's great, sometimes something I wish I had been smart enough to think of sometimes it's not, sometimes I'm like, Oh, I don't know where they got that. But that's their interpretation. I mean, one of the issues is that people will always subjectively interpret the arts there's no escaping that. We bring our own experiences, in so many different ways. So you bring a lifetime of experiences with you to any movie, you see any song you hear in your example, any novel you read, you bring all your experiences, you also bring the context in which you're experiencing it. So what are you thinking about when you hear that song? What kind of day are you having? Are you upset about something? Are you feeling great about something, all of these things will impact your experience of that piece of art, and I think that's inescapable. I think what's important to do is to not disavow that or pretend that doesn't exist or to minimise that that exists, I think it's important to embrace it, and to look at the positives. And to me, the positive is the democratisation of knowledge that more people can have interpretations that there is more critical thinking, not less. I rather have more ideas, not less, even if I don't agree with all of them. I think the world is better for having more ideas and more perspectives and more thoughts. I'll tell you just my personal experience as a novelist, I, you know, when every book comes out, you have a publicist that sends it out to lots of advanced readers, and some love it some hate it, it's usually pretty extreme. But I if they tagged me on social media, I always thank them for reading it, regardless of if they liked it or not. If they tagged me, I go, and I thank them. And I've had multiple readers over the years who didn't like one of the love stories I wrote, and I tagged them to thank them. And then they call me back. Yeah, I had just broken up with someone I wasn't in the right place to read that book. Or like, you know, it has nothing to do with what's in the book. It has everything to do with where they are in their life at that moment. And so they're either cynical, or they're optimistic, or whatever. And they meet the pages on that book at that moment in their life. And that creates their reaction, their interpretation, their emotional response, that is the nature of the art. So to me, I focus on the positive side, which the positive side is for a long time, researchers have acted as the all Knowing authorities telling people what to think. Most journal articles read like a lecture. Most humans don't actually respond well to lectures. We know this, and we know it in education, like we know this for a fact. But yet we keep doing it anyway. People don't like to be talked down to and that's how lectures often feel. People don't like to be told what to think they like to be given information and ideas and then formulate their own thoughts. So to me, that's where arts-based research excels in that it's open to multiple interpretations. It allows for a multiplicity, it allows for dialogue, it allows for personal and social reflection. So yes, there will be some of what you could call misinterpretation or different interpretations or uses that might be different than how you would intend but that that doesn't, to me diminish the overall value. And I do think it's the responsibility of each researcher artist. to do their best to be clear about what they are putting out into the world. So yes, there will still be different interpretations. But for example, when I write a novel I to say I revise, I don't know, 50 to 100 times is accurate. So every book I write, so it wasn't revised once or twice, every word. And I have many, many, many people that read the books at different stages and in totality, before they go out in the world. And I hear what they say. And I listen carefully to what they say. Sometimes they don't even mean a criticism. They're saying something innocuous I, I was recently visiting my parents in Florida, they're elderly, they're in their 80s. My dad's a reader, so I always bring him my unpublished books. He's my favourite reader, because he's a fast reader, he'll sit and read, he'll smile. I gave him one of my unpublished books that I love. And he said, Yeah, I really liked it. And then he said something about a plot point that he interpreted completely differently than I had meant. And I can promise you that the first thing I did was go back and reread that. And I didn't say anything to him, I just smiled and said, okay, like, you know, and now, I still don't know if I agree with him. But I think about it. And by the time that book is released, I will feel very confident that I did my best to make sure I put my intent on the page. And so you know, that's the best you can do. I think it's really important to get feedback. But then I think it's really important to be open to multiple interpretations. And to not be too defensive about that. In the end, I do think that that the artists intent is usually what comes through and is the predominant message that's received. Good luck with your research, though, it sounds very cool.
Stella Micheong Cheong 26:42
Thank you so much. I think so. It's really interesting. And well, Patricia, I'm really interested in social fiction, although I haven't yet tried, but I will try. But writing social fiction comes with its own set of challenges writing, and the creating data based on the data, I can imagine how to write the story, how can craft the story? So what are some of the biggest challenges or hurdles social science researchers face when trying to write social fiction? And how do you think these challenges can be overcome?
Patricia Leavy 27:23
So for people listening who might not know what social fiction is, it's just the term that I use to describe fiction that's grounded in scholarly research or insights. So which people have been doing again for hundreds of years I feel like I you know, people tell me all the time I invented this, I really didn't. I mean, I coined that term, but people have been doing this for a long time. So Simone de Beauvoir are one of the most famous philosophers in the world. She wrote many nonfiction books. She also wrote many novellas and novels. And if you read them, you'll see they're espousing her philosophical theories. Jean-Paul Sartre, also a philosopher wrote many plays, novels, short stories, he won the Nobel Prize for what I'm calling social fiction. Zora Neale Hurston, and incredibly important anthropologist, again, wrote novels and short stories based on our anthropological research, I'm just giving a few famous examples for people who might be listening who thinks this sounds very new and out there, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who have done this, but you're in good company if you're interested in this. So, you know, it occurred to me that people have been doing this for a long time, in different disciplines. But we've never really had a way of housing all of that work of thinking about it as even as a category of research or writing. So I came up with the term social fiction to just sort of broadly encompass fiction that's inspired by scholarly work. And you know, it's like with everything else there, there are challenges to me, by way of advice, I think that the biggest challenge is, if you have been trained as a social scientist, or as any kind of researcher, educator, you now need training as a fiction writer, as a creative writer, as a novelist or playwright, whatever it is that you want to write, that doesn't mean you need to go out and get another degree. It doesn't mean you need to get that kind of formal education. I certainly didn't do that. But it does mean you need to really work on your craft, you know, and you have to start from somewhere. So don't be afraid to start where you are. When I wrote my first novel, I promise I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I mean, I literally didn't and I you know, I had no idea what I was doing. I found out after I wrote it that there are novel writing rules that I had broken. I didn't know the rules existed. So clearly, I broke but you work on it and you get better and you get better and you read more you read more about craft you take workshops if you can you do whatever you have to do you practice and I practice a lot you do writing prompts you can do creative writing prompts. A creative writing prompt is just something to jumpstart you’re writing. It's a fun Read an easy way to jumpstart your creative writing. So it's my recommendation to everybody out there, a commercial author or a writing prompt, they would take a social media post or the opening line of a book or a newspaper headline. And then they would start free writing after that, for a researcher. My suggestion is creating five prompts based on your research. Each prompt is just a short sentence, if they can be very, very simple. So it could be you know, he was listening to the music and felt happy. I mean, these don't have to be complicated sentences. Just take five ideas from your research, write five sentences, pick one, pick the one that jumps out at you. And free, right, you use it as your opening sentence you just free right? There's no good or bad writing with a prompt there either is writing or there isn't. So you don't agonise about it, you don't think about every word, there's time for that later, you just write I recommend you go for at least 45 minutes, because you get into a flow. If you only have 20 minutes, it's fine. Take whatever amount of time you take that sentence and just free write. And that is the first step to jump starting your creative writing to taking a seed of an idea from your research. And just writing about it without thinking about academia without thinking about jargon, without thinking about all that kind of stuff, just writing. So that's a place that anybody can start the challenge is learning a new craft. And then the challenge is also balancing the need for a good aesthetic and literary quality. You want it to be a good piece of art and balancing that against whatever it is you're trying to communicate. So if you have specific ideas, from your research to specific information, specific points of view, that's the tricky thing is learning to create that balance. Because at the end of the day, let's say it's a novel, it has to be a good novel, or nobody wants to read it. And then it might as well be a journal article, because nobody wants to read those either. That's the truth. Nobody wants to read them. You don't take them on your beach vacation, you don't read them over the summer, there's a reason why we only read them when we have to cite other people, primarily, we read journal articles not even to learn, which is really sad, we read them to cite to benefit our own research that nobody will read. So it's like quite the cycle. So you have to balance these things. You know, if you're if you are just a fiction writer, you don't have to think about that you only want to think about literary quality and craft, if you are also a researcher and you're trying to communicate ideas, you have two hats to wear, it has to be a good piece of art, you know, the best to your ability, or people will want to read it. But you're also committed to a certain set of information, insights, goals, whatever it is that you want to communicate. So balancing those things is tricky. And it takes time to figure out that balance. I think a lot of people in the beginning I mean, I've recently just taught a workshop about how to write social fiction and I think a lot of people in the beginning, they're very heavy handed putting their research into it. They're like really spelling things out. You have to learn to trust readers. I really, really believe that the more you can trust readers that even if you don't fill in every dot they can I mean people are smart people can people have life experiences that whatever your writing is not the first thing they've read, people know how to connecting. So sometimes having a little bit more of a delicate hand and letting the reader participate a little more. And it's hard to do that in the beginning, right? The same way. When you write your dissertation, you have a million citations, but by the time you write your 20 journal article, even if you're straight academic research, you'd have less citations because you trust your own voice more. It's the same thing with fiction is that you know, you can put the research in there without being heavy handed. So it's a balancing act.
Stella Micheong Cheong 33:46
wow. Oh, thank you so much for your strategies. I'd like to move on. Another challenge. As we witness, maybe almost all social scientists or any other scientists, faces struggle with struggles because of COVID 19 pandemic. So as the pandemic has disrupted, and venue, so how can arts-based researcher explore new digital or virtual formats for engaging participant and disseminating their creative work, creative research output? What are the affordances and limitations of these formats? Would you like to share your own opinion?
Patricia Leavy 34:29
It's a great question. I mean, I actually have always thought that art space research is really well suited to the internet. And it's one of the strengths of arts-based research. So for example, I think that an online journal if you want to publish and there are plenty of journals that publish art space research, I think an online journal is much better than a print journal for art space research because you can actually allow art to live in an online space. You can have links to video performances, you can have other colourful art, which is too expensive to print in journal, so if you had colourful art, it would be become black and white. So I actually think that the internet is a great place for arts-based research and that it always has been long before the pandemic, I just think because of what the pandemic was, it forced a lot of us to do things differently. And to, to look at that in in a new way. But I've thought it for years, my colleague, Diane Conrad and I started, we founded an online journal, I forget how long ago, it feels like forever ago, I mean, so long ago that we stepped down from it. But it's called Art Research International. And it's a transdisciplinary peer reviewed, you know, anonymous peer reviewed journal, very competitive, but it's fully online. And it's always been fully online, because it's the only way you can actually showcase all of the arts and showcase them in the way that they're meant to be showcased. You just can't do it. And so I think that people should, you know, have been using the internet and should be using it more. It also with the geographical limitations that we all have, I mean, this zoom call right now is a perfect example. I mean, on this podcast, there are four of us, I presume all four of us are in totally different locations, you know, in different countries, possibly. So you know, and that is enabled by technology. I mean, we can have these conversations, I do want to share with people if they haven't heard about it, but the best thing that I think has happened in years for art space research is the London Arts- Based Research Centre. So if you haven't heard of it, Google it the second we get off this podcast, the London Arts- Based Research Centre, it is incredible. The woman who runs it, Roula-Maria Dib, is incredible. And they host in person and online conferences all year. I don't think that anything that isn't at least hybrid. So everything is online, it's just some of it is exclusively online. And when I say they host conferences, I think they had like more than 100 last year. This isn't an organisation that does one or two conferences like most this is constant. They have virtual events. They have both free events and paid events. I've done both. I've been a guest in both kinds. They offer workshops and classes about everything from poetic inquiry, I just ran a workshop on writing fiction. I'm doing another one on book publishing on April 22. So for anyone who's interested, it is almost filled, we do limit the seats so that it's a good experience for participants. But there are still some spaces left. So that's on I believe, April 22, you can look that up. But they have all different kinds of conferences, workshops, everything from you know, poetic inquiry to puppet making to Union theory and arts-based research to you name it. There. It's practically events every day, and it's all online. And I can tell you that I've fallen in love with them. And the reason I've fallen in love with them is because it is so global, it is truly international in the best sense. The first event they asked me to do, which sold out it was a conversation I had with Susan Roland who is an arts based researcher, I think originally based out of the UK, and it was a conversation we had that was moderated by the founder of the London Arts- Based Research Centre, I was amazed there were people from every continent. In that Zoom meeting, there were people whose first language were many, many, many different languages. It was so incredibly International, and they host a lot of their events in London time seven to 9pm London time, because if you sort of look at the world clock that basically works out for everyone it works out, you know, that nobody has to be up at. So you know, I've done multiple things at this point with them where there's people in Australia, and it's like 5am. And you know, for me, it's like sometime in the afternoon, and for the London people, it's nighttime, and it's just all over the place. So that's another resource. And I think that that was I don't know if it was a product of the pandemic. I've never asked for all of that. But it certainly feels like a solution to what many of us experience so and I will say for me, the pandemic? Well, I don't want to minimise it at all because it was a horrific, horrific experience for the world. And I almost lost my own father to COVID. So I felt it very, very deeply. And I was depressed and worried and all the things that many people were at the time. That being said, because I was in lockdown in isolation for so long and we weren't leaving our house at all. I had nothing to turn to but creativity and being a novelist was the greatest thing that had ever happened to me during the lockdown. I felt that on a deep level I felt deep profound gratitude and I wrote more during the 15 months before I got the vaccine during those 15 months, I wrote more probably than in the 10 years before that, and I'm pretty prolific author, I read a lot. I mean, I was just every day all day, I got into a different kind of flow than I've ever been in, I wouldn't wish the world to have a pandemic for that to happen to anyone, but I will take the good with the bad, I will look for the silver lining, and I just tapped into a different level of creativity and, you know, knock on wood that has not left me yet I've been able to continue to have that while going out and having what we would consider a more normal life. So I think you know, the pandemic, I've talked to so many creatives. And I think like, I think it's like two camps. There's this one camp that are very similar to me, where was this incredible time of creativity. And there's another camp where they couldn't create it all. Because of the pressures and stress and trauma of what was happening. It was a time of no creativity. But I think even for those people that does provide a time of reflection, that I believe will spawn great creativity from them moving forward and probably already has. So I think we can always look for the positives, even in the biggest negatives.
Stella Micheong Cheong 41:06
thank you so much, Patricia it is really incredibly insightful. And then a helpful, informative presentation. So I suppose my colleagues, Adam and Kamille have a lot of cash. So I hand over to Adam,
Adam Peter Lang 41:21
thank you very much for that. That's very interesting. And I liked what you were saying just there about the pandemic. I don't totally agree with all of that. But one of the things that we've been looking at in our podcasts is that the influence of the pandemic widely while I was reading your work, and also, hearing you speak today reminds me of a philosopher. I think his name is Ernst Cassirer, he was writing long time ago, about homo symbolical. You know, the fact that humans are different from animals, we have language, culture, arts, you know, cave drawings, dance, and so on. And I think it's interesting your way of approaching research, having returned to study as a mature student in a university, seeing many of the things that you're talking about, I just asked you, though, about because you, you chart, you've answered quite well about the subjective nature of looking at art and so on. And I think that, but I just wonder, in this age of populism in this age of anger, you've touched on social media, in this age of fake news, a good display, aren't we seeing that at the moment? How does that challenge you? And how do you respond to that when somebody we're more traditional bent might say, well, this is so subjective, that we can't really value it in the same way that we could do other forms of methodology.
Patricia Leavy 42:40
I mean, it's always a challenge, right? I think it's always a challenge for people doing anything in the arts. And for people doing anything in academia, that is at all outside what the inner circle has been. I just think that's a constant challenge. I mean, it was a challenge for qualitative researchers, you know, 70-80 years ago, and continues to be less so now. But it was a huge challenge. I mean, ethnography wasn't taken seriously. And so it's always a challenge. And to me, you know, I try and focus my energy on positivity. And I don't mean that in a like, Lala way, I mean, in a really serious way that I've just learned, I only have so much time and energy, and I just don't devote it to all the naysayers, because I just can't I mean, it's a black hole. It's a bottomless pit. And it takes energy away from the work I'm trying to do. Now, for me, I used to write pretty dark things. I'd say when I started writing fiction, most of my fiction, I mean, my friends would always say, Oh, you're so dark, how can you be so dark, which, that's how people see a lot of my early novels. And then to, really, I mean, it was during the Trump years in the United States. And since that point, I started writing with a lot of people see, it's very, very positive novels. And so people have asked me about and that is my response, I respond through my art. So when I see divisiveness, I respond by writing things where people are coming together across differences and working together across differences. So that's how I respond when I see hate, which I've seen massive amounts of hate in my country and in the world. In the last few years. I respond by writing love stories, where there is deep affection on literally every page. So I guess that's it's like, my personal form of resistance is less about having to base with people. You know, I did that early in my career. And it was just a lot of banging my head against a wall. So instead of having debates with people, I just put it in my art. And the truth is it is subjective. And so how people will read these things will depend on a lot of where they're coming from, you know, my politics or in my art. I have a romance novel that's coming out in September, where there's an entire dialogue and conversation about critical race theory, and it basically calls people who have a problem with Critical Race Theory morons. There's no other point of view presented in that conversation. Well, I wrote that when, you know, critical race theory became the thing that conservatives decided to go after in this country, but I wove it into a romance novel. It's like a Cinderella story. But it's there. So that's how I choose to respond. I've chosen, It's funny, because I'm a sociologist, by training, I really was trained in very traditional conservative ways. But I think we can't escape our nature for too long. And I think at the end of the day, I'm an artist. So I try and respond in poetic ways, and not literal ways at this point in my career. But the fact of the matter is, you know, we live in a world where we know what news channel to put on to hear the narrative that we want to hear. And so that is real. And that is disturbing. And so I understand that the kind of research I do, bumping up against that moment, creates this, oh, it's all subjective. And it's all biased. And I just choose to respond politically.
Adam Peter Lang 46:02
Well, that's Thank you very much. That's a positive way in which to approach both your writing but also for our listeners to think about the way in which they're approaching their research, but obviously tinged with realised realism that is going on as well. But thank you very much. I'll pass over to Patricia.
Kamille Beye 46:19
So I loved what you were saying. I was thinking about the arts in Africa. And so obviously, I mean, obviously, I My background is in international education. But I'm also international development specialist. And so I kept thinking about how when we'd be working in Africa, they talk about give us your best stories, and they'd have people do these lessons learned. And a lot of the development projects, listen, education have plays, because people understand the art. They don't necessarily have the literacy, literacy skills to read a report or understand things at this academic level, but they understand things conveyed in drama. And so talking about HIV/AIDS was a big deal. US plays, obviously, talking about nutrition and sexual health, I'll use dramatic presentation. And so I was thinking about going back to the research part. And it really blew my mind about only three to eight people reading a journal article. And so I was thinking about how do how can action how sorry, how can arts based research be used to not only critique these type of plays, to keep that academic spin, but also make the knowledge they're trying to present available to lay people because obviously, we're writing about these things. And we're in the development space, there's a lot of training, right? So they'll tell people to go out and read this play on whatever that topic is. But that's just for the local audience there. But there's not that academic speak behind it, like you say, to maybe get put in a journal. But then there's also not that relationship built, where the academic speaks with the development specialist to get to the wider audience of a community. And so I would love to know more about how arts based research does that I guess.
Patricia Leavy 48:08
I love the work you're doing. And I love the question. And actually, I mean, the first thing I think of is that really what you need is to be doing out I say you but I mean, people doing this work, need to be doing community based research, which can also include the arts, I mean, that's ground up research, I wrote a book called research design. And most books on design have three kinds, qualitative, quantitative mixed methods. So my book has five kinds, qualitative, quantitative mixed methods, arts based research and community based research, which is why I'm sharing this with you community based participatory research. Because I see them all as different paradigms, I just see them each has their own paradigm. And there are community based participatory projects that use the arts and that use arts based research. And so you're working with people that work in community organisation, so it's merging academics with other stakeholders, right? So and those other stakeholders could be community members, people who work at relevant organisations, people who are practitioners of X healthcare in a couple of the examples you came up with immediately come to mind, but it's about putting a team together and everyone on that team has to be equally valued. That would be my biggest tip is that if you want to do this kind of work, the biggest problem is it's often initiated by one or more academic researchers, which is absolutely fine because it's usually their research agenda, and they have the time to build the project. But when you get other people, those other people are not working for you. They're not less than you. They're equivalent to you. You are a team a partnership. It's like in a relationship. I mean, like in my home, I do the cooking thank goodness because my husband can't make toast literally, but he does the dishes. So not everybody has to do the same thing. But everybody has to be valued and everybody needs to be able to contribute and meaningful way. So I see this as doing some sort of community based research work where you're putting teams together that involve researchers, like academic researchers, practitioners and relevant areas and community stakeholders, like people in these communities that you can learn from. And then maybe you're representing this research and not one, but in two ways, which would be my recommendation. And one is an arts-based format, like a play something that people in the community can understand. And then the other one, it could be a journal article, if you want to talk to academics, but it could also be an op ed in a newspaper, it could be a blog, it could be going on National Public Radio, it could be a lot of things that by the way, when you have the initials Ph.D, next to your name you can achieve because people always think, Oh, well, how would I get on radio Ph.D next to your name, you can get on these you can do it. That's something you can get for the group. And more easily than you might think it usually just starts with shooting folks in email and saying, like, This is who I am, this is what I've done, you know, can we share it? So that would be my suggestion to you? I think the work you're doing is amazing. I would use a community based approach. And I would use the arts and I would think about having more than one outcome for the research, which I just want to say beyond your question. I suggest that to all researchers, I suggested all the time, we often think that a research project leads to one outcome, a journal article, a book, a conference presentation, but really there can be multiple outcomes. And those outcomes can be for multiple audiences. So you know, if I write a novel, I might also be writing a blog or not bed, or I might also be writing a journal article or a chapter of an edited book, or I might be writing an entire nonfiction book, I've done all of these things. At the beginning, Stella, very kindly mentioned, my book method meets art, I've taken different pieces of method meets art, which is a nonfiction academic book, and I've written many op eds over the years, you can only take one idea, you can't take a whole book and make it not bad. But you can take an idea. And you can break that into the traditional five paragraphs that we all learned a long time ago. And you can publish an op-ed. And I've done that many times over the years. There's one section and method meet art, which is about neuroscience and art. It's about how our brains process art. And I think I think that's important and powerful, which actually speaks to Adams question a little bit. Because it when you use hard science, you can get at people who are resistant to what they see as soft. And so I always turn to the neuroscience on all of it and how we process literature, how we process arts, why this is important for education, why it's important for public research. And so I took what is literally I took like, literally a few pages and method meets art, and I rewrote it as a five paragraph op ed and that travelled around the world. I mean, in the first week, it had like over 10,000, downloads or whatever. So it's like you get out to the public with those ideas right away. So you can always have more than one outcome for your research. So I would encourage you to think about that too. Because sometimes there's is a reason to speak to three to eight, or 50 or 100 people in academia, but you also want to speak to the community in which you're actually doing the research, the community in which you're enmeshed. I have a couple of scholars that I really love Ivory Tolson, Donna Ford, and they've written a lot about community-based research in communities of colour, and they call it drive by scholarship, because the researchers go in, they do the scholarship, Vina seven winters has talked about this, too. They do they do the work, and then they leave and like, what's the benefit to the community? Right. Um, but if you're, if you're sharing that research in multiple ways, in ways that are accessible, that actually there could be a real benefit to that community. So I wish you the best of luck with your research.
Kamille Beye 53:46
Thank you. That was helpful.
Adam Peter Lang 53:49
Thank you, Patricia, we're coming to the end of a fascinating hour, I just wonder if there's anything that you wanted to say that we haven't asked you about? Or we haven't given you time to tell us about or not? You don't have to respond. But it's an opportunity just in case, there's something that we've missed, and you'd like to talk to us about?
Patricia Leavy 54:07
No, it was a great conversation. So thank you for having it. I will tell you very briefly about my current book that's out. recent novel, it's called the location shoot, and I wrote it during the pandemic. And it is very, very much isolation inspired. It's about a group of artists who go to Sweden, and they're living in an inn together for three months making a film about the meaning of life. And the lead character is actually a philosopher, she's friends with the filmmaker. So she joins the actors for the summer. And it becomes a love story and all of that, but it really is very much about what is the meaning of life and it was very much a product of the pandemic and of isolation and I also just want to let people know who might be interested that I have a new nonfiction book out called writing and publishing qualitative research. It literally just came out a few days ago. Well, people have been asking me for years write a book about writing a book about publishing. And honestly, I just now time but pandemic, of course provided that time. So I thought, You know what? I'm going to do the thing people have been asking me forever, I held nothing back. So absolutely everything I know about publishing is in this book, and everything from publishing journal articles, to publishing op eds, and blogs, and novels and all those kinds of things. So it's called writing and publishing qualitative research. And other than that, I just really want to thank you all for a great conversation.
Adam Peter Lang 55:33
Well, thank you very much. That sounds very interesting, those last two pieces of your work that you've talked about, particularly the last one, I'm sure our listeners will be very interested in researching and reading that Well, look, Patricia, I'd like to thank you so much for your time today. And it's been a pleasure really to hear about your research, your work and your it's very timely, in the context of both academia and beyond, and I was just reflecting on the wide range of conversation that we've had actually, about your that art space research and the challenges that people might throw at that, but also how you respond and the way you've got many answers to that, which I think are excellent, and your own work and your varied work and your substantial work. I was particularly taken early on when you talked about writing up research that you've done his poetry, I that was fascinating to me, about using different forms of art form to bring into the world that we work in and the world and trying to understand the world and bring together good practice good ideas. I think you've really said that in such a positive way. So we'd like to thank you so much for your time today. I think closing the episode today. I'm Adam Peter Lang. I would like to thank everybody to listening to conversations4citizenship. We really hope that you enjoyed this fascinating episode, be sure to subscribe to conversations4citizenship and look out for us on Twitter at @c4c_ed. A transcript of today's conversation with Dr. Patricia Leavy can be found on www.conversations4citizenship.com. And this episode of conversations4citizenship was produced by me, Adam Peter Lang, Kamille Bay and Stella Cheong, recorded and sound mixed by Stella Cheong. So thank you very much, everybody and take good care. Thank you.