Embracing the Mosaic: Crafting Collaborative Arts-based Research for Critical Resilience

A mosaic brings together fragments from different sources, crafting them into a whole object. Mosaics do not seek to hide the points of disconnect between these fragments, but use them to create things of beauty which embrace new meanings and a new utility. This analogy aptly encapsulates the participatory, arts-based research method of 'collaborative poetics.'

In collaborative poetics, artists, academic researchers and community participants work together as a 'research collective' to produce creative texts. The method harnesses the skills and knowledge of all of these groups, and has been used to build resilience within communities, advocate for social justice, enhance knowledge and skill sharing between fields, and provide an innovative teaching tool.

Dr Helen Johnson tells the story of collaborative poetics; its roots, shoots, ideology and methods. In the process, she speaks to the concept of 'critical resilience,' which emphasises the need to balance the nurturing of individual resilience with a social justice model, which challenges the conditions that create a need for such resilience in the first place.

This event is open and free for all to attend. This event may interest researchers interested in innovative research methods.

About the speaker

Dr Helen Johnson is a senior Psychology lecturer at the University of Brighton. Her work centres around creativity and the arts, with research focusing on areas such as spoken word and slam communities, and arts interventions in health, education and dementia care.

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Links

• Social Science Research Unit (SSRU)
• About the seminar series
• More SSRU events