Unmasking the 4th space: collaborative creativity in praxis at the intersection of artists, people with their communities, and institutions

This portfolio, submitted for the Doctorate of Cultural Research (DCR), unmasks tensions and transformations generated in complex interdisciplinary creative collaborations. I study such tensions through practice-led research, identifying a potentially transformative ‘4th space’ that emerges through collaborative creative processes between artists, people with their communities and institutions. To identify ‘ways of knowing’ in this space, I traverse Augusto Boal’s ‘aesthetic space’, in dialogue with Bob Hodge’s ‘counter-factual space’, Jean Clandinin’s ‘metaphoric three-dimensional narrative inquiry space’, and aspects of Homi Bhabha’s ‘Third Space’. Dynamics of the ‘4th space’ are further explored with applied metaphors from chaos theory and non-linear science. This creates innovative intersections of method that include narrative, ethnographically-based poetry, objects as metaphor, sensory relationship mapping, autoethnography, and performance autoethnography. Through this, an innovation in methodological approach is born and referred to as Sensory Poetic Relationship Mapping (SPRM). This opens the space for a multiplicity of voices to co-exist and contribute to the research inquiry - revealing stories in this 4th space that are often not told.