Arts-Based Methodologies

Arts-based methodologies are a family of methodological practices that engage and intersect multiple disciplines, all the while centering the arts as and in inquiry. Within qualitative research, arts-based methodological practices cultivate spaces for non-traditional modes of inquiry, data, and (re)presentation, expanding possibilities for methodologies and methods, broadening how scholars/artists communicate, relate, and understand. Arts-based methodologies, then, are often considered disruptive to academic norms, creating new and ever-expanding possibilities for inquiry, expanding beyond written language. This chapter examines arts-based methodologies, beginning with an overview of what they are and how they came about before exploring arts-based research methodologies in relation to four theoretical groups that represent contemporary approaches to arts-based methodological practices: (1) feminist; (2) critical and decolonizing; (3) post-qualitative, posthuman, and new materialist; and (4) phenomenological. This chapter concludes with hopes and possibilities for arts-based methodologies moving forward.