Embodied, arts-based and participatory research

This article outlines embodied, arts-based and participatory approaches to research which were applied in a four-year project inspired by participatory action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005) with a primary school class in South Africa. As an intercultural group of artist-educators and researchers, project partners developed new strategies for teaching through arts-integrated educational practice and explored the children’s opportunities for learning. During these processes challenges were encountered when working with established qualitative methods and therefore arts-based methods (Leavy, 2018) were included to help solicit the children’s perspectives. The article discusses the potential of these methods to reach out and involve participants in a decolonising research practice in which experienced dilemmas of seeking to understand ‘the other’ when power issues to do with colour, age and socio-economic status cannot be erased.