Caroline Lenette PAR Aug24

Participatory action research – key takeaways

Positionality in relation to research: requires the researcher to declare why they are motivated to undertake this research in order for it to be meaningful and ethical.

Lenette discusses their ‘anti-colonial’ research as an action based research which requires explicit commitment that acknowledges and addresses the harms of colonialisation. It requires an element of knowledge translation and action. 

PAR is any form designed to actively involve participants as active researchers. Instead of mining data, they are co-researchers. Importantly, power is shared and decision-making is shared. It is the responsibility for the researcher to create opportunities to exercise agency and the way it can be shared, diverting the tendency of academia to hold research, but rather, it is action-based. 

Key concepts relating to ethical PAR:

• intersectionality: consider the compounded effect of intersectional identities
• trauma-informed: trauma is not the topic of conversations but the researcher is aware of participants may be affected. not coercing those to share traumatic narratives
• cultural safety: training staff in understanding cultural frames of reference and why a person might be experiencing their illness and their engagement with the medical system in a certain way.
• decolonising research methods: acknowledging the impact of colonialism 

Co-reasearchers are invited to express their social world and cultural understanding. 

Importance of meaningful participation. Not consultation after the fact or tokenistic participation. Needs to be the primary focus. 

A commitment to collaborative or community-engaged outputs. Requires flexibility, agility, humility and reflexivity. 

The output needs to be accessible! 

Education for socially engaged art : a materials and techniques handbook / Pablo Helguera

A key reference for building an understanding the approaches to teaching socially engaged art practice has been “Education for socially engaged art : a materials and techniques handbook” by Pablo Helguera from 2011. This has been especially important in considering whether community radio – specifically pirate radio – can fall into the realm of socially engaged art.