Some of my data...

 Depressed 

Bleak

Kind of strange

Hopeful

scary

 changing

 Drastically, The City doesn't seem to have the same values it did when I was growing up.

 I was helped by a total stranger to find my way...the beauty of the water,

Raw Arts ...an amazing oasis for youth.

 Visiting the marsh and checking out the wildlife ecosystem and walking along the 

breakwater when the waves were crashing up and getting splashed...

 No best aspect just a crime ridden city that is unsafe for the people to walk the streets 

no matter what time of day or night.

 When i visited RAW in downtown Lynn, I couldn't help thinking that it might have been pretty nice and

 lively at one point. I hope it can be again. It has a ton of potential.

 An old city with some great treasures.

 Ocean Views, Gritty City

My Research Question, part deux

I've completely re-done my research topic from the original one. Of course, this means more work! But I really like my new topic, as it involves self reflection and challenging my own assumptions. Earlier I noted my struggle to dedicate time and energy to this work, and so this question is the perfect challenge for me right now. 

Self Reflection: Using poetic inquiry to examine my own impressions of the community of Lynn, MA

How can poetic inquiry illuminate our own preconceptions and understanding about a community as we research it?

I am doing my internship at Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project, which seeks to analyze, gather, and understand data about the impact of the arts in the lives of youth at risk. It is an off-shoot of RAW ARTworks in Lynn, MA. I realized that all I knew of Lynn was from what I heard from others, and I wanted to explore my preconceptions and be aware of them before I dive into this research to be sure that my own judgments do not cloud my analytic process.

Lisa asks: how will you track your own evolving perceptions?

This is the nut of the thing, really. How do I track it? This is what my internship is all about, too. Not only do I want to be focusing on my initial opinions and thoughts, and then my thoughts as I research and learn, but the evolution of this and most importantly how and why and record this in some way.

I need to research some more on this topic to get a better idea. I need to better understand the methods others have used so my work will be valid and more useful.

Research Topic

I am interested in researching the power of metaphors in articulating a process that is largely internal.

I love to write, and metaphors are a powerful tool for a writer to help the reader understand a concept. But how would metaphors help a learner? And do they always need to be written down? Or can they have the same power in movement and art?

My proposed 'experiment' is this: at the end of class, to tell everyone to think of metaphors that describe the process of this course, and to do it through writing, visual art, or movement. Then I would like everyone to present their metaphor in class and have a discourse on the results. I might record this as well.

What I want to know is if the process helped anyone work through the difficult nature of this course? or did it even help refine one's question?  What medium did you use, and why? Or was this not helpful at all?

I want to know because I imagine in my future work that I will be working with organizations that are having difficulty articulating the methods and process of their arts based projects, and need to for a grant or the like. I want practice in working with a group as well.

Reading Responses, Arts Based Research

As I read the materials for this course, I am struck by a repeated theme of 'translation'; how can the data collected through arts based research be communicated in ways that make sense to a wide variety of audiences. How can we communicate the effectiveness of this work to scientists? policy makers? foundations? education administrators? There are so many people who could benefit and would like to understand, but it's an immense challenge to translate the information so that others not in the field can understand. In another course, a guest panelist mentioned that 'people like us' have "drank the punch", and it's a constant battle to explain the nature of this work to those who have not.

Luckily, the arts have a way of moving people emotionally that raw data and numbers cannot. The fact that most of us are so comfortable with the arts as a means of dissemination means we have this skill on our side. The arts also can help us process the information we've discovered, or even help the subjects process it. The story that Lisa told in class about the teenagers working on the Playwright Mentoring project at Barrington Stage is such a wonderful example. Sean McNiff wrote that:

...the arts help us improve the way we interact with others by learning how to let go of negative attitudes and excessive needs for control, learning how to foster more open and original ways of perceiving situations and problems, gaining new insights and sensitivities towards others, learning how the slip stream of group expression can carry us to places where we cannot go alone, learning how to create supportive environments that inspire creative thought...

Often the translating that is most important is from what is in our heads as ideas to tangible concepts.

Another interested concept discussed in the reading is that arts projects tend to be multidisciplinary. Does this help with my translating issue? In Chapter 1 of our text, Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor writes:

Blurred genres tend to have the goal to speak to diverse audiences both within and outside the academy. The use of accessible, vernacular, and aesthetic language and image, helps to explicity reach out to larger, more diverse audiences...

I've decided that this concept of using the arts to assist in articulating an intangible process is what I want to focus on this semester. How do we make our results valid and useful? When the process is often more important than the product, how do you measure that? Often this type of research just presents more questions than answers. This is SO hard for me and I find that it is so hard for the class as well. More on this in my next post, on my research topic.

Arts Based Research, First Post

Welcome to my Arts Based Research blog!

I am really looking forward to this class. My interests in the area of inquiry, assessment, and evaluation are really taking off, so I am really looking forward to getting the tools that will help me in my thesis.

While reading the course text book (New Creative Community) for another class that I am taking, Ideas into Action, I came across the following quote by Arlene Goldbard about the nature of community work:

"But because it essentially participatory and collaborative, because the question of success has more to do with process than product, the evaluation of community cultural development work must be grounded in conversation among practitioners and participants. The judgement of success rests with the participants." (154)

And later:

"Can it be demonstrated that funds invested in a community cultural development work will produce lasting value for a community, help to bring about lasting change?" (155)

These questions were already buzing in my head. In class, I wrote in my journal that foundations/government funding bodies all report to some higher power, often the bottom line. This mindset has permeated into the arts funding world and now community arts, which in itself cannot be measured or quantified in either process or product, needs to answer to this baseline requirement of measurable success. How can we use the arts to communicate to those in this world that the process is more important than the result? That the products and achievements cannot be measured so much as felt? How can you prove progress with arts based community development?

My research then is to establish effective, proven methods of recording, sharing, measuring, and communicating the powerful positive effects of arts based community development that can be understood by  both sides of this funding conundrum. How can both sides learn from one another? Where are the roadblocks in the communication pathways?

I'll post later on the chapters in Arts Based Research, as they inspired different questions altogether!