Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art 9781474283830, 9781474283861, 9781474283854

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Applied Practice

The Applied Theatre series is a major innovation in applied theatre scholarship, bringing together leading international scholars that engage with and advance the field of applied theatre. Each book presents new ways of seeing and critically reflecting on this dynamic and vibrant field. Volumes offer a theoretical framework and introductory survey of the field addresses, combined with a range of case studies illustrating and critically engaging with practice. Series Editors Michael Balfour (Griffith University, Australia) Sheila Preston (University of East London, UK) Applied Theatre: Aesthetics Gareth White ISBN 978-1-472-51355-7 Applied Theatre: Development Tim Prentki ISBN 978-1-472-50986-4 Applied Theatre: Facilitation Sheila Preston ISBN 978-1-4725-7693-4 Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing Veronica Baxter and Katharine E. Low ISBN 978-1-472-58457-1 Applied Theatre: Research Radical Departures Peter O’Connor and Michael Anderson ISBN 978-1-472-50961-1 Applied Theatre: Resettlement Drama, Refugees and Resilience Michael Balfour, Bruce Burton, Penny Bundy, Julie Dunn and Nina Woodrow ISBN 978-1-472-53379-1

Applied Practice Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe Series Editors Michael Balfour and Sheila Preston

METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © Matthew Reason, Nick Rowe and contributors, 2017 Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as editors of this work. Cover design: Louis Dugdale Cover image © Shuttershock All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Reason, Matthew, 1975- author. | Rowe, Nick, 1954- author. Title: Applied practice: evidence and impact in theatre, music and art / Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe [editors]. Description: London: New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017. | Series: Applied theatre | Based on a conference held at York St John University, UK, in 2014. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017003696 (print) | LCCN 2017022221 (ebook) | ISBN 9781474283847 (Epub) | ISBN 9781474283854 (Epdf) | ISBN 9781474283830 (hardback: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Qualitative research–Congresses. | Arts and society–Congresses. | Performing arts–Social aspects–Congresses. Classification: LCC H62.A3 (ebook) | LCC H62.A3 A67 2017 (print) | DDC 306.4/7–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003696 ISBN: HB: 978-1-474-28383-0 PB: 978-1-3501-0193-7 ePDF: 978-1-474-28385-4 eBook: 978-1-474-28384-7 Series: Applied Theatre Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Introduction: A Rope Comprising Several Cords Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe Part One 1 2 3 4

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Framing Evidence and Impact in Participatory Arts

Purpose, Outcomes and Obliquity: To Plan or Not to Plan Nick Rowe and Matthew Reason Evidence, Knowledge and Persuasion in Arts Impact Research Matthew Reason Intrinsic and Instrumental Impacts in Participatory Art Matthew Reason Participatory Research in the Participatory Arts Nick Rowe and Matthew Reason

Part Two

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11 24 37 48

Researching Participatory Arts: Analytical Perspectives

Section Introduction Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe 5 On the Need for Diversity of Methods in Researching Arts and Health Practice Stephen Clift 6 Do You See What I See? Arts, Science and Evidence in Autism Research Nicola Shaughnessy 7 Wrestling with Beauty: Putting the Aesthetic into Arts Evaluation Katya Johanson and Hilary Glow

63 67 80 95

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Capturing the Intangible: Exploring Creative Risk-taking through Collaborative and Creative Methods Elanor Stannage 9 Besieged by Inappropriate Criteria: Arts Organizations Developing Grounded Evaluation Approaches Anni Raw and Mary Robson 10 The Performance of Prison Theatre Practices: Questions of Evidence Caoimhe McAvinchey 11 Researching Applied Arts through Ethnographic Performance: Perspectives from an African Context Kennedy C. Chinyowa 12 Thou Art, I Am: Discovery and Recovery in the Artmaking Process Olivia Sagan Part Three

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123 139

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Researching Participatory Arts: Practice-Orientated Case Studies

Section Introduction Nick Rowe and Matthew Reason 13 ‘Dear Younger Me’: Writing, Songwriting and Choral Singing while Incarcerated as a Means to Build Identities and Bridge Communities Mary L. Cohen and Perry Miller 14 Exploring the Perceived Benefits of Shared Musical Experience Christine Bates and Liz Mellor 15 The Wisdom of Crowds: Applied Theatre, Social Media and Data Visualization Paul Sutton 16 A Community-based Theatre Arts Programme for Adults with Disabilities: Evidence through Research, Observation and Individual Transformation Natalie Russo, Melissa Luke, Kevin Heffernan, Luis Columna and Elizabeth Ingram

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195 202 210

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17 Bespoke Practices: A Practitioner’s Perspective on Documenting and Evaluating the Experiences of Artists with Disabilities Jennifer Gilbert 18 ‘There’s No Pill For That’: A Practitioner’s Perspective on the Evidence Imperative in the Arts and Mental Health Linda Boyles 19 Embracing Indeterminacy in Participatory Storytelling Catherine Heinemeyer 20 Art Knows No Boundaries: Cross-Cultural Bridge Building through Transnational Arts Project Matthew Hahn, Lungile Dlamini and Marius Botha 21 Foot in Snout, Snout in Trough: Doing Good, Evaluation and Other Megalomania Scott Rankin

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231 238

246 254

Afterword: Confidence in Art as Evidence Ross W. Prior

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Notes References Index

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List of Illustrations Figure 1.1 The Converge Communitas choir, York St John University. Photograph Jen Todman.

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Figure 5.1 Changes in SF12 mental health scale over the course of the trial and the three-month follow-up.

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Figure 7.1 Filming of Wild at Heart, reproduced with permission of Curious Works and Meet+Eat.

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Figure 9.1 Roots and Wings. Example adults’ prompt sheet.

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Figure 14.1 Converge Research Project: Data Set 2b: Research Tool.

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Figure 14.2 The distribution of responses by Converge music students in improvisation.

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Figure 15.1 Wisdom of Crowds. C&T Data Visualization by Paul Sutton.

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Figure 18.1 Illustration of common aims of different stakeholders involved in an arts project.

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Figure 21.1 Big hART’s Yijala Yala Project. Featuring Timara Bradshaw and Jennifer Daniel. Roebourne. Western Australia. Photograph Claire Leach.

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Notes on Contributors Christine Bates is Senior Lecturer in Community Music at Leeds College of Music. Her career has formed from experience as a classroom teacher, practising community musician and researcher. She is a graduate of both the University of Wales and Durham University and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Marius Botha is a Durban-born musician, studio owner/engineer and guitar doctor (a name earned from his unique skill of restoring/ making guitars). He has forty years’ experience in the music industry, performing, promoting, recording and composing. He often collaborates with musicians and artists in other art forms who share his strong commitment to fulfilling their educational responsibilities. Linda Boyles is Arts Development Manager for Arts and Minds, a mental health and arts project hosted by Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. She has twenty-five years of experience in arts and mental health development work in the statutory and voluntary sectors. She is also an exhibiting fine artist and community artist, and has worked as an occupational therapist in mental health settings. www.artsandmindsnetwork.org.uk Kennedy C. Chinyowa is currently Research Professor in the Department of Drama and Film Studies at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa. He was the head of the Dramatic Arts Division at the University of Witwatersrand (2011–14) and a visiting scholar in the Centre for Applied Theatre Research at Griffith University (2001–5) where he obtained his PhD in applied theatre. He has presented papers and workshops internationally and published widely in books and refereed journals.

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Stephen Clift is Professor of Health Education and Director of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health, Canterbury Christ Church University. The De Haan Research Centre, established in 2005, has made original contributions to research and practice on the value of singing for people with enduring mental health challenges and older people with chronic respiratory illness, dementia and Parkinson’s. Mary L. Cohen is Associate Professor and Area Head of Music Education at the University of Iowa. She researches music making and wellness with respect to prison contexts, writing and songwriting, and collaborative communities. She leads the Oakdale Prison Community Choir and the prison songwriting workshop. Luis Columna is Associate Professor in the Exercise Science Department at Syracuse University. His research focuses on methods to increase participation of families (especially Hispanic families) of children with disabilities in physical activity, and to better prepare teachers to work with diverse populations in physical activity settings. Lungile Dlamini is a celebrated South African singer/songwriter, who believes in the healing power of the arts. In conjunction with her music career, she works tirelessly to take music and arts to schools where no formal lessons are taught in these fields. Jennifer Gilbert is the manager of Outside In, an organization supporting artists facing barriers to the mainstream art world. She has been working in this field since 2008. She has a BA in graphic design from Central Saint Martins as well as a master’s degree in art, health and well-being. She runs training in disability equality and in 2016/17 toured two exhibitions around the UK. Hilary Glow is Associate Professor at Deakin University, Australia, where she is Director of the Arts and Cultural Management Program in the Faculty of Business and Law. Her research is in the areas of audience

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engagement and cultural policy, particularly focusing on evaluation processes for arts organizations, the impact of arts programmes on people’s views of cultural diversity, barriers to arts attendance and audience measures of artistic quality.  Matthew Hahn is a creative producer, playwright, theatre director and theatre for development facilitator specializing in creating theatre for social change, examining behaviour, resolving conflict and improving communication skills. He works with emerging and established theatremakers to find new ways for audiences and communities to access art through partnerships. Kevin Heffernan is Assistant Professor of Exercise Science and is a director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Syracuse University. His research examines the impact of diet, nutritional supplementation and exercise on vascular health in chronic disease and disability throughout the human lifespan. Catherine Heinemeyer is a storyteller specializing in story in community and youth settings and in response to environmental change. In 2017 she completed a practice-as-research PhD in participatory storytelling practice with adolescents, funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award and conducted in partnership between York St John University and York Theatre Royal. Elizabeth Ingram is Associate Professor of Drama at Syracuse University, a faculty advisor and originator of ‘The All Star C.A.S.T.’ programme, a drama group for people with special needs and drama students. Elizabeth was an actress in England before coming to the United States. Katya Johanson is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, where she teaches and researches

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across both communications and creative arts. Her major research interest is in improving the relationship between audiences, citizens and communities on the one hand and strategic cultural policymaking on the other. With colleagues Jennifer Radbourne and Hilary Glow, she is the co-editor of The Audience Experience (2013).  Melissa Luke is Professor and school counselling programme coordinator in the Department of Counselling and Human Services at Syracuse University. She is a nationally certified counsellor (NCC), an approved clinical supervisor (ACS) and a licensed mental health counsellor (LMHC) in the state of New York. Caoimhe McAvinchey is Reader in Socially Engaged and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to this, she established the MA Applied Drama programme at Goldsmiths, University of London (2005–9). Publications include  Theatre & Prison  (2011) and Performance and Community: Case Studies and Commentary  (2013). Forthcoming publications include  Phakama: Participatory Performance in the Making  (co-edited with Lucy Richardson and Fabio Santos), Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System and a monograph about Clean Break theatre company. Liz Mellor is Professor of Music at York St John University. She taught at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, before joining YSJU in 2000. Liz has a wide range of teaching experience and research interests across music perception, creativity, collaboration, community, arts, health and well-being, and is currently involved in exploring aspects of her experience in gestalt psychotherapy to inclusive pedagogy and student engagement. She is a National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Perry Miller was a remarkable writer and lyricist. He sang in choirs and played in bands throughout his life. In his younger years he travelled

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to Italy with a youth choir. Perry recorded a few CDs with his own Christian band called Seraph. He most recently sang with the Oakdale Choir and the Mt Pleasant Choir in Iowa. Perry died on 23 November 2015. Ross W. Prior is Professor of Learning and Teaching in the Arts in Higher Education at the University of Wolverhampton. He is best known for his book Teaching Actors: Knowledge Transfer in Actor Training and his work in applied arts and health as Founder Principal Editor of the Journal of Applied Arts and Health. He has a record of research surrounding learning and teaching within a range of educational and training settings. Scott Rankin is a playwright, director and, for twenty-five years, the creative director and executive producer of Big hART. His collaborative cross-media projects have won many awards, and he has toured extensively. He is an Australia Council fellow and lives in the northwest coast of Tasmania (land of the Tommeginner Aboriginal people). Anni Raw was previously a community musician and has worked as an evaluator in participatory arts for fifteen years. She completed her PhD, exploring community-based participatory arts practice, Durham University’s Centre for Medical Humanities. Currently combining work as a Senior Research Associate and freelance evaluation consultancy, she is also Visiting Fellow at University of Leeds School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, and research active with collaborators in Mexico and Brazil. She currently investigates cultural value, and research and evaluation methodologies and practices in relation to the arts and social change. Matthew Reason is Professor of Theatre and Performance at York St John University, UK. Publications include Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance (2006), The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s Experiences

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of Theatre (2010), Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Contexts (co-edited with Reynolds, 2012) and Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance (co-edited with Lindelof, 2017). www.matthewreason.com Mary Robson trained as a theatre designer and has worked as an artist, social educator and arts and health consultant in the UK and beyond. Her influential arts in health and education work in schools focuses on the social and emotional development of children.  She is Creative Facilitator for two Wellcome Trust-funded research projects at Durham University, and has received a Royal Society of Public Health award for ‘innovative and outstanding contributions to arts and health’.  Nick Rowe is Associate Professor at York St John University. He trained as a psychiatric nurse and drama therapist and later was a project coordinator of Skills for People, an advocacy project with people with disabilities. He is a performing member of Playback Theatre York and the author of Playing the Other: Dramatizing Personal Stories in Playback Theatre (2007). Nick founded Converge in 2008, a project offering educational opportunities to people who use mental health services.   Natalie Russo is Assistant Professor of School Psychology and the director of the Center for Autism Research and Electrophysiology at Syracuse University. Her research interests focus on the development of individuals with an autism spectrum disorder and specifically on sensory perception and multisensory integration. She is a licensed psychologist. Olivia Sagan’s research explores first-person narratives of mental illness. Her book Narratives of Art Practice and Mental Wellbeing: Reparation and Connection was published in 2014, and she is currently editing and contributing to Narratives of Loneliness: Multidisciplinary Perspectives from the 21st Century, to be published in 2017.

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Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of applied theatre, contemporary performance and cognitive theory. She was Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded project ‘Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autism’. Her publications include Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice (2012), and she is the editor of Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being (2013) as well as the Bloomsbury Methuen Drama Performance and Science series. Elanor Stannage is completing doctoral research in arts in mental health at York St John University, working in particular with Converge and Arts and Minds. Her research explores the experiential processes of arts in mental health practice. She is a theatre practitioner with over a decade of experience working across diverse communities as facilitator, writer, director and project manager. Paul Sutton is the founder and artistic director of applied theatre company C&T. He has extensive experience in schools, colleges and universities in the UK and internationally, working as teacher, actor, director and digital media producer. He has worked with organizations such as the BBC, British Film Institute and Arts Council England. Paul has published widely on drama, education, applied theatre and digital technologies. He is Digital Editor of Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Performance.

Introduction: A Rope Comprising Several Cords Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe

The participatory arts are driven by a deeply held belief in their powerful and potentially transformative impact upon both individuals and communities. Often produced in the context of tight budgets, low pay, lack of respect and other constraints, it is this belief that motivates and underpins the vibrant practice of committed and skilful practitioners. First-hand experience provides tangible examples of how the participatory arts can provide new opportunities, change lives and forge community connections across a diversity of contexts, from education to hospitals, mental health to prisons. However, while participatory arts practitioners are frequently able to produce stories of tremendous impacts, in the context of reduced and competitive budgets they are also asked for more and to produce ‘evidence’ about the impact and outcomes of their work. The origins of this book rest in a symposium that we coordinated at York St John University, UK, in 2014 titled Elusive Evidence. Inviting contributors from across the United Kingdom and guests from the United States, this research event aimed to bring together a diverse range of approaches to documenting and researching arts in health, education, community and social contexts. During this event we explored how practitioners and researchers can document, measure and evaluate the impact of participatory arts practice. This book does something similar, although despite enjoying its alliterative rhythm, we have ditched the title. Our premise – no doubt naïve, although we suspect fairly widely held – was that the problem holding back the participatory arts in making its case was a lack of

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evidence. The evidence, we implied, was hard to find or not easy to capture through measurement or verbal documentation. It was perhaps situated and difficult to generalize. It was most likely rooted in very particular participatory relationships, the product of the particular approach to facilitation, the particular art form, the particular people involved. The evidence, we implied, was elusive and – moreover – that whatever was presented was never enough.… But if we could capture it, then all would be (re)solved. The premise was mistaken in all sorts of ways, not least because far from being elusive (in the sense of being rare), there can often appear to be a surfeit of evidence. Instead we discovered that the challenge was more subtle and perhaps more intractable, located not in the ‘elusive’ but in the less evocative yet more meaningful word ‘evidence’. The situation is more accurately described by Theo Stickley, who writes in the context of arts and mental health that there is ‘much evidence continually being produced that supports arts and health practice. … But until the right kind of evidence is produced for the NHS, the evidence that is produced often remains marginalised and will continue to be the subject of criticism within the scientifically dominated health care arena’ (2012: viii). Something does remain elusive within this context, but it is more discursive than the magic bullet solution implied by our original title. Any ‘answer’ – we are sorry to say – is not as simple as commissioning more research and producing a particular kind of evidence. Rather the issue is more fundamental, concerned with reconfiguring the philosophy, the ethics, the discourse of how we conceive of evidence within the context of participatory arts practice. It is this that our collection seeks to achieve, engaging with a diversity of contexts, locations and art forms – including theatre, music and fine art – to bring together theoretical, political and practice-based perspectives on the question of ‘evidence’ in relation to participatory arts practice. This collection is a unique contribution to the field, focusing on one of the vital concerns for a growing and developing set of arts and research practices. It asks us to consider evidence not only in

Introduction: A Rope Comprising Several Cords

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terms of methodologies but also in the light of the ideological, political and pragmatic implications of those methodologies.

A short word on terminology As authors and editors neither of us is particularly predisposed to get mired in what can become overly inward-looking questions of terminology. Often, as soon as you step outside the discipline itself, the difference between terms – say ‘arts for health’ and ‘arts and health’ or ‘participatory arts’ and ‘arts in social context’ – reduces to less than zero. Nonetheless we did find ourselves needing to settle on some shared terminology for this book. Our conversations about how to resolve this crossed between the purely pragmatic and the more conceptual and meaningful. The question was simply what should we label the activities that we are talking about, with the options variously including community art, socially engaged art, art in social context, applied practice, art as social engagement and participatory art. The question does, of course, matter, and not just for reasons of consistency. In a paper on art in health, Raw, Lewis, Russell and Macnaughton discuss how in the specific context of arts and health the terminologies and definitions in use are ‘fragmented and disputed, with a plethora of different terms used and defended by different groups, nationally and internationally’. The consequence, they argue, is a lack of ‘visible identity’ that results in a less impactful and less cohesive body of research (2012). This book seeks to draw together an even more disparate and interdisciplinary body of material, stretching across not just arts and health but also education, prisons and community contexts and embracing a diversity of art forms. While not seeking to construct a singular identity for this research we are certainly hoping to increase its visibility and certainly arguing that as a body of research it is strongest considered collectively – as a rope comprising several cords, an image we will return to in a moment.

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It was in this context that as editors we have adopted the wording ‘participatory arts’, in order to signal our focus on the active, creative doing of art-making that concerns us in this book. ‘Participatory arts’ also evokes a broadening and widening of who is making the art, from a narrowly defined and even elitist specialism of The Artist to an inclusive and radical proposition of anybody and everybody. What is the impact – in various social contexts – of doing art? What kinds of evidence support these claims to impact? This is not to ignore the sizeable aesthetic or ethical discourses and dilemmas surrounding notions of participation. Within the arts Tom Finkelpearl describes strands of participatory practice including ‘interactive, relational, cooperative, activist, dialogical and communitybased’ (2014); while from the social sciences have emerged various typologies, including most famously Sherry Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Participation’, first published in 1969. We return to some of these questions surrounding participation in Chapter 4, which explores among other things the relationship between participatory arts and participatory research practices when it comes to questions of evidence. We want to reflect on this theme here as well, while also returning to what we hope to achieve by bringing together the various voices present in this book.

The death of the expert At the febrile height of the 2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, Conservative politician Michael Gove declared ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’. In this blurt of invective Gove was calling for voters to trust their own experiences, to trust their own perceptions and own values, over the ostensibly more informed or more evidenced claims of those anointed experts. Moreover, he was doing so in the context of what could be called a (flawed) process of participatory decision-making.

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There are, no doubt, multiple reasons for this growth in scepticism, including a general dislocation with various forms of authority. More particularly, the suspicion of experts – and of the evidence that experts provide – has grown as a result of a suspicion of the possibility of impartiality and the existence of a neutral place from which to observe. In part this has taken place in the context of a conscious effort among academics and activists within the progressive movement to resist or overturn the claims of ‘objectivity’ that accompany scientific certainty. Exemplary of this is Donna Haraway’s influential text ‘Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’ in which she seeks to unmask ‘the doctrines of objectivity because they threatened our budding sense of collective historical subjectivity and agency and our “embodied” accounts of the truth’ (1988: 578). The radical and genuinely liberating power of this movement has been in its giving voice to previously ‘subjugated’ or marginalized perspectives, including feminist, postcolonial, queer, disabled and mad. These, Haraway writes, are all ‘marked bodies’, possessing ‘situated knowledge’ that have historically excluded the pseudo-objective positions of truth. One of the great achievements of the progressive movement has been in giving validity to the particularity of such individual and collective lived experiences. Yet it is immediately possible to see how the celebration of lived experience presented here might morph in different and less progressive contexts. This is the focus of Bruno Latour in his essay ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?’, where he observes how his philosophical objective had always been to ‘emancipate the public from prematurely naturalized objectified facts’ and combat ‘ideological arguments posturing as matters of fact’ (2004: 227). An unintended consequence of this, however, has been the adoption of similar processes of critique from other, less progressive and even reactionary perspectives. If critique has invited us to question the stability of any claim, if there is ‘no sure ground anywhere’, then the result is a potentially dangerous position of absolute relativism where any perspective – Latour is

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particularly focusing on climate change denial – warrants equal respect and equal airtime. The following passage from Latour illustrates the investment of the intellectual progressive movement in the concept of critique, and his fear of the unintended consequences: Entire PhD programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth, that we are always prisoners of language, that we always speak from a particular standpoint, and so on, while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives. (2004: 227)

As writers and researchers we come from within this uneasy tradition, from within the progressive movement with its invested belief in political empowerment through the positive validation of stories of individual lived experience and from within a tradition of critique that has sought to doubt and question voices of authority. Yet as writers and researchers we also recognize the value of expertise, of rigorously uncovered evidence and of the insight and knowledge that come from education and learning. These ideas warrant a far more subtle and nuanced discussion than we can give them in these brief paragraphs, particularly as we also want to map a way forward within the context of evidence and impact within the participatory arts. Here some of the issues can be situated within the framework we have uncovered, particularly a tension between a drive for impartial, objective, authoritative evidence on the one hand and the validation of invested, subjective and partial lived experience on the other. To help us move forward, we draw upon the work of Phillip Kitcher, who argues that neither the exclusive elitism of the expert nor the ‘tyranny of the ignorant’ is a sound base on which to found research. He calls for a ‘well-ordered’ science within an ‘enlightened democracy’ in which tutored judgements are made by experts and non-experts

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through democratic processes (cited in Faulkner 2004: 2). To Kitcher’s concept of ‘tutoring’ we might add other processes that have sought to unite the evidence that comes from expert knowledge with the insight and democratic validity of participatory processes. Examples include the development of ‘citizen juries’ within participatory action research or, to give a specific example, the Irish Constitutional Convention of 2012. What both these processes share is the establishment of a ‘jury’ consisting of a random or representative cross-section of society which is required to hear, cross-question and consider expert witnesses and evidence before producing a collective conclusion. The explicit parallel is of course with the far more familiar legal jury system, where a random selection of peers considers and weighs up the evidence presented to them. What is interesting for our purposes here is that this enables a disparate range of types of evidence to be considered and enables the non-expert to engage in considering and balancing evidence. Crucially, among the kinds of evidence that become admissible within the jury system are those described as both hard and soft, both absolute objective facts and different forms of more or less subjective testimony. Testimony is rooted in experience, in the body, in the self, in the position of first-hand witness. In the context of participatory arts practice, testimony documented through words, pictures or video has a particular value in making the lived experience visible. There is movement in this direction, as Olivia Sagan writes, ‘Testimony from people is increasingly regarded as a valid form of “evidence” despite the continued clarion call to positivistic means by which to count, measure and offer statically significant proofs of X’ (2015: 6–7). Testimony in this context is knowledge rooted in the personal, in the subjective story of experience. Such testimony is also easily dismissed as subjective, individual, even ‘anecdotal’ (to use a word that is almost anathema in the context of evidence). Yet testimony as evidence has an utterly vital and indisputable function. Within the law, personal testimony represents a cornerstone of our justice system, as a form of evidence that might not always stand

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on its own but is not neglected or ignored. Instead, cases are built through the careful joining together of multiple testimonies, with one classic articulation of testimony as being ‘like the case of a rope comprising of several cords. One strand of the cord might be insufficient to sustain the weight, but three strands together may be quite of sufficient strength’ (Pollock CB, R v Exall (1866) 4 F & F 922, 929). This cumulative construction of evidence through the weaving of multiple strands seems a valuable way forward, and, in a small way, this is what we hope to present across the three sections in this book, adopting conceptual, analytical and practice-orientated relationships to the subject. In Part One, we begin with four short chapters that seek to frame reflections on evidence and impact in the participatory arts; Part Two brings together eight full-length chapters by invited international contributors that present analytical perspectives on the question of researching the participatory arts; Part Three contains nine shorter, more practice-orientated case studies, again with international scope. Short section introductions will seek to draw connections between these chapters. Across all these chapters the evidence accumulates, with your task as readers being to weave together the cords, the perspectives, the knowledge and the evidence, and over the course of the collection as a whole reach your own conclusions.

Part One

Framing Evidence and Impact in Participatory Arts

1

Purpose, Outcomes and Obliquity: To Plan or Not to Plan Nick Rowe and Matthew Reason

In his book Imagination in Action, Shaun McNiff tells us that those who work in participatory arts practice, and particularly in arts and health, need to ‘move between worlds’ (2015: 156). He suggests that such practitioners journey between worlds that employ very different languages, epistemologies and practices that can easily lead to misunderstandings and incomprehension. To pursue his metaphor: in the ‘kingdom of health’ clear, unequivocal outcomes are sought, evidence gathered through scientific methods is favoured and achievement of objective measures uncontaminated by emotion and individual experience is aspired. In this world single causes are sought, multiple variables are excluded and treatments or interventions have clear aims, an approach that is essential in establishing the most effective medication or surgical procedure. The language and tactic of the ‘republic of art’ are radically different: it operates on multiple levels – inspirational, visual, textual, creative, affective, sensual – and tends to eschew linear causalities, preferring the indeterminate and multilayered. The benefits that artists may claim for their work are underpinned by cultural values that often treat subjectivity as an actively positive marker of experience and perspective. Although one needs to be cautious of slipping into an unhelpful binary discourse, which will only serve to reinforce misunderstandings, the differences are real and deeply embedded. As long ago as 1959, C. P. Snow, in his highly influential Rede lecture, identified the problem

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of these two cultures. As a scientist and novelist he felt that he was constantly moving between two groups – comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes, who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington House or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean. (1959: 1)

This polarization is, he told his audience, ‘a loss to us all’ and a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems. Although Snow was referring more broadly to the cultures of science and the humanities, his concerns are clearly evident in the debates surrounding evidence and impact in the arts. Those of us working in the field have perhaps heard community artists angrily, and sometimes rather preciously, accusing those who ask for evidence of not ‘understanding’ the nature of art processes. We may also have heard medics or policymakers speaking rather dismissively of the arts as ‘touchy, feely stuff ’ and of its evidence of impact as ‘soft’, as opposed to the ‘hard data’ available through the scientific method. These shouting matches and dismissive language can bedevil communication between policymakers and the arts. In articulating their practice, participatory artists are inevitably influenced by the historical and cultural claims made for the arts. As John Carey writes, ‘People in the West have been saying extravagant things about the arts for two and a half centuries’ (2005: ix). He goes on to list some of the claims that have been made: art can improve and civilize us, produce social tranquillity, foment social change, cement social bonds, maintain the position and status of the elite, help us transcend material limitations, teach us, help us to remember, increase our aesthetic sensibility, allow us insight into the experience of another and provide a means to explore our inner world. In a similar vein, Alain de Botton summarizes the arts as a vehicle through which we can do such things as recover hope, dignify suffering, develop empathy, laugh, wonder, nurture a sense

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of communion with others and regain a sense of justice and political idealism. (2014)

The aims and rhetoric of participatory arts projects can be seen as emerging directly from this tradition of either idealistic or grandiose claims. In contrast, the scientific method is in many ways more sceptical but also less ambitious in its approach. It sets out to test and indeed, if possible, disprove a hypothesis. There is an insistence that it can be falsified, that there are circumstances in which it can be disproved. Indeed, for Karl Popper (2005), falsification is a criterion of ‘demarcation’ between what is scientific and what is unscientific. The claims for the arts discussed above are in this definition unscientific: we cannot disprove the claim that arts enable us to recover hope or that they allow us insight into the experience of another. We write this chapter as occasional travellers between these two discourses, considering the pragmatic, attitudinal and cultural barriers to mutual understanding. To do so, this chapter explores the articulation of aims and purpose in participatory arts practice, identifying the main problems that lead to misunderstandings and disappointment. It follows the journey from aims to outcomes, from the establishment of purpose to the evaluation of impact, detailing some of the issues that cause problems in the determination of efficacy. Given the lack of comprehension that can occur, we suggest the need for a mutually sensitive understanding of these different cultures; we need to be pragmatic, searching for areas of agreement and accepting variations in language and emphasis. This understandable desire is likely to be more problematic in light of four interrelated problems: 1. The tendency of participatory arts practitioners to express their aims in broad sweeping terms and a general reluctance to define the direction of their work too tightly; 2. The communication of aims across a range of stakeholders; 3. The embedded contextual nature of participatory arts practice; 4. The problem of identity.

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1 Definitions of purpose in participative arts practice The methodological differences between participatory arts projects and the realms of scientific research are often most clearly evident, and the problems most acute, in the articulation of the aims of any given project. As Mike White asserts: ‘A serious and widespread shortcoming [in arts and health work] is a failure to state and agree clear aims for a project’ (2009: 204). In Chapter 5 of this book, Stephen Clift similarly notes the ‘surprising finding’ that many arts projects do not ‘formulate clearly expressed aims’. Typically, participatory arts practitioners will identify broad aims, such as to provide access to the arts, to break down barriers or to enable participants to tell their story. Some concrete examples taken from the UK will illustrate this. Stepping Out, a theatre company comprising people who use mental health services, ‘provides a place where people can participate in the production of high quality, socially-valued theatre’ (2016). The participants are ‘challenged with support to find new ways of being’. Meanwhile, Graeae Theatre Company, which engages people with disabilities, aims to ‘boldly place disabled artists centre stage’ (2016). Our own project, Converge, states that one of its key aims is ‘to challenge the dynamics of social exclusion that make it difficult for people who use mental health services to access good quality educational and employment opportunities’ (2016). We would all perhaps readily ascribe to these aims and praise their ambition. It is also clear how they are derived from cultural assumptions about the value of the arts described above by Carey and de Botton. However, they do not allow easy verification. They are not falsifiable. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to design a method that would disprove them. The scientific method requires a clearly defined hypothesis to be tested; it aims to reach conclusions that are universal and generalizable across large populations. Does this drug reduce blood pressure? What dosage is most effective? The aim is clear and largely demonstrable through experimental designs such as a randomized control trial. To put this rather more vividly: the scientific method takes aim rather like

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an archer does to his target; success or otherwise is easy to determine. The arts practitioner invites participants to plunge themselves into an immersive pool of creative experience, trusting that this will have an effect that cannot be fully predicted at the outset and is likely to be difficult to define. Indeed, in Chapter 19 of this book, storyteller and researcher Catherine Heinemeyer provocatively and convincingly seeks to place positive value on notions of ‘indeterminacy’. In addition to the problem of setting aims that are untestable through the scientific method, participatory arts practitioners are sometimes reluctant to define aims at all. This is not surprising given an understanding of the artistic process as immersive rather than onedirectional. Artists do not usually begin their work with clearly defined goals. With the exception, perhaps, of strictly defined commissions, writers, artists, musicians and theatre-makers begin with ideas, impulses or images that take them in unpredictable directions. Surprises and changes of tack are to be expected and welcomed. Very often the final product is multilayered, inviting a range of possible meanings and interpretations. It is a process of discovery that cannot be predicted in advance. For many this is the joy and the thrill of art-making. This desire to remain open to new unexpected directions may lie behind the resistance of many participatory arts practitioners to set aims and evaluate their work. It certainly compounds the difficulty of establishing outcome measures that will convince the scientific and policymaking communities. This reluctance to set defined aims presents a problem when external funders call for evidence and evaluation. Against which aims will the work be measured? If we do not know where we are going, how will we know if we have arrived?

2 Communicating purpose across a range of stakeholders If they are searching for funding or institutional support, arts practitioners inevitably need to negotiate the aims of their projects. A

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mismatch between participants, funders, host agencies and facilitators is one of the main sources of conflict between interested parties (an issue relative to evaluation criteria, examined in detail by Anni Raw and Mary Robson in Chapter 9). If practitioners and funders have different opinions on this matter, then it is likely to lead to disappointment and conflict. If, for example, funders believe the purpose of the activity is to directly improve well-being among participants but the practitioners’ key aim is to develop artistic capacity, then, unless carefully negotiated, there will be a mismatch in expectations. Given the reluctance to be overdefinitive about precise aims, and the preference for broad expressions of purpose, it is hardly surprising that this negotiation can be fraught with misunderstanding. Funders and policymakers often want to know the measurable impact the activity will have in terms of things like reduced use of services, return to employment or reduction in offending behaviour. Practitioners need to be careful not to make promises they cannot keep or to agree to evaluative methods that would not be acceptable to participants. Not only do arts practitioners need to negotiate aims with funders, they need to communicate these to the participants with an ethical requirement to do so honestly and transparently. The purpose defined by facilitators and participants sets the nature of the event, identifies the roles that are to be played and the relationships that will be established. To some extent it inflects the meanings and interpretations that can legitimately be ascribed to the artwork that is created. There is an ethical issue here: art-making often involves various levels of exposure, whether through creative risk-taking, public exhibition or the telling of personal stories. The meaning of this needs to be understood within the context in which it occurs, and the lack of a clearly defined purpose may be potentially abusive. For example, a person discusses his or her painting in a group designed for people who have mental health problems; their understanding is that the class was convened with the explicit purpose of ‘learning about painting’. The ‘teacher’ in the class – for that is what the group member thought he or she was – starts to ask questions of the painting that relate to the particular mental health problems the person has experienced. At

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the end of the sessions, the participants are issued with an evaluation form that asks about the activity’s impact on their mental health. The participants thought they were making art; however, they discovered that the art-making was for a purpose that had not been agreed upon, a purpose that did not align with their understanding of the work. The potential for a break down in trust here is considerable and risks demeaning the value of the work that took place.

3 The embedded contextual nature of participatory arts The third problem in establishing clear aims relates to the contextually dependent and embedded nature of arts practice. At the risk of overgeneralization, medical interventions are not significantly influenced by the place in which they are administered or the political, economic or cultural circumstances of the patient. To a considerable extent their design and administration are context free. This considerably simplifies the definition of aims and the methods used to establish efficacy. However, in the case of participatory arts the situation is very different. It is very common for the expression of purpose to contain – either directly or by implication – a statement of intent in relation to power, politics and identity. The work often takes place with groups who have been politically, culturally and economically marginalized, and the aims often reflect a desire to challenge this in some way. The aims may aspire to promote the following: ●

●

●

● ●

Access: providing opportunities for people who ordinarily would not have the chance to engage in the arts; Participation: taking active roles as actor, storyteller, audience members, director, etc.; Ownership: taking as much control as they are able to over the process and the product; Story and voice: enabling untold or silenced stories to be told; Education: to enable people to develop skills and understandings in the arts.

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Part Three of this book presents multiple examples of participatory arts practice that exemplify these aims: from Chapter 17, where Jennifer Gilbert describes seeking to document the experience of artists with learning disabilities, to exploration of arts in mental health by Christine Bates and Liz Mellor in Chapter 14 and Linda Boyles in Chapter 18. In the conventional medical approach, the aim of treatment implies a particular kind of relationship between the professional and the patient, one that is free of context. Superficially, politics and power are to a considerable extent irrelevant to the task at hand despite the considerable power exercised by the health professional. This is usually not the case in participatory arts. Aims and therefore expected outcomes often reflect an awareness of the political and cultural circumstances of the group with whom they work. For example, Mind the Gap, a British organization working with people with learning disabilities, states: Our vision is to work in an arts sector where there is equal opportunity for performers with learning disabilities: a world where performers are trained, respected and employed equally, and feature every day on our stages and screens. (2016)

For the arts practitioners who wish to employ scientific studies to establish efficacy of their work, the journey between aims and outcomes is clearly fraught with difficulties. Is it possible to resolve the contradiction that art-making calls for an open-ended, subjunctive approach and experimental scientific design requires clearly defined aims with measurable outcomes? Certainly not easily. The onus will certainly remain on arts practitioners to lead the way.

4 The problem of identity To identify an aim for participative arts practice is, to a considerable extent, to fix the identity of its participants and the roles they are expected to play. This may be one reason behind the reluctance of practitioners to overdefine aims. This is particularly problematic when

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people come from communities that are marginalized and whose identities are, in Goffman’s (1968) terms, ‘spoiled’ through ingrained processes of oppression and stigmatization. Our work is not hermetically sealed from the cultural and political realities of the lives of the people we work with, and the risk is that in a desire to fulfil funders’ requirements we unwittingly confirm stigmatized identities. This is acutely the case in mental health, where it can seem that any activity automatically morphs into therapy due to the mental health identity: drama becomes Drama Therapy, painting becomes Art Therapy, planting seeds becomes Eco-therapy and so on. This can reinforce the stigmatized identity and undermine the value of both the arts and therapy. As an example we include a case study here to illustrate these issues.

Converge: An illustrative case study in arts and mental health In order to encourage aspiration and hope beyond the confines of the mental illness identity, our strategy was twofold: to frame our work as ‘education not therapy’ and to work with people as students not as patients or clients. These interrelated aims were crucial to the development of Converge. To work with people as students in an educational context challenges the corrosive nature of the mental illness identity, which reduces people’s aspirations and inhibits their recovery. The attribution of a mental health identity can lead to a reduced sense of personal control, loss of hope, a reduction in self-belief and, perhaps most detrimentally, social isolation. It tends to lead people to focus on deficits rather than on ability and reduces the expectations others have of those who are ascribed with such an identity. The labelled person is linked to the undesirable characteristics attached to the label and consequently they may experience discrimination and loss (Link and Phelan 2006). This focus on education guides approaches to evaluation and research; we need to look at learning and progression, retention and attendance, not improvements in the mental health condition. Under pressure from funders we did use the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Wellbeing Scale for a short while, but

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Figure 1.1 The Converge Communitas choir, York St John University. Photograph Jen Todman.

its use caused some resentment and surprised disappoinment among participants – ‘We thought we were students here!’ – so we abandoned it. Currently our funders accept the use of educational measures. The issues we have set out above suggest significant problems in establishing aims that are defined and precise enough to align themselves to a traditional scientific design. The challenge of limiting the arts activity to measurable aims, the need to explain these across a range of stakeholders, the embedded contextual nature of the practice and the problems of reinforcing stigmatized identity through aim-setting compound the problem. The concept of obliquity offers a constructive way of thinking about and crystallizing the issues at stake.

Obliquity In his extensive work to establish the efficacy of the arts in health, Stephen Clift has called for ‘robust controlled studies with precise measurable [health] outcomes’ (2012). There is a logical power to this

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position that would see participatory arts projects pursuing a clear set of aims and working towards identified outcomes with measurable parameters. Methodological design is usually shaped in line with research aims. However, in this chapter we have explored how the objectives of arts projects are often broad and far from measurable. Before shifting this position in the pragmatic need to engage with the language of funders and policymakers, it is worth asserting how such broadly defined processes might be an integral and positive component of arts activities. We do so by drawing on the concept of obliquity, coined by economist John Kay, which ‘describes that process of achieving complex objectives indirectly’ (2010: 5). Our proposal is not that this solves the difficulties we have explored in this chapter, but rather that the concept of obliquity allows us to understand that rather than simply being softer or woolier or less clearly defined, arts processes engage with particular ways of being and doing. Kay’s paradoxical observation was that often the best way to achieve a goal is not to approach it directly. He cites J. S. Mill: ‘Happiness is not achieved through the pursuit of happiness,’ and the chemist, James Black, who was constantly surprised by unexpected findings in his work that occurred when he was following some other question. He provides various examples of where direct approaches have been disastrous: Lenin’s ‘close knit revolutionary cadre with a single vision’, Pol Pot’s ‘year zero’ and some of Le Corbusier’s modernist architecture. As he points out in relation to the building of tower blocks which were intended to directly address the problems of housing: ‘Their very functionality is dysfunctional’ (2010: 63). He notes some of the absurdities that have developed out of government targets and tells the wonderful, if apocryphal, story of the Soviet nail factory, whose success was measured by the weight of nails produced and which met the target by producing one large nail. The insistence on direct solutions, although superficially attractive, is often ineffective, absurd and sometimes dangerous. It seems that the journey between intention and outcome is complex and requires the constant recalibration of

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means and methods. In contrast, Kay argues, we are all very familiar with following aims obliquely, and we would like to propose that this is the case with the participatory arts. To return to our example of Converge, we would propose that the success of the project in terms of attracting both sustained participation and funding is in no small part because it has not explicitly sought to address the ‘problem’ at hand. As described, participants are students, theatre-makers, writers and artists; the aims and objectives are broad; the approach is holistic. ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant,’ writes the poet Emily Dickinson, ‘Success in circuit lies.’ One of the fundamental powers of art lies in its ability to address the world ‘at a slant’, through metaphor, through ‘theatrical distancing’ (Jennings 1998: 115), through material practices. It is a central assumption of arts therapy practice that art can serve as a means through which trauma, distress and the vagaries of the human condition can be approached. Influenced by the humanistic psychology of Maslow and Rogers, arts therapists have moved away from the interpretive traditions of the psychoanalytic approach, trusting that engagement with the art allows the client to work with, or work through, personal distress. Just as a dream does not need interpretation to do its work, nor does art. Obliquity provides us with a conceptual framework that allows us to see that the circumlocutory nature of art is its own reward.

‘Chaos has to be very well organized’ In this chapter we have proposed that the complex, contextual and multilayered nature of arts practice makes it difficult to identify single aims that are easily measured or evaluated through traditional research methods. However, neither can we throw our hands up and simply acclaim the unique nature of the arts and the value of oblique approaches. Our conclusion is that we need to hold a position between

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these poles, simultaneously accepting two seemingly contradictory ideas: that research and evaluation need to be based on clearly stated aims, while accepting that this will be inadequate to the task of satisfactorily capturing the experience of participants. Littlewood’s assertion that even chaos needs to be organized (cited in Johnston 2005: 53) conveys a paradox familiar to many working in the arts – the simultaneous acceptance of chaos, creativity and uncertainty alongside the recognition of the importance of structure and organization. The following chapters take some of these issues further, in terms of considering that the knotty relationship between evidence and knowledge in arts impacts research.

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Evidence, Knowledge and Persuasion in Arts Impact Research Matthew Reason

One of the roots of the word evidence is ‘obviousness’ – from the Latin evidens, meaning obvious or apparent. Obviousness describes something for which no evidence is required, whether because it is naturally apparent (it is self-evident) or because no right-thinking person would doubt it (it is common sense). This chapter argues that discussions on the status or nature of evidence in relation to participatory arts often reside in various assertions of obviousness that mask a much more complex relationship between what we know and how we know. At stake is what, at first glance, might seem the rather esoteric question of the relationship between knowledge and evidence. What, we might ask ourselves, comes first? Our knowledge or our evidence? Or, to rephrase the question, which defines and determines the other? The question has twin answers, both in their own ways self-evident. Either ‘it’s evidence, stupid!’ or ‘we know more than we can measure’ – both of which are simplifications that elide the interdependence of knowledge and evidence. This chapter considers, in turn, articulations of the primacy of evidence and the primacy of knowledge, before considering how perhaps the dominant function of evidence is not its impact on knowledge but its rhetorical power of persuasion.

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The primacy of evidence ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,’ remarks Sherlock Holmes in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1892). ‘Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts’. Coming from an arch-rationalist there is not surprisingly logic to Holmes’s position, even a certain obviousness. It is the position that we might imagine coming from the mouths of other arch-rationalists such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins and one that Jim Joyce describes as the typical articulation of the relationship between knowledge and evidence: Most epistemologists explain knowledge in terms of evidence: knowledge requires justification, and justification is a matter of having sufficient evidence for one’s beliefs. (2004: 296)

This represents the first element of two counterbalanced positions in relation to knowledge and evidence: in this first instance a relationship whereby evidence must come before, shape and determine knowledge. This position is, fundamentally, the cornerstone of positivism, whereby knowledge is built upon the observation and measurement of phenomena to the exclusion of any a priori beliefs or perceptions. The assertion of the primacy of evidence is also central to doctrines of evidence-based practice (EBP), an approach to the relationship between policy, practice and research that emerged in the context of medicine in the 1990s and has since spread across disciplines and contexts. A search through a library catalogue will reveal texts on evidence-based education, mental health, sport science, parenting, conservation, rehabilitation and more. As the description on the back of one collection puts it, ‘Few concepts can have achieved the status of unchallengeable common-sense in such a short space of time, and across such a broad range of professional activity, as evidence-based practice’ (Trinder and Reynolds 2000). At its core, EBP proposes that decisions should be based upon evidence of whether and to what extent a particular approach works.

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Knowledge, in this relationship, is based upon evidence; when the evidence changes, our knowledge changes, so consequently do our decisions and our practices. This has a quality of obviousness about it (or common sense, as Trinder and Reynolds prefer it), and we might momentarily enjoy satirizing the alternatives. What fool wouldn’t want evidence-based practice? Indeed, so obvious does the idea of EBP appear that it is worth asking what happened previously, particularly in fields such as medicine and health care, where the risks of bad or misinformed practice are so high. The most frequent assertion is that what existed previously was a less systematic approach to practice, drawing on evidence but also shaped by prior practice and seniority to produce tacit understandings that implicitly informed a sense of what was best. Gary Thomas describes such tacit knowledge as ‘accumulated both deliberately and fortuitously about the world’ and often being based upon ‘a feeling, a hunch that this way or that way is the right way to proceed, without being able to articulate its evidential provenance’ (2004: 2). Forms of tacit knowing influence our behaviour and shape our habits precisely because they are tacit. We have – as Bourdieu describes it – forgotten that we ever learnt them and in that forgetting there is an unquestioning form of authority (1984: 1–2). Habits, in this sense, become a substitute for thinking, producing a kind of ‘resistance to evidence of particular kinds’ because it does not mesh with learnt habits or professional inheritances (Thomas 2004: 13). It is extremely difficult to question, and consequently to change, knowledge that is based upon instinct, inspiration or simply knowing. This becomes problematic if such knowledge leads to stultified, unchanging, inefficient or even actively harmful forms of practices. It is against this stultified form of knowledge that EBP positioned itself, proposing that practice should respond to the most up-to-date and valid research findings that were available in a manner that challenged knowledge based purely on precedent, seniority or authority. As Trinder puts it, ‘Evidence rather than experience becomes privileged’ (2000a: 12). The claims made for EBP are significant. For Trinder it is

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‘profound enough that it can appropriately be called a paradigm shift’ (2000b: 212). What is interesting, however, is the impact that the paradigm of EBP has on conceptualizations of knowledge. Here the obviousness that knowledge should shift in the light of evidence elides the oblique process whereby knowledge comes to be limited by evidence, a process of reification or conceptual simulation whereby we can only know that for which we have measurable evidence. The most trenchant critiques of this process identify how EBP operates according to a ‘hierarchy of evidence’ that places systematic reviews and randomized control trials (RCTs) at the top as a ‘gold standard’ and case studies, personal accounts and other qualitative research at the bottom. As Trinder notes, ‘Although evidence-based practice supports the matching of research design to questions, in practice a cursory scan of evidence-based practice databases or journals indicates that it is only RCT data and meta-analysis that counts’ (2000b: 236–7). Almost without exception commentators recognize that RCTs are more challenging, rarer or inappropriate for socially embedded and multifaceted kinds of research – a domain in which participatory arts are centrally located. For Olivia Sagan there is a fundamental challenge at play here in relation to participatory arts, which are complex interventions that do not lend themselves ‘to positivistic methods of data collection and analysis’ (2015: 146). Similarly, John Geddes observes in the context of mental health: There is concern that EBP might not actually lead to better outcomes, or worse still, it might even lead to a lower quality service by encouraging the use of therapies for which there is RCT evidence and discouraging the use of therapies and interventions for which there is no evidence. (2000: 80)

Indeed, RCTs lend themselves to pharmacological treatments, which in turn are also the focus for the considerable investment required to produce RCTs, not least because there is profit to be made there (Geddes 2000: 80). Shirley Reynolds similarly describes how a rigid application

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of EBP produces a circular problem whereby a focus on a narrow range of research methodologies stifles innovation in other areas simply because they are not easily researchable (2000: 32). Trinder identifies this process of the reification of one form of evidence as the central criticism of EBP, commenting that ‘some areas are inherently more researchable than others, particularly if the aim is to achieve highlevel evidence’ (2000b: 219). In a delicious irony Trinder recognizes that there is no empirical evidence, and certainly no RCT evidence, of the effectiveness of EBP itself. As a complex, multifaceted and socially embedded process, EBP is not researchable and therefore ‘advocates have relied upon intuitive claims’ as to its effectiveness (2000b: 213). The interesting factor is that all of this is widely recognized and fairly uniformly asserted. The difficulties and limitations (as well as the power and strength) of a rigid hierarchy of evidence are known, yet it has become a closed system that produces its own power. This is known and widely agreed upon, yet within the economy of evidence it is practically ignored. The result is the reification of what is knowable, or, as Belfiore and Bennett put it, ‘The evidence that is most valued in evidence-based policy is that which can be measured’ (2008: 6). From Sherlock Holmes’s objection to the twisting of facts to fit the theories, there has emerged the possibility that sometimes we twist the facts (and indeed the world) to fit the tools we have to hand. Just because we can measure it does not make it true, and certainly does not make it the whole picture. The primacy of evidence over knowledge, however, can make us act as if it is. While it might be self-evident (cf. common sense) that we should follow EBP, it is not necessarily self-evident what evidence we should be following. Responses to this critique of the hierarchy of evidence vary. From assertions that what is needed is simply more RCTs in a greater diversity of contexts (Geddes 2000), to the argument that criteria need to be developed to appraise the weight of different forms of qualitative evidence (Reynolds 2000: 33), to attempts to reinvent the hierarchy of evidence in the form of a typology that recognizes that different

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methodologies enable us to know different kinds of things (Petticrew and Roberts 2003). This last point will be returned to at the end of this chapter. First, however, for those already committed to and convinced of the value of participatory arts there is another response, which is to assert the importance of alternative forms of knowing.

The primacy of knowing Our sense of knowledge must certainly change in response to changing evidence, but as evidence is always contextual that change cannot be absolute. What evidence counts, to whom, and when, are all questions loaded with political and contextual circumstance. EBP is clearly appropriate to certain kinds of questions in certain contexts, but its uniform application for reasons of consistency or economy potentially leads to overly narrow practices and conclusions. Evidence itself does not exist as a stable a priori entity outside of such considerations. In his introduction to Qualitative Research in Arts and Health, Theo Stickley usefully illustrates this situation in a modern fable of an imagined medical consultant who in his working role demands to see the quantifiable evidence of the effectiveness of arts interventions on health. He dismisses what he is given as anecdotal and failing to provide the hard evidence that is required. He then drives home listening to music, visits the ballet in the evening and reads a novel before falling asleep that night: If questioned about his engagement with art and culture, he would inevitably greatly value what he almost takes for granted. … He doesn’t first measure the effect of the arts on his life before he engages with something; he knows, by common sense that the arts are good for him. (2012: ix)

There is a sense here of knowing in a manner that is not independent from evidence, but where the evidence is implicit within rather than independent from the knowledge. Or, to put it another way, it has become a situation where evidence is no longer important to the

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knowing because it is obvious, because it is self-evident. Eleonora Belfiore draws on the work of philosopher Alain de Botton to similarly suggest that there exists a ‘naturalness’ to beliefs of the benefit of the arts, that resides at the level of the idea and that endures ‘even in the face of the scarcity [… of an] evidence base’ (2016: 13). Within the context of the arts in social practice there is an obviousness to claims of social benefit and impact. For a broad range of practitioners, facilitators, advocates and participants, of course the arts have benefit; it is obvious that the arts are good for us, or in the words of de Botton, ‘It comes naturally to most of us to think of music as therapeutic’ (2014). The implication is that discussion could benefit from moving on from questioning such a self-evident truth. Discussions of evidence from within the arts community often come from this perspective. That is, from a position of already-existing certainty where what might variously be called faith, belief or experience comes before explicit or externally validated evidence. This position of established knowing is present, for example, in Ross Prior’s description of how ‘those who work with the arts as a medium for therapy and as an instrument of focused social change will “know” the many benefits offered to participants’ (2013: 163). Or, alternatively, Mitchell Kossak’s description of how art therapists get into the field ‘because we know that engagement in artistic expression is an extremely effective way to create change’ (2013: 21 – emphasis added). Or Shaun McNiff, who writes, ‘Most people tacitly understand how dancing, making music, writing poetry, and other forms of creative expression relieve tension and provide feelings of fulfilment’ (2004: 290). Or Sagan, who writes, ‘How little we understand about art making’s therapeutic, restorative and identity-building powers, beyond an instinctive believe that it has such powers’ (2015: 141). Such knowing is not, of course, based upon nothing – but it is based upon experience, observation and testimony rather than explicitly derived from hard evidence. This is a knowing that exists prior to the searching for or presentation of evidence. Indeed, when evidence is sought, it is sometimes specifically for the purpose of confirming the

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already-existing sense of knowing. As Belfiore and Bennett write in their examination of the social impact of the arts, the advocacy agenda within the arts means that rather than ‘questioning whether or not the arts actually do have the economic and social impacts claimed for them, researchers have directed their efforts to coming up with evidence that they do’ (2008: 6–7). The formula for the relationship between knowledge and evidence has been reversed. Once again it is worth stressing that such knowing is not without evidence. Indeed, the evidence might be broad and significant, although often it is evidence that has been forgotten and subsumed into the knowing. Here the kinds of personal or tacit knowledge that EBP considers as stultifying and all too difficult to shift have their own primacy, as recognized by Prior’s assertion that ‘to undervalue personal knowledge in arts practice is to misunderstand the essential nature of the arts’ (2013: 167). This personal knowledge of arts practice is often embedded within the form, within the moment and within the particular intersubjective relationship. There is an evocative description of this at the very beginning of Sagan’s book on art and mental well-being, where she presents a particular encounter of art-making in prison and writes: I don’t know how the painting is working on him, in him. … But for a short session, week after week, something important is happening. (2015: 1)

Everything about this encounter resists being held, measured and evidenced. It is entirely contextual, situated in a particular time and particular place. It is ‘anchored in practice’ (Conquergood 2002: 146), it is relational and therefore subjective, it is fleeting and temporary. And its significance resides precisely within these qualities. Yet there is knowing here; ironically expressed as a not knowing. Such production of knowledge that resists conceptualization – that resides as a not-knowing or an eternal not-yet-knowing – is described by art theorist Henk Borgdorff as the particular characteristic of artistic research. Arts practice, for Borgdorff, ‘reinforces the contingent

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perspectives and world disclosures which art imparts’ (2012: 61). John Baldacchino articulates something similar when he suggests, ‘Unlike any other human activity, art is immanent not because it claims to distance itself from everything else, but by confirming that all it does is engage with a world defined by its contingency’ (2012: xiv). The contingent plurality of arts practice – it is this and this and this and this – resists reduction to simple measurement or even to a single articulation or conceptualization. And in the context of the participatory arts it is also what gives art its affective – and consequently its effective – significance. It is also possible, here, to draw connections between the contingent not-yet-knowing of arts practice and conceptualizations of situated knowledge (Haraway 1988), subjugated knowledge (Foucault 1980), narrative knowledge (Lyotard 1984) and many others. What such positions have in common is the desire to find space to recognize forms of knowing that have been excluded from a scientific, positivist paradigm that strips out the subjective, the personal, the community, the contextual and the body.

Pragmatism, politics and persuasion In these circumstances it would be tempting for arts practitioners to seek to turn the hierarchy of evidence on its head, resolutely privileging the phenomenological and experiential as offering better access to the kinds of impacts that result from participatory arts. The challenge is that such forms of knowing are powerfully felt, but often silent or silenced; not least because while known they are not evidenced and therefore cannot speak for themselves. They are, as Conquergood puts it, ‘erased because they are illegible’ (2002: 146). We have returned again to the interrelationship between knowledge and evidence, and the limitations of decoupling the relationship. If we depend upon our intrinsic or instinctive knowing without evidence, on our tacit knowledge, then we are condemned to a kind of silence where we are unable to speak or persuade or implement. On the other hand, if we mistake what can be

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measured with what can be known, we condemn ourselves to living in a kind of simulacra of evidence, where everything makes sense but only according to its own internal logic. I am instead sympathetic to Conquergood’s call for a ‘co-mingling of analytic and artistic ways of knowing’ and developing what he terms ‘radical hybridity’: If we go the one-way street of abstraction, then we cut ourselves off from the nourishing ground of participatory experience. If we go the one-way street of practice, then we drive ourselves into an isolated culde-sac, a practitioner’s workshop or artist’s colony. Our radical move is to turn, and return, insistently, to the crossroads. (2002: 153–4)

A sense of the need for the research hybridity is not hard to find; in this book it is explicitly present in Chapter 6, where Nicola Shaughnessy explores the potential and pitfalls of arts/science collaborations. In discussions of the problem of evidence across a range of disciplinary contexts, it is rare to find a reflective and engaged commentator who does not recognize the challenge inherent to the question. The limitations of a fixed hierarchy of evidence are asserted again and again by writers asserting the need to value different research designs on their own terms (Trinder 2000: 237) and an understanding that the hierarchy of evidence ‘disregards the issue of methodological aptness – that is, the fact that different types of research question are best answered by different types of study’ (Petticrew and Roberts 2003: 528). This, fundamentally, represents a common call – that there needs to be a closer alignment between the methodological approach and the particular question being asked. Petticrew and Roberts, for example, propose replacing the hierarchy of knowledge with a ‘typology’ that conceptualizes the strengths and weaknesses of different methodological approaches (2003: 527). Within such a typology it is recognized that, while quantitative methods, such as RCTs, are hugely powerful in providing evidence of the efficacy and effectiveness of practice, they have little to say about questions such as its perception among participants/ users or how such practice operates. Additionally, there is an important element here worth recognizing, in that RCTs function as evaluating

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tools rather than knowledge generators. As Thomas writes, RCTs play an important ‘but mundane confirming role’, confirming efficacy and cost-effectiveness but not providing the research work that leads to the advance or the innovation in practice (2004: 11). On the other hand, qualitative and arts-based research methodologies have largely reversed strengths and weaknesses. As Clift and Camic recognize in the introduction to the Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health and Wellbeing, a sense of the need for a ‘mixed methods approach’ has been increasingly recognized, including by organizations such as the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) (2016: 6–7). There is – once again – a kind of obviousness to this solution. It is common sense: of course there needs to be a close and sympathetic link between the questions asked and the research methods adopted. The difficulty is that in practice this breadth of methods and approaches already exists, represented not least by this book, which presents a range of methodological and epistemological approaches to evidence and the impact of participatory arts. The gap, in this instance, is between evidence and hearing – does all evidence get equally listened to? This question, addressing the pragmatic function of evidence within the decision-making of policy and funding, shifts attention towards the grubbier but utterly vital perspectives of pragmatics and politics. In the context of research evaluating participatory arts practice, Stephen Clift offers a very pragmatic perspective. On the one hand, he recognizes the ‘considerable difficulties’ of evaluating impact beyond ‘qualitative documentation of participants’ perceived benefits’ (2012: 124) and also articulates the value of personal testimony as a form of evidence. He returns, however, to the fundamental persuasive and evidential power of evidence, and particularly the RCT, and its ability to influence and change policy: most particularly in a situation of finite resources, where decisions have to be made about what to fund and what not to fund. ‘Robust evidence’, writes Clift, ‘becomes central to any effort to translate promising demonstration projects into sustained programmes of work through commissioning by the public sector’ (2012: 121).

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A similarly pragmatic admission of the importance of robust evidence in order to secure funding is asserted by Lord Howarth of Newport, previously minister for the arts in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport: There has been a wealth of sufficient and rigorous research in this field – a lot of anecdote, a lot of assertion and a lot of appeal to common sense but, while it has been enough to persuade me, unfortunately it isn’t necessarily enough to persuade funders. Statistics will probably show that there has been faster growth of funding for other areas than there has been for the arts. (Forward to Devlin 2010: 13)

Here the purpose of the research, the function of the evidence, is no longer to shift knowledge – Lord Howarth already knows, we all already know – but rather that of persuasion. This is evidence as rhetoric, rather than research. Meanwhile for Sagan the purpose of evidence (rather than knowledge) is fundamentally pragmatic, directed by a need to press for funding and for recognition of the potential for arts activity in participatory contexts and driven by an ‘increasingly evidence-driven policy climate’ (2015: 148). Similar observations are made by Stickley, who again in the context of arts and health asserts that there is ‘much evidence continually being produced’ but that without rigorous evidence of the specific contribution made by participatory arts programmes to (mental) health outcomes and their cost-effectiveness, it is unlikely that existing or future governments will see fit to encourage local health commissioners to invest in them. (Cited in Belfiore 2016: 12)

Mitchell Kossak similarly positions the value of such evidence not in terms of its contribution to the field but for its powers of persuasion: ‘Funding comes from those that believe in empirical research and therefore more empirical research was needed’ (2013: 22). There is an echo of this in Clift’s own writing, where, in his advocacy for the possibility of RCT in the context of arts in health, the focus is less on what is discovered through the research than on its utility in securing

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funding and therefore ultimately in implementing practice in a wider context. It is the overbalancing of the evaluative processes, through a narrow application of a hierarchy of evidence, which results in the imposition of measurability over anything else. If persuasion is the goal, then the whole field of debate suddenly shifts. It is no longer a question of the relationship between knowledge and evidence, of what we know or what we can measure. Instead it is purely about persuasion and about what counts, what gets heard and what gets listened to. Within this context we hope this book, in bringing together multiple voices from different methodological approaches, can begin the process of broadening the conversation and enabling a great diversity of voices to be heard. Specifically, the next chapter explores different understandings and different constructions of the intrinsic and instrumental impact of participatory arts practice, and asks what the potential is to communicate the interrelated nature of effect and affect.

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Intrinsic and Instrumental Impacts in Participatory Arts Matthew Reason

This chapter explores the ways in which the ‘artness’ of participatory arts matters in relation to questions of evidence and impact. In the context of, for example, a community choir, is it that the participants are making music together that is important, or is this indistinguishable from the broader benefits that might arise from the interpersonal and social experience of doing something (doing anything) with others? I will return to this hypothetical community choir throughout this chapter, using it as a testing ground for possible arguments as I seek to frame some of the questions surrounding evidence and the impact of artness. Is there something about art-making – about aesthetics, about affect, about beauty, about creativity maybe – that is particular to the efficacy of participatory arts practice, and, if so, how can we describe and account for this? In discussing the benefits of arts participation, Mike White observes that ‘participants in projects will say quite clearly that what they get out of it are the social and connection opportunities on top of simply a pleasure in practicing the art form’ (cited in Devlin 2010: 20). The benefits of such social connectedness are clearly significant – the benefits of participating in a community choir include friendship, a sense of belonging, a regular pattern of activities to look forward to and more – but these are not necessarily unique or specific to arts participation. The same benefits could be gained from many other participatory group activities. In which case, as White asks:

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A similar question, and a similarly almost rhetorical reply, is found in François Matarasso’s influential study, Use or Ornament?, which details a diverse range of social outcomes that can be produced through participatory arts projects. Describing outcomes such as personal development, community empowerment and well-being, the majority of which might again be produced through a range of participatory, group activities, prompts Matarasso to ask, ‘Could it be done without art?’ If it is accepted that the social benefits identified here can be produced by participation in the arts, the question arises whether they could not be as effectively secured through more established, non-creative approaches to social policy. (1997: 10.3)

While accepting that many of the social benefits might equally result from other activities (for, put simply but accurately, ‘Doing things is good for people’), Matarasso nonetheless concludes, like White, that ‘arts projects are different’. This assertion that arts projects are ‘different’ recurs again and again, echoing the unquestioning knowingness discussed in the previous chapter: a knowing rooted very much in tacit experience that has become a form of belief held independently from evidence. Fundamentally this articulation of differences is located within a wider discourse concerning the relationship between the intrinsic and instrumental understandings of the value of the arts, and this chapter will survey this discussion while drawing out key themes relating to the impact of beauty and the potential of arts to ‘decentre’ or ‘unself ’ the individual.

Intrinsic or instrumental The intrinsic and the instrumental are, of course, two well-worn concepts within art-world discourses. It is unnecessary to rehearse the

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history of this discourse (which Belfiore and Bennett do excellently in The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History [2008]), but we can identify its traces in places as diverse as Oscar Wilde’s declaration that ‘all art is quite useless’ to Matarasso’s binary between ‘use or ornament’. Indeed, ‘use’ is an effectively illustrative word, clearly demarking the notion of function and utilitarian purpose. Returning to our hypothetical example, what use is participation in a community choir? The word very clearly determines what is being asked and what kind of evidence is required in response. Phrased like this it is possible to begin to conceive of answers, instrumental answers, about benefits to wellbeing through the physical and social impact of participation. In the context of questions of evidence and impact, the use value or instrumental benefits of the arts at least offer up the prospect of measurement. If the claim being made is that participation in the arts increases people’s self-confidence and sense of self-worth, then it becomes possible – not straightforward but possible – to think about how that might be measured and evidenced. The huge challenges of such a question seem a piece of cake in contrast to any attempt to evidence the intrinsic value of the arts; not least because it is not at all clear what might be meant by that, however certain we might be that it exists. It is possible to illustrate this challenge of figuring out what we mean by intrinsic by returning to the example of the community choir. A recent piece of research by Eilunen Pearce, Jacques Launay and Robin Dunbar set out to explore whether group singing had particularly advantageous effects on social bonding – so far so instrumental, social bonding being an effect that it would be possible to evidence through before and after measurement proxies. What was particularly interesting, however, was that the researchers framed their interest in terms of whether there was something ‘intrinsic to singing or whether any social engagement can have a similar effect’ (Pearce, Launay and Dunbar 2015: 1). For Pearce et al., singing was an activity where ‘group unity depends on behaviours that are synchronous and involve some muscular effort’. This results in the release of endorphins that enhanced positive affect and a ‘willingness to cooperate’. Group singing, they proposed, produces

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the feeling of closeness without the need for the participants to know anything about each other as individuals. The resulting conclusion is fascinating, suggesting that while over time other social activities produce equal feelings of group closeness, group singing produces a quicker and more immediate sense of social bonding. Fascinating, but what is meant by intrinsic has already begun to shift elusively. Group unity and muscular effort are clearly essential (intrinsic if you like) to community choirs and in a manner that is meaningless to separate. To do so one would have to position groupness and effortness in a nominal category of ‘doing’, distinct from a nominal category of ‘music’. The meaninglessness of this should be immediately clear: the doing is what makes the music; the music is what makes the doing. Useful here is Christopher Small’s proposal of the word ‘musicking’ to signal music’s status as a doing and not a thing: ‘To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance’ (1998: 8). I would make a similar proposal with other art forms, positioning them always as processes, as doings, where the act is inseparable from the thing. (Interestingly this is perhaps most deeply and linguistically embedded with dance, with the inseparability of the doing from the thing being evocatively presented in W. B. Yeats’s famous line, ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’). Rather than asking what use is art, perhaps we should be asking, what does it do? Where does this argument take us? Perhaps, first to a greater sense of the narrowness of the distinction between what might be considered intrinsic and what might be considered instrumental. One solution would be to adopt the position taken within evolutionary psychology that art-making’s fundamental origins are instrumental: the meaning of group singing is precisely that of encouraging group cohesion and a sense of collectivity. Within such a context the whole intrinsic versus instrumental debate becomes redundant: the instrumental benefits are the point. To consider the use value of art, therefore, is not to shift focus away from the real (cf. intrinsic) or true (cf. intrinsic) purpose of art, but rather the reverse. However, what Pearce et al. discuss as intrinsic in their research is not intrinsic in the sense meant by those speaking from within the

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arts. There is nothing in their research on what might be considered the artness of music, nothing on the fact that the participants are working together to create something that has aesthetic qualities and values.

The aesthetic experience Within arts research the word ‘impact’ has been associated with various kinds of social utility – the impact of the experience on health, wellbeing, social cohesion, social justice, education and so forth – that is, a focus on effects. This utilitarian perspective of impact is described by Belfiore and Bennett in their exploration of the intellectual history of the social impact of the arts. However, they suggest that by focusing on social indicators impact studies often fail to engage with what they term the ‘real purpose of the arts’, which rests not with instrumental impacts but with the aesthetic experience in and of itself (2008: 7). A similar point is made by Brad Haseman and Joe Winston, who also observe how much of the research around participatory arts has concerned itself with questions of social impact. The reasons, they suggest, are largely pragmatic, with it being unlikely that funding from health, education or other organizations would be received ‘based on the quality of the sensuous experience and other aesthetic indications rather than what the pre-tests and post-tests tell them about attitude change’ (2010: 465). For Haseman and Winston, however, it is such ‘sensuous experiences’ and ‘other aesthetic indications’ that hold the real value of the arts. Following such a perspective there has been a significant conceptual push back from many writers within the arts against the possibility that instrumental outcomes can be considered – or indeed produced – in isolation from the aesthetic and experiential concerns of artness. This call for greater recognition of the aesthetic dimension within the discussion of impact has been described as a distinct ‘aesthetic turn’ within the participatory arts.

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Examples include James Thompson’s Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (2009), a special issue of Research in Drama Education edited by Winston and Haseman on ‘The Aesthetics of Applied Theatre and Drama Education’ (2010) and most recently Gareth White’s Applied Theatre: Aesthetics (2015). What all of these works share is a desire to refocus attention from the measurement of instrumental outcomes to an understanding that these are fundamentally dependent upon the aesthetic, affective qualities of participatory arts practice. Thompson influentially frames this in terms of a relationship between affect (the felt, the experiential) and effect (broadly the instrumental, the change), writing that applied theatre ‘is limited if it concentrates solely on effects – identifiable social outcomes, messages or impacts’ and forgets its affective, experiential and aesthetic qualities (2009: 6). In the context of the question of evidence and impact, White proposes a usefully stripped-down perspective of the knotty relationship between intrinsic and instrumental returns from arts participation: If art is being used as an instrument … we should judge it alongside other instruments; but if art is allowed to have its full range of artlike characteristics (unpredictability, experimentation, intuition, for example), then its efficiency as an instrument is unreliable. (2015: 25–6)

White recognizes the simplification inherent in this binary, not the least of which is the proposal that the efficacy of art as instrument might itself be dependent on its various art-like characteristics – moreover it still remains largely unstated what these characteristics might be. Across all these examples there is the repeated assertion that participation in art does something different from participation in bingo – or sport or walking or knitting, or any number of other diversely beneficial activities – with the reason being something about the quality of the arts as an aesthetic activity. As Haseman and Winston write, practitioners recognise and work towards deep, sensuously rich moments of engagement when participants or audiences are moved to ‘experience’

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the situation that confronts them. Such experiences go beyond mere recognition of conceptual content; instead cognition, imagination, memory and the body work in complex interrelation to produce insight and fresh understanding. (2010: 467)

In other words, arts participation offers access to non-conceptual forms of knowing, producing encounters that go beyond those of the everyday precisely because they are propelled by an aesthetic quality, which we might describe as a particular way of looking, hearing, feeling or knowing. The notion that there is an aesthetic ‘way of knowing’ recurs across a range of commentators. It is present, for example, in Raymond Williams’ entry for aesthetic in Keywords, where he describes its potential ‘to express a human dimension which the dominant version of society appears to exclude’ (1983: 32). Also useful here is John Dewey’s argument that artistic experiences prompt a particular relationship with the world, which he describes as being of ‘heightened vitality’ and in ‘active and alert commerce with the world’ (1934: 19). At its height the artistic experience, for Dewey, ‘signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of object and events’. While in the specific context of participatory arts, in Chapter 12, Olivia Sagan draws upon ethnobiologist Ellen Dissanayake’s concept of ‘making things special’ through art to reflect on the impact of an aesthetic way of knowing. The argument, therefore, is that when engaging in arts processes – whether variously making, or watching or participating – there is at least the potential of a shift towards a different sort of perception and a different sort of consciousness. This might be, as Dewey articulates it, characterized by a heightened, active and alert engagement with the world. Returning to our hypothetical example of the community choir, the proposal is that in addition to the participatory qualities of groupness and physicality there is a further intrinsic benefit to do with the aesthetic and affective experience of music making. These elements are fundamentally interweaved – in part the affective experience

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is of groupness; in part the aesthetic quality is the product of multiparticipants collectively – but the particularity of music, or musicking, rests in the fact that they are interweaved with a distinctly aesthetic engagement. For writers such as Thompson and Winston, it is with such qualities that the unique and particular value of the arts resides. Consequently, it is with the experience of such qualities that the real transformative power of arts participation must also rest. And yet the reasons why entering into this kind of aesthetic engagement or state of consciousness might have personal or social benefit – not to mention how it might be evidenced – still need pinning down.

Beauty Putting aside the question of evidence for a moment, one avenue to pursue narrows the broad notion of aesthetic engagement to the particular concept of ‘beauty’ and what Thompson describes as the ‘radical potential to enjoy beautiful radiant things’ (2009: 6). Thompson’s phrasing here is key: What is the radical potential of beauty? What does beauty do to us and for us as we participate in art? Inevitably the history of beauty as a concept is far beyond the scope of this short chapter. However, it is profitable to outline how writers within applied and participatory arts – most noticeably Joe Winston – have drawn on philosophical articulations of beauty in relation to its impact on consciousness and perception. Winston explores the role of beauty within education, specifically in drama in education, where he describes its potential to impact on young people as a process through which a young person can both possess and be possessed by the object of beauty, willingly allowing something or someone other than themselves to shape their desires and thus change how they perceive what matters to them and in the world. (2015: 13)

If change – personal or social – is the fundamental objective in participatory arts, then beauty can provide the energy, the drive, for

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change. In exploring the reasons for this, Winston draws upon Iris Murdoch’s exploration of beauty in ‘The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts’ (1967, 1985). Here Murdoch echoes the articulation of Dewey and others of how aesthetic engagement – particularly of beauty – produces particular kinds of attention: inviting ‘unpossessive contemplation’ (85), ‘transcending selfish and obsessive limitations of personality’ (87), and how it ‘pierces the veil and gives sense to the notion of a reality which lies beyond appearance’ (88). Engagement with beauty, for Murdoch, fundamentally ‘alters consciousness’ and produces what she describes as an ‘unselfing’ – that is, it lifts or removes us from our preoccupying concerns, anxieties and selfish cares. These ideas are also developed by Elaine Scarry, who draws upon the work of Murdoch in her own book On Beauty and Being Just. Through engaging with beauty, Scarry proposes, a ‘quality of heightened attention is voluntarily extended out to other persons or things’ (2006: 81). This heightened attention represents a ‘small wake-up call to perception, spurring lapsed alertness back to its most acute level’ (81). Moreover, while this heightened experience might be fleeting – indeed typically is fleeting – it produces a drive or ‘forward momentum’ to return to or regain or re-experience that state. The result is a radical decentring, a self-forgetting in which we come to ‘feel adjacent’ to ourselves (114). While their positions are not identical, both Murdoch and Scarry articulate the impact of beauty within a moral philosophy, describing the experience of unselfing as a driver for virtue (Murdoch) and justice (Scarry). As Winston points out, there is a lineage to Plato’s argument that we are drawn to beauty ‘through the virtues we perceive in it – harmony, balance and proportion’ (2015: 11). For both Murdoch and Scarry, the perception of these qualities within art or nature provokes within us a desire to replicate, to possess, those qualities. Art, for Murdoch, ‘transcends selfish and obsessive limitations of personality and can enlarge the sensibility of its consumer. It is a kind of goodness by proxy’ ([1967] 1985: 87). Hesitations at this point come thick and fast: from the problematic relationship between beauty and political morality to the myriad

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examples of artists and audiences who were far from virtuous. However, as Winston writes, it is possible to ‘concede that goodness will not necessarily flow from it’ (2006: 292) but still recognize the forcefully affective power that beauty does have upon us and its potential to effect change. It is the concept of unselfing or radical decentring that is valuable, considering how engagement with beauty alters our consciousness in relation to ourselves, others and the world around us. As Scarry puts it, beauty acts ‘like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space’ (2006: 112). In the context of participatory arts, the nature and impact of this vaster space is in its potential for affective and effective change.

Embodied objectivity To keep ourselves grounded, let us return to our hypothetical community choir and the repeated question as to whether there is anything particular about participation in art that makes it different from participation in other activities, whether sport, bingo, knitting or whatever. This chapter has proposed that the discursive division between intrinsic and instrumental is not always useful or sustainable. If art is a doing, then the artness of art cannot be considered as necessarily separable from its doing-ness. In the example of the community choir, the groupness and physicality of singing are as intrinsic to the act of musicking as are the sensual, experiential, aesthetic and beautiful elements of music. This is important to reassert, as a rebuttal to those who declare the autonomy of art or suggest that a focus on questions of impact is to ignore the ‘real’ purpose of art. Yet it remains fundamentally true that the benefits of arts participation are more frequently and more readily evidenced in ‘instrumental’ elements such as a sense of community, improved well-being or changed social attitudes, while anything to do with the aesthetic experience

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and with beauty is largely ignored. Katya Johanson and Hilary Glow’s chapter in this book, aptly titled ‘Wrestling with Beauty’, is an exemplary discussion of precisely this exclusion. However, if we accept the assertion that nominally intrinsic and nominally instrumental impacts of arts participation are fundamentally interwoven, then we still need to recognize this within structures of evaluation and evidence. How do you evidence the impact of beauty, the experience of unselfing and the fleetingly temporary but potentially profound altering of consciousness? Such qualities are inherently subjective. The solution is to stress the importance of qualitative methodologies and assert the existence of research traditions that do engage in the felt, the experiential and the sensual. Such research takes subjectivity not only as its starting point but also its founding epistemology, recognizing that in domains such as the individual aesthetic experience the concept of objective knowledge is oddly illogical. The turn towards aesthetic impacts – or rather, towards recognition that the aesthetic is central to all impacts in participatory arts – does not need to be at the expense of evidence. Rather, it entails the investment in uncovering what Donna Haraway describes as the ‘embodied objectivity’ of individuals’ encounters with aesthetic processes. That is the experience as located in the particular and situated experiencing body. For while the groupness and physicality of community music making are absolutely beneficial, and are absolutely intrinsic to the musicking, it is experience of these through the heightened, intensifying, decentring act of making art that provides drive to the experience and the power for radical change. The following chapter takes these methodological questions forward through consideration of participative research methods into participatory arts practice.

4

Participatory Research in the Participatory Arts Nick Rowe and Matthew Reason

We begin this chapter with an example that will be familiar to many working in participatory arts practice: at the conclusion of an arts and health project, a man with a long history of depression told us, ‘Art has saved my life.’ He had also written a song that told the story of music in his life. We were moved and encouraged by this, but when considered as evidence or as an indicator of impact, we knew its limitations: this was only the record of one person; we cannot assume that art will ‘save’ the lives of everyone with depression. His statement raises questions, some of which are addressed in this chapter and others picked up throughout this book: What value does this story have? And who decides? Is it to be dismissed as just one individual voice in a blizzard of voices? Can a song ever be considered evidence? And what level of agency is an individual granted within the narrative of his own recovery? The problem does not lie in the integrity of his story, which it would be churlish to doubt, but in its lack of methodological or systematic rigour. Is it less evidence, more ‘mere’ anecdote? In order for such stories to gain persuasive power, they must be accompanied by other voices and presented within systematic, established processes of research and evaluation. Yet, as explored in the previous chapter, such approaches are not always sympathetic to processes that have brought about value in the first place. In this chapter we explore how this tension might be resolved by drawing upon developments in participatory action research, arts-based research and

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performative social sciences to provide the methodological buttressing to support subjective testimony. We will discuss traditions that have developed largely outside the arts but argue that the arts generally, and participatory arts in particular, are excellently placed to develop processes of evidence gathering and dissemination that will provide persuasive ballast to the individual story.

The search for methods Norman Denzin reminds us that evidence is never morally or ethically neutral: It is rather a question of who has the power to control the definition of evidence, who defines the kinds of materials that count as evidence, who determines what methods best produce the best forms of evidence, whose criteria and standards are used to evaluate quality evidence. (2011: 647)

Among those working in participatory arts there can be resignation or even lofty defiance when challenged with requests for methodologies more familiar to medicine and the natural sciences. The politically aware practitioner recognizes the power structures at work and reacts with an iconoclastic desire to opt out. This we think is a mistake as there are developments across a range of disciplines that open up methodological options sympathetic to a more arts-based research – in fact, ones for which arts practitioners are amply capable of fulfilling. In this chapter we look for approaches to research that, on the one hand, are robust, systematic and plausible to those funders not immediately sympathetic to the arts and, on the other, are able to capture the complexity of arts engagement, obliquity, the individual aesthetic experience and the ethos of participation that characterizes the practice. Previous chapters have explored the challenges of matching narrow experimental designs with broadly based arts processes. Methodologies such as randomized control trials (RCTs), although

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highly valuable where they are possible, are not capable of capturing the sensory, affective and embodied experience of arts engagement, nor do they fulfil the aspiration for creative involvement central to so much participatory arts practice. (Tom Smith, for example, comments that ‘it is questionable how sensitive and respectful RCTs are to concepts that are marginal to science’ such as subjective, social and emotional elements [cited in White 2009: 208].) Nevertheless, research and evaluation designs that are systematic and robust and that include the following characteristics are needed: ●

●

●

●

●

They possess a coherent theory of knowledge, a theory that explains how we know about a phenomenon, the means by which we gain such knowledge and the limitations and pitfalls of adopting it. There is a clear and realistic statement of research aims, which also takes into account the open, less predictable nature of arts experience. There is an approach that is transparent so that someone outside the process can understand how the findings were arrived at. There is a methodology that is valid or trustworthy in the sense that the approaches taken capture the things they claim to. The research/evaluation conforms to basic research ethic principles related to non-maleficence (do no harm), beneficence, respect and social justice. (adapted from Beauchamp and Childress 2001)

While accepting these descriptors for systematic and robust research, however, it should also be accepted that they can be delivered in a wider variety of manners. Perhaps a wider variety than is currently accepted in realms such as the arts and health where, as Carolyn Kagan argues, it remains necessary ‘to challenge the hegemonic grip that positivism has on acceptable evidence’ (cited in White 2009: 209). Indeed, one much-repeated dictum within research is that the research methodology should fit the question, rather than the other way around. It is therefore necessary to look for systematic and rigorous forms of

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research that are sympathetic to the nature of the arts as described in the previous chapter. One of the defining characteristics of participatory arts practice is that it encourages engagement and co-creation. Indeed, a central agenda in the participatory arts would be the manner by which it seeks to provide agency and empowerment through the act of engaging actively with arts-making. As such, participation is central to the benefit of the participatory arts, and we propose that approaches to research that do the same are both more likely to be welcome to participants and more likely to reflect the lived experience and benefits of the participatory arts process. In a similar fashion, approaches that employ the arts as a method of inquiry may well be more acceptable to participants and more able to capture their experience. In making this proposal we are following writers such as Theo Stickley, who argues that ‘qualitative research suits arts activities more than quantitative. Qualitative research can be made creative, non-intrusive and fun’ (2012: viii), and Ross Prior, who writes that ‘to undervalue personal knowledge in arts practice is to misunderstand the essential nature of the arts’ (2013: 167). Ultimately it may be that it is not possible to ‘prove’ the efficacy of the arts through approaches that are currently recognized by, say, some health providers. However, we recommend that we should develop and demonstrate the capacity of the arts to meaningfully engage people in research and provide accessible and vivid means of communicating its findings. The accessibility and alerting qualities of the arts allow it considerable persuasive power that can be shared beyond narrow communities of practice. In the following discussion we will consider two broad developments in research practice and dissemination that provide opportunities for participatory arts practitioners to make a unique contribution. The first relates to the involvement of marginalized groups in research where previously they would have been its subjects, and the second to the qualities of art that enables it to be a vibrant and accessible means of communicating research findings.

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Involvement: Participants as researchers There has been, particularly in the social sciences and more recently in health and social care, an increasing interest in the involvement of the ‘subjects’ of research in the design, implementation and dissemination of research and evaluation. In their systematic review of patient and public involvement in research, Brett et al. found that there is ‘clear evidence’ that it can ‘have a positive impact on research, enhancing the quality and ensuring its appropriateness and relevance’ (2012: 643). Indeed it is becoming increasingly common for public agencies and funders to require the engagement of patients in health research (Cook 2012). A call for proposals for research funding by Disability Research and Independent Living in the UK asserted that disabled people, ‘may not know about how to do research. But they do know about the barriers that affect them, what questions to ask people, and what solutions would work’ (DRILL 2016). Traditional research has usually maintained a very clear distinction between the researcher and the researched. Those who are being researched are not invited to participate in the design of the study, the analysis of the data or in the dissemination of the findings. There are understandable reasons for this separation that have their roots in the natural sciences; however, a great deal is lost in this striving for objectivity. It is difficult if not impossible to convey the participants’ experience when their voices are always filtered through the researcher or filleted through the process of data analysis. Developments such as participatory action research, patient–public involvement (PPI) and ‘survivors as researchers’ (Faulkner 2004: 61) challenge this separation arguing from a social justice perspective or a service improvement one that the subjects of research need to be involved in some or all aspects of the research process. In these and other circumstances the involvement of the ‘non-experts’ in research is becoming increasingly common. Citizen research provides interesting examples of involving the public in activities such as counting bird populations or inviting people with

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dementia and their families to create ‘a digital science community’ (Nesta 2016). However, it is participatory action research that has perhaps the most developed and theorized example of these practices. Bergold and Thomas write that ‘participatory research can be regarded as a methodology that argues in favour of the possibility, the significance, and the usefulness of involving research partners in the knowledge-production process’ (2012). It is, according to Peter Reason and Helen Bradbury, an ‘orientation to inquiry’, which asserts people’s right and ability to have a say in decisions which affect them and claim to generate knowledge about them’ (2008: 9). Emphasizing the importance of keeping close to the lived world of the participant, Reason and Bradbury assert that cycles of knowing and acting are a crucial feature of the approach since it means that ‘action research does not have to address the “gap” between knowing and doing that befuddles so many change efforts and “applied research”’ (2008: 1). According to Heron and Reason, participatory action research allows for experiential knowing, ‘an encounter with person, place or thing. It is knowing through the immediacy of perceiving through empathy and resonance’ (2008: 367). We would suggest that these descriptions of participatory action research have a powerful and natural resonance for arts practice. For example, practice-based research in the arts is centrally concerned with ‘embodied knowledges’ that can be accessed experientially through art itself (Nelson 2009: 118). The focus of practice-based research is on knowing through doing and, importantly for the following discussion, on dissemination through the practice itself. The participatory arts similarly emphasize discovery through doing, the process of co-creation, and the development of structures and opportunities through which people can have a say. The skills and experience that arts practitioners often have can make a significant contribution to what is perhaps the greatest challenge in participatory research: the genuine, non-tokenistic involvement of people who are unfamiliar with research. The notion of participation should not be left without critique, however. A more sceptical position would be that the aspiration to

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participation, involvement or ‘co-production’, and the loose use of words such as ‘empowerment’ have not always been matched by the skills, time or approaches necessary to achieve it. Indeed, according to Cooke and Kothari, ‘Tyranny is both a real and a potential consequence of participatory development, counter-intuitive and contrary to the rhetoric of empowerment though this may be’ (2001: 3). The risks of unreflective ‘groupthink’ or the potential for manipulation or indeed group coercion are always present in such approaches. They call for ‘a genuine and rigorous reflexivity, one that acknowledges the processes and consequences’ (Cooke and Kothari 2001: 15) of the tyrannical potential of participation. Sherry Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Citizen Participation’ (1969) was one of the first attempts to describe what genuine participation might look like. The bottom rung of the ladder is not surprisingly ‘manipulation’; it progresses up through indications of ‘tokenism’ such as ‘informing’, ‘consulting’ and ‘placating’ to ‘citizen control’ at the top. It has been adapted by others to suit different groups (Hart 1992) and redesigned by David Silverman into what he calls the ‘citizen participation continuum’ (2005), with ‘instrumental participation’ as its bottom rung and ‘grassroots participation and control’ at the top. More recently, and in the context of the arts, Ben Fletcher-Watson has adapted Arnstein’s ladder as a model for participation in theatre for early years (2015). In her paper ‘The Ethics of Survivor Research’, Alison Faulkner (2004) makes the case that service-user involvement in research makes it more relevant, enables the development of new designs and methods, generates new knowledge, allows for more honest, less fearful responses and maximizes the opportunities for dissemination. She provides a useful systematic overview of the underlying principles of research with people who have experienced mental health problems, which include significant challenges such as a commitment to change current services and the importance of a careful negotiation of how the identity of ‘service-user’ will be represented throughout the research process. Elsewhere, in Chapter 8 of this book, Elanor Stannage uses

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participatory action research to examine participants’ experience of risk in creative arts processes. Hutchinson and Lovell’s (2012) account of a participatory action research project employing people who use mental health services as co-researchers identified significant benefits. Most notably co-researchers questioned the identity of the ‘service-user’, recognizing that their experience of mental ill health brought real value to the research process, and one noted: We have moved from being service users, to being researchers, a positive identity, which has motivated us all, yes we are useful … we are being valued for helping to compile an incredible piece of work, for many of us, confidence has returned, passion and purpose too, as well as an overwhelming feeling of pride to be part of [it …] being part of a team. (2012: 647)

These are valuable and important gains. There is significant potential for participatory research to redress power relations, challenge stigmatized and marginalized identities, generate insider knowledge and perceptions, and provide a vehicle through which silenced communities can be heard. Bergold and Thomas tell us that, ‘Marginalized communities are in a very poor position to participate in participatory research projects, or to initiate such a project themselves’ (2012: online). They often do not have the language or background to immediately play a full role in research projects. What is needed is a ‘safe space’ (Bergold 2012), ‘a communicative space’ (Dentith et al. 2012) or ‘a discursive space’ (Cook 2012) in which people can both develop their skills in research and feel able to express dissenting or controversial perspectives. Participatory arts practitioners will find this need for a safe, dialogic space very familiar. Art-making in various social contexts often depends on the creation of relationships and structures that allows for this, and many practitioners have highly developed skills in facilitating such environments. Of course there is always the risk of tokenism, but systematic and well-established methodologies combined with the careful facilitation of participatory arts processes

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can reduce this. We would suggest that there is a significant ‘readacross’ from these claims for the potential of participatory research to practices in the participatory arts, and practitioners can confidently contribute to growing developments in this area as well as employ established methodologies to support their evaluative efforts. These developments offer significant opportunities to those involved in the participatory arts, not only because they often have well-developed skills in facilitation but also because the arts provide an accessible means through which people can have a voice.

Dissemination: The role of the arts The vast majority of research is published in academic journals and often written in a form that, without a familiarity with the vocabulary of the discipline and the particularities of the academic style, can be very difficult to access. The arts can play a valuable role in disseminating the findings of research in forms that are more accessible to non-expert audiences. In this section we will look at two closely related developments that privilege the arts in disseminating research: arts-based research and performative social science. Although these traditions have developed through different academic disciplines (arts-based research in the arts and health tradition and latterly the social sciences), for our purposes in this chapter we consider them together. The term ‘performative social science’ was first coined by Norman Denzin in 2001 and is described by Gergen and Gergen as involving ‘the deployment of different forms of artistic performance in the execution of the scientific project’ (2011). In a response to what Kip Jones calls the ‘shop worn approach’ of PowerPoint presentations, this approach allows for a fusion of both, creating a new model where tools from the Arts and Humanities are explored for their utility in enriching the ways in which Social Science subjects might be researched and/or disseminated or communicated to various communities. (2012)

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Meanwhile, Shaun McNiff defines arts-based research as ‘the empirical use of artistic experimentation … as a primary mode for both the process of enquiry and the communication of outcomes’ (2013: 4). Taken together these arguments provide a compelling rationale for the role of the arts in the dissemination of research: it is more accessible to a general audience, and as Gergen and Gergen put it: Traditional forms of scientific writing radically truncate the potentials of the language. … While traditional writing seeks to bring the full content into a logically coherent whole, a performative orientation invites explorations into ambiguity, subtle nuance, and contradiction. (2011: 294)

The particular claim of arts-based research, as described by McNiff and others, is not just that it offers a different way of doing things than more traditional research methodologies – although this is important in making research processes more participative and accessible – but rather that it enables access to different forms of knowledge. In part, this might be thought of in terms of our ability to communicate through music or art or poetry, something that otherwise we might find inexpressible. Sandra Weber, for example, writes of the use of visual images in research that ‘images can be used to capture the ineffable, the hard-to-put-into-words’ (2008: 44). More than this, however, the arts access a different kind of affective knowing, that often evades our fully consciousness reasoning. Eliot Eisner describes this relationship between arts and knowledge, writing that the knowledge that is expressed through and contained within art is not expressible in ordinary discourse. The reason for this ineffability is not that the ideas to be expressed are too high, too spiritual or too anything else, but that the forms of feeling and the forms of discursive expression are logically incommensurate. (2008: 7)

We would propose that one of the particularities of arts-based knowledge is its capacity to engage with and represent the complexities of lived experiences, particularly through maintaining apparent

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contradictions in flux and dealing with wholes rather than atomized parts. It is striking that in this book a number of contributors present artworks as a primary form of evidence, including poetry in Chapters 13 and 16; the potential for art processes to become research methodologies is also the focus of Ross Prior’s insightful Afterword. (For further discussion on arts-based forms of knowledge, see Reason 2010; Reason and Heinemeyer 2016.) ‘Photography, music, dance, poetry, video installations, dramatic monologues and theatrical performances’ are all, according to Jones (2012: online), part of the researcher’s toolbox in performative social sciences. We can also find examples of these approaches in the practice of ‘ethnodrama’ documented by Johnny Saldaña, which employs ‘the traditional craft and artistic techniques of theatre production to mount for an audience a live performance event of research participants’ experiences and/or the researcher’s interpretations of data’ (2005: 1). Saldaña provides a detailed list of research presented in dramatic form, including a recent and intriguing example of this approach, as detailed by Ahmed et al. (2015), in which the experience of breast cancer was explored through performances developed from research data. What connects these approaches is a commitment to the arts as a means of engagement, discovery and dissemination in research. Although developing in fields parallel to participative arts practice, these approaches offer systematic approaches that practitioners may draw upon.

Conclusion This chapter began by asking, how we can give weight to evidence given in the form of testimony or even artworks by participants. Accordingly, we make two interrelated proposals that support the contention that participatory arts practitioners have the tools and the skills to develop persuasive evaluations. First, community arts practitioners often have highly developed skills in facilitating genuine participation that can

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effectively be employed to gather systematic evidence. Secondly, the arts provide a vivid, immediate and accessible means through which the perspectives and experiences of people on society’s margins can be both expressed and heard. Our proposal is that we draw upon these inherent capacities within participatory arts, along with established developments in participatory action research, arts-based research and performative social sciences; then it would be possible to provide a more robust systematic underpinning that will enhance the persuasive power and give full weight to a statement such as, ‘Art has saved my life.’

Part Two

Researching Participatory Arts: Analytical Perspectives

Section Introduction Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe

A number of the chapters in this section have titles that, particularly when read together, evocatively communicate something of the angst that sits not far below the surface for researchers seeking to evidence the impact of the participatory arts. So Elanor Stannage writes of ‘capturing the intangible’; Katya Johanson and Hilary Glow describe ‘wrestling with beauty’; while Anni Raw and Mary Robson conjure up the image of being ‘besieged by inappropriate criteria’. Wrestling, capturing, besieging – there is a sense in these words of the struggle and perhaps conflict that often accompany questions of evidence and impact in the participatory arts. And the cause of this angst is summarized in the question posed in the title of Nicola Shaughnessy’s chapter, ‘Do you see what I see?’ Particularly given the context of her chapter, which explores both the opportunities and challenges of arts/science collaborations, the meaning of this question could be various. Is it an exclamation of shared discovery – do you see what I see? Or, is it a wail of frustration born of miscommunication – do you see what I see? One of the functions of evidence is to bring something into knowledge – or, colloquially, to allow us to see it. Frustrations are born when this process fails: when your evidence is not accepted; when your facts are not the same as their facts; when the starting points, end points or rules of the exchange are not mutually agreed. The chapters presented in this section grapple with the implications of these challenges, presenting different solutions and articulated from within different contexts, but largely sharing this same desire to explore how evidence can communicate and can convince. Stephen Clift, for example, opens this section with a useful summary of both the growth

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of and need for evidence, specifically in the context of arts and health. In this field, perhaps more so than any other, the function of evidence is most direct, impacting on treatment and prescription in the context of finite resources. Clift echoes the frequently asserted need for diversity of practice and the requirement that the method matches the question. Through his exploration of the work of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts Health, his powerful message to the arts is not to shy away from including quantitative elements within such approaches. ‘Results’ often seek the condition of clarity, simplicity and neatness. One of the values of Shaughnessy’s chapter is its presentation of some of the complex negotiations and interdisciplinary compromises that went on behind the scenes of a landmark study designed to explore the impact of participatory theatre on children with autism. Examining differences caused by disciplinary vocabularies and expectations around ‘blinding’, Shaughnessy maps out the process whereby a transdisciplinary understanding emerged that established new criteria and practices of evidence. The focus of the next two chapters is on the importance of not ignoring aspects of arts practice simply because they are hard to measure. First, Katya Johanson and Hilary Glow observe how research and evaluation processes almost invariably ignore the aesthetic quality of art, almost certainly because it is hard to measure, impossible to quantify and not easy to know what to do with any insights when you get them. Using the example of a short documentary film, they describe how the experience of beauty in art accounts for its potential to change and affect audiences. In her exploration of the work of Converge, in the context of art and mental health, Elanor Stannage describes the difficulty of accounting for art-making processes and experiences – particularly in what she terms ‘creative risk-taking’. Often elusive and intangible, Stannage advocates the utilization of participatory action research to produce knowledge of the importance of the experiences of process. A particular pleasure in the chapter by Anni Raw and Mary Robson is the feeling of recognition in reading their account of the challenges that arts organizations face while working across shifting aims and

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objectives, inaccessible methodologies and inconsistent demands from funders and other stakeholders. Having usefully traced the differences between evaluation and research, they draw on their own experiences to advocate the value of qualitative approaches that emerge from the grounded context of the particular project, but also hold serious consideration of the requirements of transparency and methodological rigour. The next two chapters present two different accounts rooted within specific contexts. In both, the approach to evidence is dictated by the circumstances, traditions and practicalities of the locations. First, Caoimhe McAvinchey describes some of the histories of evidence of impact in relation to the value of the arts in prisons. The accumulation of evidence, however, was never ‘enough’ in and of itself, and instead McAvinchey describes the need to reorientate the conversation around a new question. Rather than focusing on evidence of what prison theatre does, she asks us to consider prison theatre as evidence in itself. Kennedy C. Chinyowa similarly asserts the necessity of adopting a methodological approach that has resonance with the circumstances of the research. In this instance he describes the effectiveness of researching the applied arts through ethnographic performance in an African context. The final chapter in this section, by Olivia Sagan, explores the experience of making visual art for artists suffering mental illness. Here the particular focus is on narratives of the lived experience for the participants themselves, and the meaning for them of their artmaking processes. Sagan’s methodological approach is long term, with participants sometimes working with her for several years. In her concluding remarks, Sagan notes that the deliberate slowness and uncertainty of her research process is perhaps an ‘anathema’ to the ‘current demands for quick-wins within a “hard evidence” hungry culture’. Indeed, the challenge, implicit within many of these chapters, surrounds concerns about the reception or impact of the evidence itself: Does it convince those who need to be convinced, rather than those who already are? This, of course, is a recurring dilemma

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within this field. Innovative, creative, appropriate, groundbreaking methodological approaches to evidencing impact are to some degree only useful to the extent to which they get heard and get accepted. We are back, in a sense, to the question, ‘Do you see what I see?’ Here is another tension: whether to give commissioners or funder or policymakers what they want in terms of evidence (perhaps what we think they want) or to try and change the conversation through demonstration of the possibilities of alternative methodologies that enable us to know and say and see different things but with an equal certainty as to their evidential quality. Sagan declares that we must take on this greater challenge, or else we are missing ‘the nuanced brilliance of being human’. In their diversity of perspectives, contexts and methodologies the approaches of these chapters demonstrate that we have both the wisdom and means to achieve this possibility.

5

On the Need for Diversity of Methods in Researching Arts and Health Practice Stephen Clift

Over the last forty years, the United Kingdom has seen a remarkable growth of interest in the role that the arts and creative activities can play in promoting health and well-being in health and social care settings and in the community. Early pioneers from the 1970s onwards include: Peter Senior in Manchester promoting the value of the arts in hospital settings; Malcolm Rigler, a GP at the Withymore Surgery, recognizing the value of the arts in helping patients with social and personal needs beyond the scope of medicine; and John Ashton, a visionary director of Public Health in Liverpool, advocating for the role of arts in community settings to promote health (Clift et al. 2009). Key landmarks at the end of the twentieth century were the Windsor Conferences I and II (1998, 1999) which reviewed developments in arts and health to that point and established a new vision for the field (Phillips et al. 2002) through the Declaration of Windsor. In 2000, the Health Development Agency commissioned a survey of arts for health projects as part of its programme of work on the role of ‘social capital’ in health (HDA 2000). The preface explains the broader public health context, which remains an important touchstone in the development of arts for health in the UK, and highlights the need for evidence to demonstrate the assumed ‘major contribution’ that the arts can make to health, well-being and life skills: The arts clearly have the potential to make a major contribution to our health, wellbeing and life skills. It is important however, to capture

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Shortly after, Angus (2002) explored directly the extent to which community arts and health initiatives had been evaluated. The survey considered reports on sixty-four arts and health projects in the UK, including over half in community settings or community-based health organizations, together with activities in care homes and hospitals. The conclusions drawn continue to have some resonance today. The majority of organizations surveyed recognized that evaluation was important, but appeared to be ‘struggling to find appropriate methods’ and producing evaluations judged to be inadequate. One surprising finding was that many projects did not formulate clearly expressed aims, and, while they were endeavouring to address aspects of health and well-being, few had explicit aims to improve health. The report acknowledged, however, that the arts and health projects were not necessarily working within the framework of ‘medical models of health’ – but were concerned, rather, with personal and social outcomes. For this reason, Angus suggested, it may have been inappropriate for evaluation approaches to follow accepted medical research methods. Hamilton, Hinks and Petticrew also highlighted the lack of research evidence to support the development of arts for health initiatives, asserting that ‘evidence that art promotes public health and enhances social inclusion remains elusive’ (2003: 401). At this time, from a research perspective, a key role was played by Rosalia Staricoff at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, both in directly assessing the contribution of visual and performing arts interventions in hospital settings (Staricoff, Duncan and Wright 2003) and in compiling the first comprehensive review of the medical literature on arts and health for Arts Council England (ACE; Staricoff 2004). While Angus (2002) noted that some arts in healthcare settings are not pursuing medical goals, Staricoff demonstrated clearly that the arts could play a

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role in supporting the medical treatment and care of patients in hospital clinic settings, with the prospect of positive health outcomes and even cost savings (e.g. live music in treatment settings reducing anxiety and the need for sedation). ACE (2007) rather less systematically brought together examples of arts and health practice from across England to support the development of more focused policy and development in the field. The foreword to the report by Andy Burnham (Department of Health) and David Lammy (Department of Media, Culture and Sport) was remarkably upbeat and perhaps, in retrospect, a little exaggerated in its assessment of the extent to which the field was evidence based. Sadly, the immediate promise of this joint ACE and Department of Health initiative faded rather quickly (Clift et al. 2009), even though important research continued to be supported jointly by government departments and ACE. A key example is the work of Secker et al. (2007) on creative arts, mental health and social inclusion. In addition, a number of arts for health initiatives were funded through the Treasury Invest to Save programme, where the explicit interest was in establishing the potential for cost savings from arts for health interventions (see for example Parkinson 2009). Clift et al. (2009) reviewed the ‘state of the art’ of arts and health in England a year on from the prospectus, and reflected on the challenge of constructing a coherent and robust evidence base for arts and health in the absence of a coordinated research programme. This paper appeared in the first issue of a new research-focused journal, Arts and Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice, established in 2009. This was closely followed by a second journal that appeared in 2010, Applied Arts and Health. More recently, ACE has funded a number of substantial arts and health research projects, due to report in 2018, and their outcomes should contribute significantly in furthering the field. The increasing volume of original research on arts and health topics has also supported a growing number of systematic reviews (e.g. Daykin, Evans et al. 2005; Daykin, Viggiani et al. 2012; Bungay et al. 2014; Young, Camic and Tischler 2015). Such reviews will

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undoubtedly help to promote the development of more robust research in the field as the process of systematic reviewing involves close critical reading of published research with a selection of projects worthy of inclusion based on an explicit set of quality criteria. A major series of systematic reviews is currently under way by the What Works Wellbeing programme under the direction of Norma Daykin. This exercise should prove to be a major stock-taking of the extent to which research in the field has succeeded in generating a robust evidence base for arts and health interventions.

Approaches to the evaluation of arts and health initiatives It is clear that evaluation and research are essential to document the nature of arts practices for health; but also to understand how involvement in creative activity can positively influence well-being and health, and to assess outcomes. The central questions from a health perspective are: Does engagement with the arts promote health? Can the arts help in the treatment of specified health conditions? Are such interventions cost-effective, and do they contribute to evidence-based practice (EBP) (Clift 2012)? One approach to evaluating arts for health interventions draws upon the methodological principles embodied in the so-called ‘hierarchy of evidence’ widely adopted in medical and health sciences. This essentially promotes the value of controlled trials for establishing causal connections between interventions and objective measurable outcomes, together with the synthesis of robust experimental findings through systematic reviews and meta-analysis. An experimental, quantitative approach to evaluation is not without its critics, however. White, for example, questions the ‘empirical’ approach in arts and health research, which advocates for controlled designs and measurable outcomes:

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Arts in health is at a fork in the road. The hard-paved route, The Empirical Highway, leads to probable damnation by way of austerity culture, a narrowing definition of accredited practice, and evidence calls that are signalled through a medical model of health. Those who venture on this path will find their creativity randomised, controlled and trialled. The other route, which I term The Lantern Road, tracks its progress through reflective practice, has lit beacons of new traditions in participatory health promotion, and affirms relationship-based working as the way to a sustainable vision of community-based arts in health supported by interdisciplinary research (2014: 1).

Such reflections by a highly experienced and esteemed practitioner in community arts development must be taken seriously. Indeed, White makes important points, while also highlighting concerns often expressed by artists about the legitimacy of applying scientific methodologies to creative endeavours. In fact, however, even in the medical and health sciences, there are dissenting voices regarding the idea of a hierarchy of evidence, and the view that randomized trials are capable of answering all questions of importance in the assessment of interventions. There is also general acceptance of the need for mixed-method approaches, in which qualitative evidence is used to supplement and deepen the evidence that comes from attempts to measure and quantify. The UK Medical Research Council (MRC), for example, recognizes that social interventions are generally multifaceted in nature and has offered guidance on the evaluation of such complex interventions (Craig et al. 2008). Creative arts initiatives to promote well-being and health in community settings or to improve outcomes in the context of healthcare count as such complex interventions, and MRC guidance has made a very significant contribution to furthering more sophisticated evaluation in the arts and health field. It is also important, as Petticrew and Roberts (2003) emphasize, to appreciate a close link between the questions that research poses and the methods that are most appropriate for answering those questions. Rather than

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a hierarchy of evidence, they suggest, we should think in terms of a typology of methods, suited to different research objectives. A recent UK initiative by the charity Aesop has developed a useful framework for arts and health research (Fancourt and Joss 2015). Created on the basis of wide consultation with health science methodologists, arts and health researchers, and artists, the framework provides a tool for researchers evaluating and planning research studies on arts and health. A further recent Aesop-inspired initiative has resulted in new guidance on evaluating arts and health interventions published by Public Health England (Daykin and Joss 2016). The authors outline their aims and state clearly that robust evidence of tangible outcomes is needed if arts for health interventions are to be commissioned by the health service and local authorities: The arts, including music, dance, theatre, visual arts and writing, are increasingly recognised as having the potential to support health and well-being. However, in order for arts to be included in commissioning of health and social care services, there needs to be robust evidence of their effectiveness, impacts and costs. This document provides guidance on appropriate ways of documenting the impacts of arts for health and well-being, whether through small scale project evaluations or large scale research studies. It suggests a standard framework for the reporting of project activities that will strengthen understanding of what works in specific contexts and enable realistic assessment and appropriate comparisons to be made between programmes. (2016: 4)

Work of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health The final section of this chapter illustrates the importance of methodological diversity and the use of mixed methods through considering the work of the Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts

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and Health. Since its establishment in 2005, the Centre has pursued a programme of research on the potential value of regular group singing for health and well-being. The work undertaken serves to illustrate the value of mixed methods in arts and health research, building on the general outline given so far.

Reviews of previous research The De Haan Centre has critically reviewed existing literature on singing, well-being and health on a number of occasions since it was established in 2005 as new research studies have appeared (Clift et al. 2008; Clift et al. 2010; Clift 2011). These reviews document the wide range of methods both qualitative and quantitative that has been employed in this area of work, but also reveal limitations in the size and quality of studies in this field, pointing to the need for further more robust studies. The most recent review exercise has focused on the value of singing for older people as part of the ‘A Choir in Every Care Home’ project (Clift, Gilbert and Vella-Burrows 2016). A review of reviews on singing and health is given, which includes four differently focused systematic reviews and two Cochrane reviews on singing and respiratory illness (both empty due to the absence of relevant randomized controlled trials [RCTs] in the medical literature). Interestingly, all of the reviews draw similar conclusions on the methodological limitations of most research considered. Reagon et al. (2016) for example, sum up their recent review on singing and ‘health-related quality of life’ as follows: The studies reviewed suggest that group singing in patients with chronic disease may contribute to improved or maintained HRQoL. However, given methodological limitations such as small sample sizes, unblinded designs, lack of control, drop-out rates, variable duration and frequency of singing, limited detail about qualitative methods and limited reflexivity, the conclusions drawn are tentative and there is a clear need for further research. Specifically the review

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This commentary indicates that evidence of effectiveness continues to be ‘elusive’ due to the continuing lack of quality in the research undertaken, although it needs to be remembered that this systematic review had a very specific focus on studies which included standardized health-related quality-of-life measures. Clift, Gilbert and Vella-Burrows (2016), taking a much broader view of literature on singing and older people, reach a more optimistic conclusion: Taken as a whole, research on group singing for older people shows convincingly that singing can be beneficial for psychological and social well-being. In addition, it may have a role in helping people to manage a wide range of health issues, including mental health challenges and physical health problems associated with chronic respiratory illness and Parkinson’s. It is clear also that singing activity can positively engage people with dementia across a spectrum of severity from mild to late-stage. (2016: 4)

Established choirs and choral societies The De Haan Centre has undertaken a number of studies with members of already-established choirs and choral societies. Clift and Hancox (2001) undertook one of the first studies designed explicitly to explore the health and well-being dimensions of choral singing, providing evidence of perceived benefits for physical, mental and social well-being. This study was then replicated and considerably expanded in a major international survey of singers in existing choirs and choral societies in Australia, England and Germany (Clift et al. 2010), which made use of a structured singing and well-being scale and the World Health Organization’s health-related quality-of-life scale (brief version)

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questionnaire. An important finding was the identification of challenges to mental health and well-being among some choir participants, including a history of or current mental health problems, partners with mental or physical health problems, participants with serious physical illness and those who were recently bereaved. In addition, people with lower mental well-being as measured by the WHOQoL-Bref, were more likely to express significant appreciation of the value of singing in helping them to cope with life challenges (Clift and Hancox 2010; Livesey et al. 2012). Similarly, singers who had experienced problems with their physical health (e.g. respiratory illness) were more confident that singing had helped them (Clift et al. 2009). Qualitative evidence was especially helpful in identifying a range of putative casual mechanisms which serve to explain the health-promoting effects of singing. Recently, the Centre has conducted a further substantial survey of singers in a large network of choirs for women connected with the British Armed Forces, managed by the Military Wives Choirs Foundation (Clift et al. 2016). Participants clearly expressed the value of singing for their mental, social and physical well-being, especially in the context of the demands placed on wives and partners of men in the military. In addition, the study revealed some of the tensions and difficulties that can arise in choirs due to internal politics, personality clashes and the demands placed on members by performance expectations and schedules. While singing in a choir can be an uplifting, enjoyable and socially supportive experience, there are also aspects of the group dynamics that, for some members at least, can undermine these sources of well-being.

Singing for health groups The Sidney De Haan Centre has also established singing groups for research purposes, involving people with little or no experience of group singing. A particular focus has been on the needs of older people, particularly those with long-term disabling health conditions

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and adults affected by enduring problems with their mental health. An RCT with people aged 60-plus living independently provides the most robust findings to date on the benefits of singing (Skingley et al. 2011, 2013; Coulton et al. 2015; Skingley, Martin and Clift 2015). The study was designed on the basis of earlier qualitative work with singing groups run for older people by the charity Sing for Your Life (Bungay, Clift and Skingley 2010; Skingley and Bungay 2010). The trial demonstrated that three months of weekly singing resulted in measurable improvements in mental well-being and reductions in anxiety and depression and that the increases in mental health were maintained after a further three months when the singing groups did not take place. The key findings from the SF12 mental health scale are represented in Figure 5.1. Such quantified results have the value of showing the strength of the effects of singing on well-being. This study is also one of the first arts and health controlled evaluations to include a health economics assessment. The results supported the view that group singing can be a cost-effective intervention to help maintain well-being and independence for older people. Recent guidance from National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on community interventions to promote the well-being and independence of older people cites this study as providing robust evidence in support 56 54 52 50 48

Baseline

Month 3 Intervention

Month 6 Control

Figure 5.1 Changes in SF12 mental health scale over the course of the trial and the three-month follow-up.

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of community singing (see: https://pathways.nice.org.uk/pathways/ mental-wellbeing-and-independence-in-older-people).

Singing and mental health The Centre has also conducted two feasibility studies with participants who have a history of enduring mental health challenges (Clift and Morrison 2011; Clift et al. 2011; Clift, Manship and Stephens 2015, under review). The earlier study conducted in East Kent involved setting up six weekly singing groups which were monitored over eight months using the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE) questionnaire, a clinical measure of mental distress widely used in counselling and psychotherapy practice in the UK. This study revealed that statistically significant changes in mean distress occurred and that for many participants, on an individual level, the changes were clinically important. A further smaller-scale replication was also undertaken in West Kent and Medway employing both a positive measure of mental well-being (the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale) and a short form of the CORE questionnaire (CORE10). In line with the earlier study, significant reductions were found in mental distress, together with significant improvements in mental well-being. Not only were similar significant changes in mean CORE scores seen, but, more importantly, the profile of item changes was substantially similar in both studies. Films documenting both of these studies are available in which participants describe the benefits they have experienced (see the Sidney De Haan Centre YouTube channel for these films). Both studies have provided an encouraging foundation for designing an RCT on singing and mental health, and the De Haan Centre is currently working in partnership with the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust to design such a study.

Singing and COPD Research has also been conducted on the potential value of regular group singing for people affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

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(COPD) (Morrison et al. 2013; Skingley et al. 2014). The study revealed significant improvements in health status assessed by the St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) and also showed improvements in lung function and the management of breathing. Films from this project are available that include testimonials from participants in the singing for better breathing groups. A further replication of this study is in progress in South London and details, including two short films with participant commentaries on their experiences and benefits gained can be viewed on the Sidney De Haan channel on YouTube. These studies have provided the basis for a funding application to the National Institute for Health Research in partnership with Medway Community Healthcare to conduct a community-based RCT on group singing and COPD.

Conclusion In this chapter the historical growth of arts and health activity in the UK has been briefly reviewed with particular attention to the challenge of conducting robust evaluation and research to assess the health impacts of arts for health initiatives. From the outset, the potential of creative arts for promoting health and supporting health and social care has been very apparent from common observation and personal testimony, but the challenge has been to find ways of gathering evidence that would be convincing to health professionals and provide a robust basis for committing public money to commission and scale up creative arts interventions for health. Since 2000, considerable strides have been made in this direction, and while there is still some way to go before creative arts for health programmes are widely available, the beginnings of a secure foundation for EBP in the arts and health field have been laid. It is now well established that a range of methodological approaches are needed to fully appreciate the processes, mechanisms and impacts of arts engagement in relation

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to health and well-being, and there is widespread acknowledgement that mixed-methods studies capitalizing on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative research approaches are required. We need quantitative methods to robustly test the extent to which creative arts activities can improve standardized and objectively assessed health and well-being outcomes and qualitative methods to capture the subjective experiences of participants and the wider potential benefits of creative arts engagement beyond the chosen primary and secondary outcomes for quantitative evaluation.

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Do You See What I See? Arts, Science and Evidence in Autism Research Nicola Shaughnessy

In 2015 the Arts Council England (ACE) launched a new research grants scheme, ‘Valuing the Arts’, articulating priorities for evaluation that placed emphasis on demonstrably quantifiable impact. An explicit objective of the scheme was a funding-driven impetus towards evergreater interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences. The role of the grants programme was stipulated as ‘providing us with evidence to better understand the impact of arts and culture’ (ACE 2015, my emphasis). These priorities are consistent with those of other funders, similarly calling for robust measures and advocating the methodological rigour of empirical approaches as a means of establishing value in the arts. However, there are differences and tensions between these terminologies. Evidence of impact, as discussed in the case study presented in this chapter, does not necessarily equate with understanding how and why a creative practice generated change for participants. Moreover, how we establish both the value and the different agendas between disciplines is a further consideration that complicates evidence, knowledge and impact equations. The relationship between arts and science paradigms within such research collaborations is the focus of this chapter, which refers to a project that I led from 2011 to 2014, involving a team of psychologists and drama specialists engaging in research on autism (www. imaginingautism.org). While arts practices are established as a means of enhancing public engagement with science, they also function

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increasingly as methodologies, generating qualitative data to measure audience response, participant engagement or change in applied work (e.g. in health, education and community contexts). However, while serving as a useful tool for science, questions remain about the intrinsic function and value of arts research in interdisciplinary collaborations. As Levinson, Nicholson and Perry suggest: If creative encounters between the arts and sciences are to be both playful and rigorous, they will not only dissolve the parameters of each, but they will inspire curiosity by gathering insights from different perspectives. (2008: 22)

This chapter will explore how, in the specific context of neuropsychologies, the scientific stance of observation and measurement is enhanced through arts-based approaches that offer opportunities to engage and interact, creating knowledge through collaboration that is arguably not possible through the science on its own.

Blinded by science? In 2011 the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) awarded funding to a project based at the University of Kent, ‘Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autistic Spectrum Conditions’ (iA). The proposal was commended by reviewers for its rigorous and innovative interdisciplinary methodology, whereby psychological measures were used to evaluate the benefits (or not) of a weekly drama workshop programme for participants (22 children with autism, aged 7–12 years). The application summarized the research approach as follows: The project uses drama techniques as an intervention for autism to facilitate language and communication, sociability and empathy and imagination and creativity. The proposed intervention is designed to help autistic children to compensate for their difficulties through

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The blending of arts and science is evident in the language of the application as well as its mixed-methods approach. The arts researchers had been somewhat uneasy about terminology, particularly the instrumentalist connotations of the term ‘intervention’, which might imply a doing to rather than working with approach, as is increasingly advocated in applied theatre contexts (Jackson 2007). We were advised, however, that in the context of autism research, the term has particular significance, indicating a therapeutic approach and that what we were proposing would be most accurately described, understood and hence funded, if represented in this way. As practice-based researchers working in education, social and community contexts, we were similarly cautious about the term ‘therapy’, being mindful and respectful of the tradition of drama therapy with training and practices grounded in psychotherapy. The inclusion of a drama therapist on our advisory board ensured dialogue between these distinct approaches. Differences between disciplinary vocabularies and priorities (including, for example, what counts as evidence, process vs. product, inclusion and reliability) are factors that can reverberate as hidden subtexts, occupying the spaces between disciplines, where the ‘inter’ risks becoming ‘counter’ to a project’s productivity. We became increasingly aware of disciplinary language differences, necessitating clarification, footnotes in publications and the development of bilingual understanding for transdisciplinary research. Ultimately, a series of blind spots was generated, and it was the process of realizing these and finding ways to overcome them that would lead to some of the deepest insights. While the risk of bringing a neurotypical perspective to autism research might be deemed an issue to at least be aware of, in the case

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of this project I suggest the converse was the case: our arts–science hybridity ironically reflected autistic perception and the detailprocessing style whereby ‘thinking often becomes entangled in leaves while missing the forests’ (Klin and Jones 2007: 15). We were so focused on the detail of the research questions, outcomes and behaviours of the autistic participants that we risked losing sight of some features of context and process. The focus for psychologists, in delivering the evaluation, was on quantifiable and reliable data to establish any change in the participants through measures that were based on impact on autistic symptoms. This included improvements in social-communicative, interactive and imaginative skills in accordance with the ‘triad of impairments’ in autism (Wing and Gould 1979) and the diagnostic criteria in use at the time.2 Reflecting traditions of arts advocacy, it was noticeable that the arts researchers seemed more concerned than the psychologists to achieve a ‘positive’ result, seeking evidence to validate the method as efficacious. For the psychologists, however, key objectives were the feasibility of the research design, given what they referred to as the ‘novelty’ of the intervention and evidence that might signal potential to justify a larger scientific study. A checklist for assessing feasibility identified four dimensions: 1. Process (recruitment and retention, missing data, assessor blinding, interrater reliability, willingness of children to engage); 2. Resources (time and human/physical infrastructure); 3. Management (e.g. ‘unexpected changes in the intervention’); 4. Scientific (data outcomes, potential effect and sample size needed for a clinical trial). In practice, satisfying these dimensions meant working within the constraints needed to reduce variables so that there was a clear sense of a method (here the intervention itself) being consistently applied to rigorously evaluate participant response. A pre- versus post-intervention comparison was used with the testing of adaptive behaviour, cognitive

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functioning and emotional recognition.3 While the data produced indicated statistical evidence of cognitive benefit, the process provoked occasional tensions between different disciplinary perspectives. For example, the intervention consisted of five scenic environments (Forest, Space, Arctic, Underwater, Under the City) rotated across a ten-week programme. These were contained within the ‘pod’, a portable tent-type structure, containing lighting, sound and multisensory stimuli appropriate to each setting (e.g. a leafy forest floor in Forest, a sandy beach in Underwater). The discovery by the psychologists that there was variability in the sequencing of these environments, with the order determined through participant considerations, created a serious methodological problem that potentially contaminated the evidence. From an arts perspective, the variations felt necessary, such as the decision to use Forest as a calming low-arousal introductory environment for the sensory needs of participants in School 1 in contrast to Space being the first-week workshop for the excitable boys in School 2. Similarly, programming the final Arctic workshop as a winter-wonderland December session in School 3, and hence shifting Under the City to November, set off some cross-disciplinary fireworks as the responsive and intuitive arts-practice-based approach threatened to undermine the controlled conditions needed for experimental rigour in scientific investigations. For the purposes of sampling, the psychologists had assumed that Week 1 workshops would be the same in each school and that, when the sequence was repeated after half term, the order and content would be identical. When it was explained that the second trip to each environment would be different to the first (building on what happened in the earlier workshop and offering variety), there was further concern about variables with the arts PIs required to produce detailed plans for activities in each setting and an explanation of changes in the return journey. Assessor blinding meant data was entered anonymously and analysed in a random, counterbalanced fashion so that changes in sequencing could have implications for reliability.

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Ultimately, it was understood that while the scenic environments changed, the methods were consistent with practitioners using similar techniques to interact with participants (Shaughnessy 2016). When the data were unscrambled (to see the results sequentially), the results indicated developmental progression from the start to the end of the programme across a range of measures (but not all, as discussed below). This analysis was conducted with the objectivity needed to be sufficiently robust to qualify as evidence that could be reported in scientific journals. Different concepts of evidence, particularly in terms of the qualitative and quantitative, necessitated some bifocal adjustments to our crossdisciplinary lenses to achieve shared vision. Two further examples will serve to illustrate this.

Qualitative and quantitative dialogues From an arts perspective, one of the most surprising and disappointing results of the psychological research was the statistics for pretend play, where the standardized tests did not indicate significant change.4 However, the qualitative data contradicted the quantitative, with parents and teachers reporting increased engagement and development in play for most children. One psychologist compared her experience of being in a room of no toys on her first interview at a family home to being in an environment full of toys at the end of the project. Several parents described imaginative play at home that appeared to reflect the scenic environments (playing with space toys), and a not-altogetherwelcome attempt to light campfires using the cooker. He said things like ‘car was taking alien eyes off ’, ‘bell was ringing’, ‘the alien was crying’, and started to make expressions on his face. He commented on feelings which he has never said about. ... For the first time in his life when he plays, figures are talking to each other and he is making up a story. … He is identifying emotions, and naming them.

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After the project ended, observations from teachers indicated ongoing impact, such as participants (drawn from different classes) coming together spontaneously in a snowy January playground to act out the Arctic environment or an 11-year-old boy (with minimal language and challenging behaviour) constructing his own tent (the ‘pod’) in the classroom. These anecdotal reports of the project’s extension into real-world environments raise questions about how pretend play is tested, and about the potential for measurable change in the course of a ten-week programme of workshops. In discussion, it was speculated that the play-based psychology tests, repeated at short intervals (using identical objects and instructions), may have impacted on children’s performance due to diminished interest in the activities. Hence, they concluded, ‘For some children, improvement was only evident from the parental accounts so capturing home-based behaviours will be important in any future study’ (Beadle-Brown et al. 2017).

Unblinding Creative tensions between subjectivity and objectivity (also linked to the principle of ‘blinding’) concerned the role of parents as part of the evidential processes. In the pursuit of formal research integrity, parents and teachers as well as psychologists were blinded to the details of the project’s practical approach, knowing only that it was a drama activity. A specially-designed parental questionnaire contributed evidence of impact, showing 74 per cent of children with significantly decreased scores (hence improvement) between baseline and post-intervention. However, the value of this data was thrown into stark relief (as well as being potentially compromised) when a parent contacted the school about improvements in her son’s language (e.g. commenting on the car

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being ‘broken’ as it struggles through snow). Her testimony is documented in the project’s documentary film (Imagining Autism 2014). When the mother asked what the school was doing differently and a teacher made a connection to the project, the mother’s request to meet the team and see the methods challenged the evaluative methodology. This incident, coinciding with mounting qualitative evidence of the positive impact of the practical workshops, led to a psychologist PI Dr David Williams (previously blinded) visiting the workshops, a decision that had important implications for the project design and its future direction. This process of unblinding was to cast new light on the importance of the practical processes, shifting attention to how forms of documentation could be developed that would enable the close analysis and systematic coding of specific interactions between practitioners and children. Suggestions that more cameras should be introduced into the environment and for practitioners to focus on individual children, thereby creating exercises to elicit creative behaviours, were resisted by the arts team as changes that might disrupt the quality of the interactions and relational dynamics, particularly at this late stage in the practical process. It was sometime afterwards, having worked with the footage to respond, analyse and reproduce as different forms of evidence, that we realized our position in what has been variously described as a ‘third space’ of transdisciplinary research (Sagan 2015), an ‘aesthetic third’ (Frogett 2008), and as a ‘third culture’ (Smith 2017). While we understood the difficulties of coding group activities, endorsed the need for rigour and passionately pursued the quest for evidence to identify, articulate and develop the values of the research, we had not taken sufficient account of the complexities of the context, particularly the dynamic relations between the ethical and aesthetic. The benefit of hindsight has enabled us to re-evaluate the process and to triangulate the interactions between actors (performers and participants as co-producers), action (the work itself as aesthetic object) and reactions (responses from researchers, teachers and parents/ carers), which forms an iterative feedback loop. The transdisciplinary process was informed by the relational principle that ‘agency is located

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not in individual actors but in the exchanges between them’ (McLeish and Strang 2014).

Moral myopias: Art and instrumentalism The dialogue between aesthetics and ethics is pervasive in applied theatre and often conceived in terms of dualisms, moving between two primary polarities of art and instrumentalism (White 2015). As Adam Ockelford (2013) has observed in relation to applied music and autism, there is a tendency to conceive of creative engagement in special needs contexts in extra-musical terms, focusing on therapeutic paradigms and the potential of arts activities to promote communication, wellbeing and social engagement. This myopic vision can lead to musicality being overlooked. In response to this, Ockelford’s Sounds of Intent framework is a resource developed for use in special needs contexts as a means of mapping purely musical development in children and young people with learning difficulties (Welch et al. 2009). This tool identifies musical awareness, cognition and expressive capacity. The focus is on auditory engagement with reference to three domains, defined as the reactive (how one responds to sound and music), proactive (how one creates sound and music on his or her own) and interactive (how one creates sound and music in the context of others). Using this categorization in relation to theatre and the immersive multisensory environments of our drama approach raised some interesting questions around the relations and hierarchies (or not) between the modalities. In some respects, a progression from the reactive via the interactive, leading to the proactive, is a logical development. Thus, for example, a non-verbal child might enter our Space environment and explore the perimeter and scenic features (as so many did) in a reactive encounter with the stimuli. The child’s curiosity (e.g. picking up a rod puppet) might then lead to a practitioner responding to their cue through eye contact, gesture, vocalization or imitation. The child’s response (e.g. moving the puppet in relation to the practitioner), if connected to the

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invitation, involves a transition to the interactive which practitioners would build upon, scaffolding these responses to create a dialogic exchange. This form of imitative play might then progress from elicited to spontaneous imitation, whereby the child begins to improvise a personal choreography through sound or movement. The capacity to engage creatively with others in music-making contexts, particularly in working with autism generally, emerges subsequent to independent individualized expression. A child may respond reactively to sound, progress through imitation to initiating musical activity and then to the complexities of listening and responding to the music of others in group situations. In drama-based activities involving auditory, visual and physical elements, however, there is a blending of the interactive and proactive so that it is possible to hold more than one in a both/and manner. Footage from the practical processes provided different kinds of data with potential for coding in terms, for example, of attention (the difference between a glance and a look) and the identification and discussion of significant moments. This supplied the basis for a series of case studies, providing data and evidence of practical processes and points of transition. Examples include analysis of Mary’s interaction with a woodpecker as her awakening to empathy (Trimingham and Shaughnessy 2016), and the transformation of Eleanor as she moved in a ten-minute sequence from solitary introspection to engage with her peers as Little Foxy, through her adoption of a fur costume and mask (Shaughnessy 2016).5 Accessing these materials, I suggest, offers data at least as compelling as statistics on emotion recognition and is a powerful vehicle with which to demonstrate efficacy.

Seeing leaves and forests: Practitioner and participant viewpoints A further methodological question emerging from the project was the value and status of practitioner and participant perspectives. Gemma Williams, a co-director of the intervention, describes how the project

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changed her understanding of autism and her approach to participatory theatre practice: Before working on imagining autism there were certain things I perceived the diagnosis to be associated with. I knew there was something about autism and a difficulty with communication, emotions and relationships. I remembered a girl at school who had Aspergers. I could clearly picture the way she walked, with a low stopped posture, quick steps and the soft and slightly strange rhythm in her voice. I remembered that she had trouble maintaining eye contact with me and wondered at the similarities and differences between autism and Aspergers. I perceived those with autism as ‘different’ or in their own world, a world that perhaps I wouldn’t understand. I did not know much about the levels of imaginative engagement the children would have. I tuned into the creative desires of one particular child called Mary. She was mostly non verbal. … At the start, I felt strongly that she was somewhere else. One character that seemed to captivate her imagination, however, was the fox [who] wore a full head mask and a heavy padded costume. [Foxy was] utterly female, swinging her hips in a low, grounded stance, extending strong but delicate hands and nails to gesture to, or beckon the children to her will. As a practitioner, her presence and physicality allowed me to push the children’s physical engagement, getting them moving in embodied play. I think that Mary, being of pre-pubescent age, enjoyed the clear femininity of the fox as she herself was developing feminine behaviours, she copied and cuddled the fox, led her around the space. … Sometimes the mask would come off, often removed by Mary and placed on her own head, she wanted to be, or embody the fox, she often wore the full padded costume too. As the mask came off, her eye contact with me increased and it got to the stage where the fox costume featured less and less in our games, we found new games, played at being females. (Gemma Williams, personal communication)

In this testimony, the journey described is from a perception of autism as otherness to an empathic cognitive and affective engagement

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between practitioner and participant through physical interaction. Williams responds to Mary’s emergent sense of her femininity; indeed, she moved into puberty during the project and her difficulties in adjusting to this change (compounded by her autism) were evident at school and in the workshops. Mary’s new relationship with her pet cat (reported by her mother to psychologists in interviews before she was aware of the project’s methods) is also an example of the development of empathy and its generalization as her new relations with the animal puppets enabled her to make emotional and affectionate connections to her pets at home, whom she had previously ignored. In our pursuit of evidence through imagining autism, we also sought to engage with participant perspectives, an area where we met considerable methodological and interdisciplinary challenges. In particular we incorporated drawing and mark-making into our environments in an effort to gather as much data as possible from participants, particularly as many were non-verbal. This did not become a formal feature of the research design as it emerged in the course of the project, and there were concerns from psychologists about the tools we would use to analyse the drawings and about the theoretical basis for their interpretation. They also advised that the drawings could not be reliable data for subjective experience as they may not necessarily reflect a child’s self-awareness. Nonetheless, we continued to incorporate drawing or art-making opportunities, using materials appropriate to the environments (such as white chalk in the Arctic). The pictures were subsequently used as occasional display materials, or as illustrations at conferences, but remained largely invisible as evidence. Yet this archive reveals something about the participant experience and we continue to speculate on what the drawings might tell us and their potential value to future research, as they appear to give some indication of how participants engaged with the work. All the drawings are accompanied by annotations made by the practitioners about the commentary the children made as they produced them. These give insight into the intention and thought processes. What were drawn consistently were self-representations of the participating children in relation to aspects of the pretence frameworks (e.g. fictional

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characters and props). Mary’s Forest drawings, for example, focus on her relationship with the practitioner (Melissa Trimingham, the co-investigator leading the practical methods) she was working with and who is named in her pictures. A sequence of pictures by Mary begins with different elements drawn individually. The first picture shows a pumpkin-shaped face (orange circle with vertical lines, eyes and mouth) labelled Melissa and a witch’s hat identified as Mary. In the second picture, a stick figure of a smiling witch, or scarecrow, is drawn, with brown lines outlining the body and orange appearing to represent the costume. The brown hat and face are labelled Melissa, and the orange body or costume is labelled Mary. One possibility is that this is Mary showing herself taking on the costume or role of the witch. The third picture is labelled ‘All Mary’, and shows the witch complete with hat and dress. The pictures blend the real and imagined. Mary associated the Forest environment with Halloween (due to the workshop being in October), and the autumnal colours and textures of the Forest, including leaves on the floor. The pumpkin and witch characters, however, are her invention. We see Mary working out her identity in relation to Melissa (as other), and then imagining herself as a character in an image she creates associatively. Her drawings show a progression from the assembly of different parts, through the blending of Melissa/costume/Mary, to the Mary-witch. By bringing associative elements into their pictures, imaginatively projecting their lived experiences into their drawings, Mary and other participants are creating versions of Paul Ricoeur’s ‘configurational acts’ (1991: 106). These refer to the non-chronological production of meaning from past, present and future events. It is described as a ‘grasping together’, an act of ‘eliciting a pattern from a succession’. In her discussion of the body as narrative, Gail Weiss (2003) suggests that ‘the configurational act, as a spontaneous organizational strategy, can itself be understood as a Gestalt, or figure/ground organization’ that produces what Ricoeur calls a ‘constellation of meaning’ (29). Weiss draws attention to the role of the body in ‘the organization and production of an integrated sense of self ’. Mary’s drawings offer insights into this process through

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an activity that integrates her physical experience (and memory) of embodying an imagined other through the act of performance with her emerging sense of self. Weiss conceives of ‘a tacit organisation to our narratives that is due not to cognition or emotion but to the body itself as the ultimate ground for all narrative construction’ (2003: 32), so that imagination is an embodied activity.

Conclusion: Messages in bottles and aes/ethics In the Underwater environment at School 2, Amy’s response to our drawing request was to write a note, rather than producing a drawing: ‘Who are you and what’s you’re [sic] name,’ she wrote, explaining that she was ‘writing to the person who had left the message in a bottle’. The bottle had been a loose item, left to be discovered by one of this highly verbal group who showed an interest in constructing elaborate scenarios, introducing new characters (such as on one occasion a dog in space), whom we anticipated would respond to this trigger. Amy’s discovery of the bottle led to a group search to locate a hidden character on our imaginary island. Amy’s diagnosis of autism means she is considered to have difficulties in social imagination, in understanding and engaging with the perspectives of others. Her creative response to the stimuli is evidence of her capacity for imaginative engagement; she found the original message in the bottle, knew it was not real in the context of the theatre framework, but understood the rules of the drama game in which she was a player. As a co-producer, she contributed to the development of the devised narrative through interactive and proactive strategies. She imitated and scaffolded our action, extending it by writing to an imaginary character of her own invention and inviting a response. Her action refers to the past of the workshop and anticipates a possible follow-on from whoever receives the bottle. In so doing, I suggest, she was working self-reflexively in role, knowing it was both real (a game to be played in the moment) and not real: she was pretending to pretend. Amy was also showing her capacity to work between past, present and

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future as structures for new meaning for herself and imagined others (both the fictional character to whom she writes and the real character of the practitioner or researcher who will read the note). What is missing from this analysis, however, is acknowledgement of Amy’s creativity as an artist. The message in the bottle is an example both of social imagination as psychologists understand it and of the creative imagination we value in art. In evaluating this work, we are seeking to hold both ethical and aesthetic considerations in mind (and body, as affective responses and affect theory inform this account). Our significant moments will almost invariably involve ethical and aesthetic dimensions in this both/and configuration. A further feature conjoining these elements is the relational context in which these moments are situated, and/or the act of witnessing by the audience for the work. This creates the aesthetic third, the feedback loop wherein thinking and feeling coalesce and we become aware of our positions or perceptions shifting as we are affected by the artefact or action we are observing or interacting with. The significance of this aesthetic encounter was brought into focus for me by Andy Hurst, a multimedia performance practitioner and teacher who was visiting the project to advise on how we might enhance the immersive nature of the environments through projection and digital media. We were watching a small group of children with autism interacting in a portable Arctic environment, a makeshift structure created as a one-off training event using materials from our main environment (paper snowflakes, dustsheets blowing from cold-air fans, reflective foil as water and interactive snowmen). He watched for ten minutes, absorbing the scene, then turned to me and said, ‘It’s a film … you don’t need anything else. Watching this reminds me of Robert Wilson; they are artists making work.’ These observations based on an aesthetic encounter are important to the creative and critical tensions we continue to negotiate and balance in this dialogic third space between art and science.

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Wrestling with Beauty: Putting the Aesthetic into Arts Evaluation Katya Johanson and Hilary Glow

When you see something beautiful, it is a call to begin to repair the injuries of the world. Scarry 2015: 31 For two years we were involved in a large-scale evaluation of a statefunded arts programme in Victoria, Australia, which supported a range of activities selected for their capacity to increase people’s awareness of the harms of race-based discrimination. The programme was ambitious – it aimed to reach audiences and participants throughout the state, with particular attention to areas vulnerable to racist incidents. As a consequence, the evaluation involved observing, surveying and interviewing audience members and participants at events across the state over two years. The funded projects were successful in that the vast majority of audience members and participants reported enjoying the activities and appreciating the themes of anti-racism, and we as the evaluators were able to document specific instances of apparent material or attitudinal change as a result of people’s involvement. Beyond this success however, one project stood out to us for its artistic qualities. The Meet+Eat project used documentary films to tell intercultural stories by residents of one local council area experiencing rapid demographic change and migration. In each film a small number of locals from diverse backgrounds share a meal and exchange stories. Six films, each around twenty minutes long, featured individuals who

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tell their experience of shifting between one culture and another. The films were shot in living rooms and on front porches, in public parks and community centres; and while they were made widely available through the producer’s website and two public screenings, they were primarily viewed by the local community. The project was therefore a modest undertaking. Yet the films were also remarkably beautiful. Held together by the artistic vision of a skilled director, the content and the representation of the people and their stories were poignant. The director’s skills extended well beyond cinematography to interviewing and storytelling. In contrast to other projects within the wider programme, most of which took a traditional approach to cultural difference by simply expressing and celebrating diversity, the film project invited its subjects to tell uncomfortable stories: about social isolation and loneliness, seemingly irreconcilable cultural differences and their own bigotry. The films appeared to us, the evaluators, to be more confronting, but also more compelling and memorable, than other funded projects. They provided the kind of tension that is noted by Higgins: ‘Beauty provides the comforting background against which one can think the uncomfortable’ (1996: 283). As researchers, this left us with a dilemma: how to approach the issue of aesthetics in conducting an arts evaluation. We chose to use the frustration that follows a missed opportunity to reflect on the qualities of the films that might make their impact affective. It seemed to us that these qualities were directly related to the films’ aesthetic qualities. Here, when talking about aesthetic qualities we choose to be more specific and to use the term ‘beauty’. Beauty is a word that fell out of favour with modernism’s challenge to the notion of a universal aesthetic and its necessity in art, followed by a postcolonial embrace of diversity and inclusivity in aesthetics: a period that Scarry describes as one of ‘power outage’ in our appreciation of beauty (2015: 31). In the past twenty years, though, many scholars and artists have sought to redefine and reinvigorate the notion of beauty for the challenge it presents to existing patterns of thought and experiences, and how

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we value them (Ostrow 2003; Brand 1999; Hickey 2009; Scarry 2015; Thompson 2009; Wolff 2006). Their interest is similar to the reflection inspired in us during the film events described here. The recent revival of beauty, seen in terms of its relationships with avant-gardism and postmodernism, also requires a politicization of beauty as a category of experience. The more we thought about the beauty of the films used to introduce Victorians to issues of discrimination, the more curious we became about the positive role that beauty might play in stimulating ideas about identity and humanity, and the more aware we were of the difficulty of assessing the role of these in an evaluation.

The limitations of evaluation practice The limitations of our evaluation that led to our frustration and subsequent questioning of the role of beauty are common. There is little, if any, room in arts programme evaluations to assess the aesthetic component of an arts activity, and what room there is tends to be restricted to simply acknowledging the predetermined professional credentials of the artists who provide the programmes. This statement will be of no surprise to researchers of cultural policy or arts management, who have long pursued a polemical debate over whether policy does and should privilege instrumentalist or intrinsic values in the activities it supports, and who have noted other omissions in how cultural value is ascribed (cf. Walmsley 2013; Holden 2004; Gray 2008; Gibson 2008). For some researchers, arts programme evaluations lack consideration of people’s experience of the activity evaluated. Walmsley, for instance, finds in his audience research that many theatre spectators report valuing theatre because it provides the opportunity to escape from the constraints of their daily lives, and asks, ‘How can instrumental evaluation tools such as contingent valuation and wellbeing wheels make sense of and express this flight to a make-believe world full of fantasy, ritual and collectivism?’ (2013: 209).

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It is worth reiterating the irony that the issue of aesthetics is overlooked in evaluating a sector whose purpose is largely devoted to it. While evaluations often skirt around the issue of aesthetic quality or beauty, it is rarely explicitly addressed. There are various reasons for this omission, most of which bear a resemblance to the reasons for the ‘power outage’ in our collective acknowledgement of beauty (Scarry 2015: 31). Public arts programmes are a response by socialdemocratic states and philanthropic organizations to the problem of ensuring funding for activities that lack sufficient economic value to be supported by capitalism, but which they consider important to society. Once a cultural funding programme is in place, any hierarchy of aesthetic merit is quickly contested as elitist or philistine by those whose cultural tastes are not included, or who on principle see any such intervention as overstepping the public/private divide or assert different ideas about whose culture requires or deserves funding. In the context of such tension, the ‘character, meaning and value of postmodern culture flutter restlessly’ (Matarasso 2009: 4). Instead, evaluators rely on peer-review mechanisms and evidence of popularity (such as box-office data) or occasionally reception (critical reviews, awards or audience surveys). Agencies responsible for ‘instrumental’ benefits can only couch their decisions in the language of social, economic or health outcomes. Hickey describes the consequence: ‘Beauty has been banished … and we are left counting the beads and muttering the texts of academic sincerity’ (2009: 13). In addition, despite several thousand years of human consideration given to the importance of the arts (Belfiore and Bennett 2008), we still lack a vocabulary to describe what it is that they do for us. When we are moved, touched, challenged, inspired, incensed, disturbed, awed or impressed by the arts, we find it notoriously difficult to explain why this is and what has led us to such responses (cf. Reason 2013). Moreover, there is often very little vocabulary around artistic production (cf. Thompson 2009). Boerner describes this in relation to opera composition: ‘Language cannot give full expression to the acoustic and visual impression that the composer intended … . This

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ambiguity allows the interpreting artists to use their own talents and experiences to best advantage … . Thus, we must consider ambiguity not as a deficiency but a constitutive characteristic of interpretation quality’ (2004: 433). While this ambiguity is liberating for the artist, it makes the arts an inherently subjective experience, because my identification of quality is dependent on whether the interpretation meets my expectations, even if that expectation is to be surprised. This impacts on the potential for evaluation. Because systems of funding and evaluation, indeed public bureaucracy as a whole, tend to be mechanistic, ‘the likelihood of something being monitored seems more closely associated with the ease of doing so than with its importance to … policy or practice’ (Matarasso 2009: 9). The difficulty of articulating the power of beauty, let alone the political contentiousness of doing so, is enough to discourage attention to this issue when evaluating public programmes.

The effect of beauty A key link between the discussion of beauty and our task in evaluating the social and political impacts of the Meet+Eat films lies in the notion of promise or potential. Political activism, of the kind evident in the films in their exploration of ethnicity and discrimination, requires a belief in the potential for social improvement. Thompson argues that it is in situations of atrocity such as war and genocide that beauty is of most relevance, and so its return as a subject of research is ‘not purely a whimsical interest from some place of academic comfort’ (2009: 138). Higgins notes: ‘The big threat to effective political action is not beauty, but despair,’ and suggests that, ‘Perhaps the modern avoidance of beauty reflects our deepest fears about ourselves. Perhaps we doubt that we really do have enough of a heart to appreciate and transform at the same time’ (1996: 284). This harnessing of faith in the improvability of the social world to the potentiality of beauty is one that resonates with our reception of the impact of the films produced by Meet+Eat.

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A connected idea is that of the experience of beauty as an experience of empathy. Steiner argues that we must stop seeing beauty as a thing or inherent quality and rather ‘see it as a kind of communication’ that entails a ‘pleasurable and complex reciprocity’ (2001: xvi). Beauty is ‘the name of a particular interaction between two beings, a “self ” and an “other” ’ (2001: xvi). For Steiner, this interaction may produce feelings of ‘awe, admiration and fear’ in the ‘other’ but, more importantly, the experience of beauty can provoke ‘insight, understanding and empathy’, and these feelings are a challenge and require the active participation of the ‘self ’. In this way, ‘one participates in beauty’ (2001: xv). Scarry argues that beauty compels us to take stewardship. It ‘elicits from us a desire to protect and take care of the thing if it is already alive, such as a garden or stream, and it gets us to confer the privileges of life-likeness onto the thing, if it is an artefact’ (2015: 40). A remarkable attempt at integrating social research with the notion of aesthetic and/or experiential knowledge comes from the work of Japanese sociologist Kojiro Miyahara. Miyahara, following Kant, points out that while our aesthetic experiences lack objective validity, aesthetic knowledge and appreciation are evidently capable of being communicated and shared: ‘Aesthetic knowledge can be intersubjectively understood and thus intersubjectively valid, which a private caprice cannot be’ (2014: 68). A ‘private caprice’ in this sense is something one might personally wonder at or find pleasure in, but that leaves little room for sharing, such as the physiological sensation of needing to sneeze. In contrast, Thompson identifies that beauty gives rise to a ‘desire to share affect’ (2009: 144). We cannot simply ignore others’ aesthetic knowledge as a matter of arbitrary preference and we are motivated to take it seriously, not because of its objective validity but because of its intersubjective understandability (Miyahara 2014: 68). Miyahara identifies the way aesthetic appreciation is a valuable method for obtaining knowledge about the world and argues that social aesthetics is a form of social inquiry that uses the method of aesthetic appreciation. To do this we must ‘take a society into our stomach and make it our own,

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just as we come to realize the taste of food by licking and tasting it ourselves’ (69). As ‘social aestheticians’, we can ‘take up a microsociety that we can see, hear, smell, taste, touch and feel through our own senses and sensibilities’. Indeed, for Miyahara the only way in which the qualitative characteristics of a micro-society can be made intelligible is through its ‘aesthetic appreciation by each one of us in communicating with each other’ (73). The tension between measures of efficacy and the impact of beauty was one we experienced in evaluating the impact of Meet+Eat films on their audiences and participants. To set the scene: we were two researchers sitting in a multiplex cinema in a Melbourne suburb with an audience and small group of participants, to gather responses to the explicitly social concerns of the films and their ‘messages’ about the importance of tolerance and diversity. The goal was to be able to report to the films’ funder on the efficacy of the films’ communication of these socially desirable outcomes. Yet, at the end of the screening, our first observation to each other was that the films were beautiful. This impression has not faded over time. Twelve months later, we can still recall, in some detail, the scenes we found to be beautifully composed, lit and edited; how perfectly the images and music seemed to encapsulate the themes and stories of the people in the films! Our interest in our own response to the films (and its lingering traces in our memory) alerted us to the possibility of examining the audience data to see if and how the films’ aesthetic qualities were understood and articulated by its audiences. This is a means of gathering aesthetic knowledge from our study; of ‘licking and tasting’ as Miyahara describes it. As researchers, we considered both our own aesthetic responses and those of the members of our micro-society. Our aim was not to be able to claim scientific objectivity, something that has been largely eschewed in arts evaluations (cf. Galloway 2009) but rather precisely the kind of intersubjective understanding described by Miyahara. The analysis that follows is founded on the view we share with Miyahara about the intelligibility of aesthetic knowledge communicated through its intersubjective understandability.

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Wild at Heart Episode 6 of Series 2 of Meet+Eat is Wild at Heart:1 a twelve-minute documentary which tells the story of the three elderly Troutbeck brothers living in Craigieburn, on Melbourne’s suburban fringe. Together they have spent their lives running a family dairy farm, the last in that area. Now well into their eighties, and after four generations on the land, their days as farmers are numbered; they speak about their struggle to survive the modernization of milk production and the rapidly approaching suburban sprawl. They are also suspicious of (if not resentful about) the arrival of immigrants into the neighbourhood, whom they fear will displace them. The documentary maker, Emma Macey-Storch, introduces the Troutbeck brothers to Omar and Nadia, who have been forced to leave their home in Pakistan following a gruelling period that included the abduction of their young son for ransom. For them, living in the new developments on Melbourne’s rural fringe provides a longed-for sanctuary. The farmers agree to meet Omar and Nadia to share a meal and some music. The brothers bring a sponge cake, and Nadia and Omar bring a curry. They meet in a local community hall where the five of them talk, eat, play music and dance. We see each of the film’s subjects

Figure 7.1 Filming of Wild at Heart, reproduced with permission of Curious Works and Meet+Eat.

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interviewed individually and come to understand something of their world view and background. This is deftly handled by the film-maker, who juxtaposes the spoken short narrative accounts about growing up (in Australia and Pakistan) with visual material representing the ‘big picture’ of the historical and political contexts that shaped these people’s lives. Despite the differences in education and ethnic and cultural background, viewers learn that the experience of displacement and the fear it produces are something the film’s subjects all share. We began this chapter by describing our strongly felt view that the documentary was outstanding because the stories of the two families were compelling, and they were compelling because they were presented beautifully. The use of music, for example, was notable for the way it seamlessly shifted between Celtic folk and Indian folk music; rather than jarring the ear, this provided the viewer/listener with a soundscape that worked to meld elements of the subjects’ diverse cultural experiences. The music embodied and reflected the themes of the film. In the scene in which the subjects gather in the community hall, the film-maker captures the last of the daylight as it streams through a dusty window, catching one of the Troutbeck brothers and Nadia dancing the waltz. The composition of each shot was also notable; the subjects are seen in their homes and on their land, almost always in a mid-shot, and speaking directly to camera. There is no voiceover or exposition. They each tell their stories with self-possession, candour and warmth; we ‘get’ them. They are just like us, they feel about their homes the way we feel about ours. The film demonstrates an understanding of the power of visual details in evoking a life: a close-up of the bottle of vanilla essence in the Troutbecks’ unrenovated 1950s kitchen; the bowl of green chillies in Nadia and Omar’s kitchen as she worries about how hot to make her curry. The details are iconic and ordinary at the same time. We did not include any descriptions (such as the ones above) of the look, feel and affect of the documentary in our evaluation report. Neither did we include our own responses to the film. Rather, we attempted to evaluate the success of the film as a vehicle for carrying and

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disseminating messages about the harms of racial discrimination and the benefits of cultural diversity. Beyond the potential methodological problems associated with the task of evaluating the affect of perceptions of the film’s aesthetic qualities by and on audiences, or of integrating our own subjective responses to the film into the evaluation, there is also an ideological problem. We recognize that the beauty we find in the film is, at least in part, a function of our agreement with the values and attitudes it encapsulates and illustrates. We were acutely aware that our responsiveness to the beauty of the film would not necessarily have been matched by people who are less interested in the themes it explored: the plight of refugees and the struggle of rural communities in the face of modernization and industrialization. This fact inevitably limits the power of the arts to change our minds. Perhaps the film is beautiful to us because we agree with its cultural premises and want our feelings of compassion to be affirmed and enhanced. But the ease with which the respondents to our research found parallels between the stories they witnessed and their own social, political and personal histories suggests that beauty was intersubjectively communicated. In Scarry’s terms, beauty prompts a reproduction of itself: ‘When the eye sees someone beautiful, the whole body wants to reproduce the person’ (1999: 4).

Beauty and emotion When asked for their responses to the film, the audience members, too, were keen to emphasize its impact on their feelings. The following comments are a representative sample: It made me feel homesick and proud to be living in a country with such amazing cultures and backgrounds. Made me sad – sad for the brothers losing farm, sad for people in tent camps, sad for people who feel homesick. Sad, nostalgic, joyful, lucky and entertained.

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These comments range across prototypical emotions (sadness, joy, happiness) and second-order emotions (nostalgia, homesickness, pride, compassion). Overwhelmingly though, the two emotions that audience members identified most frequently were prototypical: sadness and joy. In recent research, there has been a growing interest in the satisfaction associated with negative emotions in experiential arts consumption (e.g. Wassiliwizky et al. 2015). In contrast to researchers who argue – often in studies of advertising – that feeling mixed or negative emotions simply makes experiences less memorable, Aurier and Guintcheva (2015) argue that, in watching feature films, the extent to which negative emotions can give rise to experiential satisfaction depends on patterns of valence. Indeed, Wild at Heart audiences often described feeling contradictory emotions, and described their ostensible causes: ‘sad because of what happened to these people; happy because of so many people helping people’ and ‘Joyous at the happy coming together of cultures, and sad that we don’t as a nation do enough for refugees’. When looking at the power of the films, it may be the juxtaposition of these two emotions that contributes to their affective power. But in addition, Aurier and Guintcheva regard a film’s beauty as essential to the way that negative emotions impact on the viewer, arguing that it both eases and reinforces the impact of those emotions. Beautiful lighting, music, costumes or cinematography can invoke some positive emotion when the dramatic content of the film is bleak or tragic; but beauty can also ‘reinforce the sadness’ (Aurier and Guintcheva 2015: 13). By inducing mixed emotions, the beauty in art which carries negative themes thereby intensifies emotion and moves it from prototypical to second-order: viewing the loneliness of the farming brothers through beautiful cinematography invokes nostalgia and empathy, rather than simply sadness. While they easily identified their emotions in response to the film, respondents were far less likely to volunteer their view of the aesthetic quality of the film. Only a few comments linked emotional response to such qualities:

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The dancing sequences were very emotional for me. Happy at music.

A few others simply identified beautiful aspects of the film: The music really fits the atmosphere. Old men, yet fresh with the dance, ahhhh, that was amazing. The series is amazing and it overwhelms your senses. Great images and sound.

In the main, these comments tend to be about the artistic qualities produced by the subjects in the films – as dancers and musicians – rather than the film itself. The skill of the film-maker is to make the film’s subjects beautiful to the viewer, and it is this reception of beauty that facilitates empathy. The audience watches the two families find value in each other. A respondent mentioned: ‘The parallel between being driven from your land whether as a refugee or a farmer experiencing urban sprawl.’ As they do so, the viewer also sees value in them: ‘It made me realise that all different cultures have something spectacular.’ These experiences illustrate Thompson’s point that we ‘accept beauty is in our eye, but we are desperate to locate it in an object … and share that feeling with others’ (2009: 144). While Aurier and Guintcheva identify the value of juxtaposing emotional valence in beauty’s impact, Scarry sees juxtaposition in beauty’s call both to imagine the future – beauty copying itself – and to revisit our past. Beauty ‘hurtles us forward and back’, and the past provoked is often nostalgic: ‘We soon found ourselves also turning backward for the beautiful faces and songs that lift us forward’ (Scarry 1999: 46). This calling back to the past underpinned many of our respondents’ comments, as they were quick to see the commonalities with Nadia, Oman and the brothers. Many identified as migrants or the children of migrants, or as farmers. ‘It’s like being me,’ said one respondent, and another offered, ‘I was raised on a farm and could relate to the stories told.’ Others talked of other historical cases of displacement and refugee migration to Australia.

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Beyond the researchers’, participants’ and audiences’ likely ideological agreement with the film’s message of tolerance, we propose that the generation of responses relating to identification has something important to say about the perception of beauty. Scarry regards the structure of perceiving beauty as a two-part process: ‘First, one’s attention is involuntarily given to the beautiful person or thing; then, this quality of heightened attention is voluntarily extended out to other persons or things’ (1999: 81). Identification is part of the voluntary extension of aesthetic apprehension whereby, in this instance, the film has acted as a ‘wake-up call to perception’ (Scarry 1999: 81). In other words, the propensity to identify with the film’s subjects relies on the beauty that accompanies their appearance – whether it is the beauty bestowed on them as people, or the beauty of film itself.

Beauty and evaluation If our experience of evaluating an arts programme without attending to the variable of beauty caused frustration – and in this we are not alone – is there room for the practice of arts impact evaluation to genuinely accommodate aesthetics? Recently, as part of a greater attempt to articulate the cultural value of the arts, efforts have been made to evaluate their aesthetic qualities according to audience or peer reception (Radbourne, Johanson and Glow 2010; Bunting and Knell 2014). But this practice is still not common in projects in which the arts are used to achieve social or health outcomes. For example, when Houston found that dancers with Parkinson’s relished ‘being beautiful’, she began to ‘query whether the right questions are being asked in research and evaluation’, but she nonetheless concluded simply that the outcome ‘may not be measurable, but it is still important to note’ (2015: 30 and 39). To do so, we need to connect philosophical research on beauty with social science-based evaluations. Beauty – whether experienced by

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participants or audience members – is an important condition for the success of many kinds of arts projects to influence the way we feel. It can make us receptive to explorations of otherwise troubling emotions by cushioning the impact of negative themes and imagery. And it can trigger a sense of connection to and responsibility for others. It was not possible to track the long-term residence of the Meet+Eat films in our memories, nor how the length of this residence might correspond to a judgement about the beauty of the films. However, given that psychology researchers have begun to identify a relationship between perceptions of human beauty and our memory for faces (Marzi and Viggiano 2010), such an impact is conceivable. The relationship between the perceived beauty of the arts and their influence on our thoughts and emotions is in its infancy, but its possible futures are interesting. If such a relationship can be established, it may one day be possible to abandon the need to evaluate the impact of arts projects and to instead ask simply, ‘Did the audience find it beautiful?’

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Capturing the Intangible: Exploring Creative Risk-taking through Collaborative and Creative Methods Elanor Stannage

In a striking moment, early on in my research into the processes of participation in arts in mental health, a participant used these words to describe a moment of his dance practice: It’s called balancing over a precipice and it’s this lovely moment where everyone is kind of teetering on one leg. Everyone together is wobbling in this precarious moment. Their legs are strong on the ground but their bodies are wobbling. It has this chaotic form of precariousness and groundedness. There’s a tension to it. (Converge Dance)1

This description inspired our action research cycle that day: exploring the idea of precariousness. We talked about what significance, if any, this image might hold and documented our responses in a mind map. The group articulated a notion of creative risk-taking, with another participant commenting, ‘It could all fall apart, we could go down like dominos’ (Converge Dance). The thing which could fall apart is the creative attempt itself; the risk is one of creative failure. As a theatre practitioner and researcher with both personal and professional experience of mental distress, I have long wanted to know what happens when we take part in participatory arts processes. I felt there was an implicit understanding between practitioners of what was happening – a knowledge of practice, created through practice – yet this was not articulated beyond the realm of practice: a knowledge base,

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not recognized as knowledge. Central among these processes is what I will describe as ‘creative risk-taking’, and this chapter will explore the significance of this to the potentially unique impacts of arts in mental health. Further, I will explore how such a process might only be captured through practice-sensitive methods that produce situated (Haraway 1988: 593), experiential knowledges that resist hegemonic controls upon knowledge production and circulation. First, however, to give some vital context.

Context and methodology In his book Community, Art and the State: Storming the Citadels, Owen Kelly argued that community arts practitioners have ‘refused to construct a theoretical framework’ and have instead relied on ‘common sense definitions’ (1984: 2). More than thirty years later, this reluctance to articulate the practice still remains and, in the attempt to examine the impacts of arts in mental health, there is often a reductive simplification of the complex and ‘messy’ (Hughes, Kidd and McNamara 2011: 186) processes at work. To begin to bridge this gap, I set out to map the processes of participation through a collaborative, arts-based inquiry with different arts in mental health groups. The principal project I worked with was Converge, a partnership between York St John University and the local National Health Service Foundation Trust that offers courses (mainly in the arts) to people in York who are accessing mental health services. In order to develop themes of process across different disciplines in arts in mental health, I worked with three groups within Converge: Out of Character Theatre Company, Converge Dance and Converge Creative Writing. This included both performance and non-performance-based art forms and enabled me to explore themes of process that may be common to all arts practices, as well as those distinct to particular disciplines. In researching with a marginalized community careful consideration must be given to the discourses and traditions of knowledge creation

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surrounding that community. Historically, mental ill health has been understood primarily through what might be considered a hegemonic epistemology – that is, one largely determined by a singular authoritative knowledge base – wherein methodological principles such as the objectivity and neutrality of the researcher are prioritized. However, such approaches often produce knowledge that is codified and quantified from a perspective constructed upon the existing knowledge base, reinforcing the dominant discourses in a field. In mental health this is particularly problematic due to the prevalence of a technological paradigm of psychiatry that objectifies people experiencing mental ill health as suffering from faulty mechanisms or processes which may be fixed by medical interventions irrespective of context (Bracken et al. 2012: 430). Discussing knowledge production in mental health and disability studies, Bergold and Thomas argue that such research has been conducted about the people in question and their problems, rather than with these people … . This has led to the development of theories and practices that may well be considered helpful by those affected, but may also be perceived as hegemonial knowledge. (2012: 197)

In contrast, the work of Sagan (2007, 2011, 2012, 2015), Stone (2004, 2012), Stickley (2010, 2012) and others in the field of arts in mental health explores service-user narratives and reflexive and autoethnographic methodologies. Such research begins to generate what Haraway refers to as situated knowledge: Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not as a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as a slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and his authorship of ‘objective’ knowledge. … Indeed, coming to terms with the agency of objects studied is the only way to avoid gross error and false knowledge of many kinds. (1988: 593)

Despite these developments, there remains a focus on impact studies which adhere to the hierarchy of evidence of the medical model. However, the leap to impact, without the foundation of qualitative

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research specific to the field and context of arts in mental health, undermines the possibility of creating a situated knowledge. When a researcher introduces methods rooted in hegemonic knowledge which objectify participants or reinforce mental health service-user identities, these approaches inevitably contaminate the practice under inquiry. Thus, impact-focused methodologies threaten to alter the practice itself by introducing or reinforcing existing hegemonic discourses, potentially negating the sought-after objectivity of such studies. Underpinning this inquiry is my own position as researcher. I have experience of caring for and living with people who would be categorized as experiencing severe and enduring mental ill health. My own mental ill health disrupted my life significantly for over a decade. I am also a community theatre practitioner working with people experiencing mental ill health as well as with other marginalized communities. Somekh describes the need for a fluidity of relationship in the collaboration between participants and researchers in action research and the importance of working towards an ‘equality of esteem’ in the power dynamics of such a relationship (2006: 7). My personal experiences and practice-based expertise enable me to adopt fluid positioning as researcher that supported this process in the collaborative inquiry. In action research ‘basic principles of openness, communication, and the appropriateness of the method to the subject under study’ (Bergold and Thomas 2012: 195) are at the foreground of inquiry. Concepts of ‘objectivity and neutrality must be replaced by reflective subjectivity’ (2012). Such an approach invites a reframing of a field of knowledge from within: an insider, practice-based, situated knowledge where lived experience is at the forefront of inquiry. Attempts to shift power balances will always be problematic with important questions around such attempts. Kester tells us that ‘discursive violence occurs whenever one individual speaks for another, no matter how firmly he or she is anchored within a given collective’ (2004: 130). Such a dilemma does not render the attempt to represent the experiences of others pointless; rather, it illustrates that ethical concerns need to be at the forefront of any such representation.

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The study presented here employed various methods to capture our collaborative reflections – such as reflective drawing, creative writing and theatre exercises and instant photography – as well as field notes documenting the experience of my own participation in the groups and auto-ethnographic reflections. These methods were used within a framework of action research methodology, using cycles of practice, observation and reflection to generate new questions and concepts of process. These methods were chosen to be sympathetic to the art forms and cause least disruption to the practice. Mind mapping was central to the inquiry, because of the manner in which it allows us to ‘think in different shapes, in spirals, in loops and waves, in radial circuits, in the recurring patterns that ground the chaotic mess’ (Reason 2010: 5). This collaborative non-linear thinking process allows comments or reflections by individuals to be viewed together and collaboratively constructed into an intersubjective response. These methodological and epistemological frameworks enabled me to research the process of creative risk-taking in arts in mental health.

Conceptualizing creative risk-taking Remembering the dancer on the edge of the precipice, risk-taking has long been suggested as a factor in the transformative potential of creativity across different disciplines and fields of study. However, despite brief references to risk or risk-taking as a process inherent to creativity, the concept itself is rarely explored. It is inferred that creative practice encourages adolescents to learn new things (Lassig 2013: 10); that creative risk-taking through musical improvisation mirrors life itself (Copeland 2007: 103); that the process of risk-taking develops confidence in creative writing students (Freeman and Le Rossignol 2010: 66–7). In these examples risk-taking is referred to as a discrete self-explanatory process, the nature of which and its relationship to other processes are left unexplored. An exception among these is Hunter’s (2008) reflection upon her practice in applied performance,

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which explores two examples of risk in practice – ‘emotional risk’ and ‘aesthetic risk’ – and the significance of facilitating a safe space within which to explore these processes. Although Hunter’s articulation of an observation of practice is illuminating, risk-taking itself is not fully conceptualized. Outside arts practice, risk is often framed as inherently negative, as in this example from a sociological perspective: Risks are potential dangers. We are all confronted with risks everyday, and we have all developed skills with which we constantly assess the various risks … . No matter how hard we try, risks cannot be avoided. We constantly accept and/or take risks because accomplishing anything necessarily entails risks of all sorts. (Arnoldi 2009: 1)

The Foucauldian perspective suggests that risk is used by those in power to create certain discourses in order to exert influence and control (Arnoldi 2009: 2). In UK mental health policy, care strategies of risk avoidance and concerns with risk management are prevalent (Shepherd, Boardman and Slade 2008). Mental health service providers are tasked with managing people who may be deemed to be a risk to themselves or society while simultaneously facilitating their reintegration into society (Wright, Bartlett and Callaghan 2008: 234–5). There is a tension between these two aims; a level of risk-taking must be facilitated and yet it is expected that the negative implications of such risks are to be avoided. Avoidance of risk is a strategy often employed by people experiencing high and prolonged levels of anxiety. Wilkinson, Meares and Freeston assert that avoidance ‘refers to those strategies an individual may employ to avoid anxiety-provoking thoughts and feelings’ (2011: 19). It is logical to recognize that when we avoid the things which make us anxious, we may also begin to avoid other opportunities, including experiences which might make us feel good. Thus, the relationship between anxiety and avoidance might be cyclical or spiralling in nature (Jacobson and Newman 2014: 438). Through these contexts the significance of risktaking in arts in mental health practice begins to emerge.

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Concepts of creativity To conceptualize creative risk-taking, an overview of concepts of creativity from a multidisciplinary perspective is required. Turning first to Maslow who distinguished between two types of creativity, which he referred to as primary and secondary. Primary creativity is the type of creativity a person uses to become self-actualized – to find fulfilment. Secondary creativity is the type of creativity … that leads to creative achievements of the sort typically recognized by a field. (Sternberg, Kaufman and Pretz 2002: 8)

The implication is that these primary and secondary forms of creativity are separate and it is indeed useful to differentiate between types of creativity in order to understand the concept. The psychological concepts of Maslow are, however, problematic, rooted as they are in the idea of the ‘self-actualised’ (Maslow 1974) person and the hierarchy of needs. As Sagan critiques: That well-known triangle, with creativity part of the self-actualisation of its peak, still held so firmly in the sight of positive psychology, lures us into its topography while overlooking the gristle, spit and inequity that characterize its bottom two levels and the increasing difficulty of moving out of their intractable snare. (2015: 145)

Simonton also distinguishes between two forms of creativity, suggesting that ‘small-c creativity enhances everyday life and work with superior problem-solving skills whereas big-C Creativity makes lasting contributions to culture and history’ (2005: 195). This mirrors Maslow’s primary and secondary creativity and alludes to underlying personality traits, becoming similarly problematic. However, Simonton also refers to them as types of creative activity (2005: 189–201) which is more useful in developing a concept of creative risk-taking. From an educational paradigm, Craft again distinguishes between two types of creativity; she explains that ‘[m]any studies

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of creativity have focussed on this extraordinary paradigm-shifting sort which many call “high creativity” ’ (2001: 46). Craft goes on to describe her conceptualization of ‘little c’ creativity and articulates its role within society: One of the effects of the intensification of change in each of these elements of society – social relations, the economy and technology – is that individuals are required to be increasingly self-directed. … One way of describing this quality of self-direction might be ‘little c creativity’. (2001: 46)

Here Craft roots the concept of little c creativity (LCC) in a quality of action, an approach to life in response to the increasing uncertainty of living in a postmodern world. Craft herself makes the link between risk and LCC: ‘An act cannot be called one of LCC if a risk, which matters to the agent, has not been taken’ (2001: 58). Crucially, the agent in this concept is the person who carries out a creative act, with the phrase ‘which matters to the agent’ being very telling. Therefore, in Craft’s conceptualization of LCC, as in the writings of Simonton and Maslow, creativity is intrinsically an act of risk-taking. In seeking to understand the process of creative risk-taking in facilitated arts practice, I suggest that there is a third type of creativity, where the potential of a person to engage in these different types of creativity is fluid rather than fixed, and part of a spectrum of creative action. I have termed this ‘facilitated creativity’ because it occurs as part of the experience of trying or exploring new things, in this case, arts practice. Table 8.1 presents a taxonomy of creativity and begins to suggest how increasing one’s capacity for one type may increase one’s capacity for others. These types of creativity are on a continuum where the actions might differ in type, scale and domain; however, the creative process itself may be the same. Thus by practising facilitated creativity one may develop the skills to implement those creative processes on an individual level in one’s life or across an art form or a larger domain.

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Table 8.1 A taxonomy of creativity Creativity type

Little c (small-c or primary)

Facilitated

Big C (high or secondary)

Domain

Individual

Local (individual or Field group engaged in creative practice facilitated by others)

Creative action

Living

Exploration

Contribution

In their book The Origins of Creativity, which explores creativity from a neuroscientific perspective, Pfenninger and Shubik support this potential for movement across these typologies: Creativity must be the ability to generate in one’s brain (the association cortex), novel contexts and representations that elicit associations with symbols and principles of order. … Creativity further must include the ability to translate the selected representations into a work of art or science. (2001: 235)

In this treatment, creativity consists of two elements, the first being ‘novel contexts and representations’: a new way of looking at things or of showing things. The second is ‘the ability to translate’: communication. In big C creativity this communication and representation occurs through a work of art or science, whereas in LCC this could be enacted through the cooking of a new recipe or the changing of a routine. Thus, the definition of creativity here becomes a new way of communicating or translating and representing a new idea or concept. This suggests that the act of engaging in a practice of facilitated creativity could develop one’s skills of applying LCC to one’s own life. This ability to be self-directing and adaptable to change also provides the skills for employing strategies of risk-taking, thus challenging strategies of avoidance. In identifying this facilitated form on the continuum of

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creative acts, it is important to locate this within the research findings and the experiences of the participants of arts in mental health.

Creative risk-taking in practice After a Converge creative writing session, as part of an action research cycle, I asked participants to write for ten minutes in response to the prompt ‘Writing is … ’. One participant produced the following: It involves continually refreshing my creative eye and letting in the light that inspires and informs my creative work. … a very personal and intimate encounter with something that exists only at the edge of my experiences. To a great extent this encounter involved overcoming a kind of mortal fear or anxiety, coming face to face with a foreign and inscrutable other. (Converge Creative Writing)

Here the participant talks of creativity as an encounter with something on the edge of his experience and of the fear and anxiety related to this process. In this description the process of creative risk-taking entails exploring a new concept or idea and a way of communicating that idea through the art form. The practice of the art form, in a sense, facilitates the creative exploration. This is made more urgent through the participant’s sense of necessity to overcome the fear of doing this. An encounter with new experiences was also described by participants in both dance and theatre: ‘Pushing the limits, going out of the comfort zone’ (Converge Dance); ‘Getting out of your comfort zone’ (Out of Character Theatre Company). This shift out of the comfort zone often involves the trying out of new forms of creative expression, or a shift into the territory of previously unexplored ideas. The implication is shifting from comfortable ways of doing things and infers the trying out of the new. During the research process with Out of Character, members of the company made short scenes about their different modes of practice. In their reflections upon these, the participants used phrases such as ‘thinking, trying things out’, ‘to keep trying’ and ‘working up towards

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getting it’ which again link to the concept of trying out and finding ways of communicating new ideas. Participants also discussed the experience of theatre games and exercises where improvisation is often a core element.

Creative risk-taking through improvisation It is worth looking more closely at the process of improvisation and its relationship to creative risk-taking. In an essay on improvisation in dance, Foster writes: The unknown is precisely that and more. It is that which was previously unimaginable, that which we could not have thought of doing next. Improvisation presses us to extend into, expand beyond, extricate ourselves from that which was known. It encourages us or even forces us to be ‘taken by surprise’. (2003: 4)

Here the potential for improvisation as a form of practice facilitating creative risk-taking is evident. The extension of thought and practice into the unknown propels one beyond the comfort zone. In the context of music, Higgins and Mantie describe the experience of improvisation as ‘embodying such qualities as risk-taking, reflexivity, spontaneity, exploration, participation, and play’ (2013: 9). While warming up for a session with Out of Character Theatre Company, I noticed how creative risk-taking works within a moment of practice. As we completed the warm-ups, the energy of the company was very high; they had really thrown themselves into the workshop, with energetic, bold and creative offers. Often when I work with people, even with those experienced in theatre, I notice a reluctance on their part to take physical or creative risks, those that might be embarrassing or difficult. An example of what I mean by risk in a theatre workshop might be particularly useful here. In the game ‘What are you doing?’ the focus is upon offering and accepting: the first person offers an idea to play with and the second person accepts and works with that offer.

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In this kind of work, the more a participant commits to that idea, the more willing they are to use their entire body, the greater creative risk they take and the more enjoyable the experience is of participating. In this example, creative risk-taking is about trying something out, about committing oneself to that attempt by being as uninhibited with one’s ideas and physicality as possible. Improvisation games work as exercises of practising that creative risk-taking. In Converge Dance the experience of improvisation was described using different language to that of theatre participants. In dance, participants described, ‘Finding our own movements’ which links to the idea of trying out a new way of expressing something, the movement being the expression and the ‘finding’ similar to the notion of ‘trying’. Participants in dance also commented that they are ‘giving our grown-up selves permission to express ourselves through movement’. Participants in dance also talked of ‘Communication with bodies, non-verbal communication’. This links to the communication element of creative risk-taking, in this instance with a fellow performer through contact improvisation, a form of dance improvisation where bodies move together in space, bearing weight with each other, and the space and objects around them. In these examples different elements of creative risk-taking are present, including trying a new way of expressing or communicating something and the casting off of inhibitions in the process of doing these things. Improvisation is a mode of working which necessitates a concentration of creative risk-taking and thus may be a particular crucible for facilitated creativity.

The challenge to reframe impact The potential implications of facilitated creative risk-taking change how we might consider impact in the context of arts in mental health. As Bohm states, ‘Creativity is essential not only for science, but for the whole of life. If you get stuck in a mechanical repetitious order, then you will degenerate’ (cited in Gauntlett 2007: 26). This suggestion

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that creativity entails the ability to shift one’s sense of self rather than remaining stuck is similar to a notion of living creatively, which Ruti identifies as a confluence between the theories of Winnicott and Lacan: To be creative a person must exist and have a feeling of existing, not in conscious awareness, but as a basic place to operate from. Creativity is then the doing that arises out of being. It indicates that he who is, is alive. (2010: 353)

However, with further exploration, Ruti defines the concept more specifically, suggesting that ‘living creatively in the postmodern era entails accepting existential insecurity’ (2010: 369). According to Ruti, Lacan takes this concept further still, suggesting that it is ‘only by exchanging ego for language, its narcissistic fantasies for the meaning making capacities of the signifier, that the subject can begin to ask constructive questions about its life’ (2010: 358). Thus, by becoming ‘meaning maker’, by exploring new ways of communicating an idea or concept, one is developing one’s LCC. Ruti’s concept of living creatively relates to an ability to accept a multitude of possibilities and meanings, of embracing a sense of not-knowing. Living creatively requires the development of the skill of being comfortable with uncertainty, while simultaneously pursuing the attempt to communicate one’s own perceptions and understand the perceptions of others. I suggest that these skills are practised in facilitated creative risk-taking in a manner that enables them to be subsequently adopted in everyday life. Creative risk-taking is a subtle yet vital process within arts practice, a process cultivated through facilitated creativity in rehearsal rooms of theatres, in university drama studios, in youth centres, occupational therapy rooms and anywhere that people are facilitated to make art. This process enables the flexing of creative muscles, a honing of a skill useful in the creation of both macro field changing new ideas and micro acts of day-to-day living. Yet risk is such a divisive concept that we may easily negate the potential of such practice to facilitate this process. Without the matching of method and practice and the focus upon generating a situated knowledge, the process of creative risk-taking may

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be lost in the limitations of methodologies prone to existing discourses around marginalized communities. There is potential here for developing an understanding of how facilitated creativity might aid the development of these qualities of LCC. This example of creative risk-taking and the methods used to identify the process show the possibilities for reframing impact through a situated inquiry which attempts to challenge dominant discourses. It provides a challenge to researchers to be resistant to hegemonic knowledge construction and mindful of how it might permeate methodology and infiltrate practice.

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Besieged by Inappropriate Criteria: Arts Organizations Developing Grounded Evaluation Approaches Anni Raw and Mary Robson

We find ourselves at a critical moment in understanding the social agency of participatory arts practices, as attention turns to interrogating underlying assumptions of the value of culture, and how it can be authentically gauged (Crossick and Kaszynska 2016; Holden 2009; Holden and Baltá 2012; Scott 2014). For arts organizations and practitioners, fulfilling the duty to evaluate their work can be among the most taxing and anxiety-inducing aspects of delivering arts projects with communities (e.g. Angus 2002: 11–12; Hall et al. 2009). Commissioners require a transparent system by which organizations account for granted funds, often using the project’s originally agreed objectives as the framework to assess its effectiveness. This seems simple, appropriate and fair: public resources should not be granted without monitoring, and reflecting on, the quality and impact legacy of what has been commissioned. However, when excavating the terrain to respond with integrity in evaluating ‘evidence of impact’, the ground becomes a quagmire of contradictory expectations, unclear concepts and inconsistent demands: across the sector, among commissioners and between parallel projects within the same organization. In this chapter we focus on evaluation in practice, in dialogue with recent significant scholarship, including the landmark cultural value research supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2013–16. We highlight issues for the sector from the perspectives of

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arts organizations, practitioners and evaluators and reflect on how the continuing turbulence of debates about evidence can impact on practice, project delivery and morale. Then, drawing on examples from practice, we respond by mapping possible routes through the evidence terrain.

Context: Words as weapons When academics talk of evidence, research, evaluation, data, or scientific, experimental or qualitative approaches, these terms, even where contested between different disciplines, have broadly agreed definitions among the academic methodologies. Discourses within different disciplines then diverge on how to demonstrate truth using these tools: an epistemological discussion, with some fundamental disagreements about what constitutes knowledge and truth. Crossick and Kaszynska note: ‘As science itself struggles with the challenge of reproducibility, with some science disciplines arguing that this is not surprising when complex variables are at play, the neatness of hierarchies of causality, rigour and evidence are called into question’ (2016: 121). Among divergent discourses, descriptors including robust, rigorous, valid, sound, anecdotal, objective and biased add further ammunition with which one group of thinkers may critique the strength of another’s research findings and deduced (or inductively or abductively generated) knowledge (Denzin 2009). While these divergences are standard within an academic research context, they offer little help in assessing evidence of impact for those involved in community-based arts projects. And yet such terms regularly appear among the evaluation stipulations in arts project commissioning processes, without clear definitions of how they are to be applied to an evaluation rather than a research context. Here, boundaries between research and evaluation disciplines have become unhelpfully porous. Commissioners may seek to increase confidence in findings by stipulating specific approaches: for example,

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methodologies involving psychological scoring (or self-assessment) systems, such as the currently popular ‘Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale’ (WEMWBS) (Tennant et al. 2007), might be suggested to carry weight with audiences who favour traditional research hierarchies, and those less convinced by qualitative approaches. Equally, using research terminology, and specifying that evaluation takes its quality indicators from the academic world, may represent a strategy to demonstrate rigour and increase credibility. Or this could simply signify a bleeding across of languages from the academic world to that of applied policy and practice. This porosity of boundaries, whether inadvertent or calculated, causes problems down the line, in project delivery and reporting, as we will go on to show. Other blurred reference points are also problematic. Organizations and funders often include basic monitoring statistics under evaluation assessment criteria, so that quantitative data on numbers and characteristics of participants are submitted as evaluative reporting; but while useful as marketing information, this contributes nothing to assessing the value of a programme. Further, in a domain recognized as driven by care, passion and commitment to the work and its intrinsic value (Durham University CMH and Waterford Healing Arts 2009; Raw 2013), there is a persistent difficulty among cultural professionals in distinguishing between evaluation as a balanced exploration of project outcomes, and the quest for advocacy material to support and justify the work. Hopes that an evaluation report will deliver an advocacy tool are very common in evaluation partnerships with organizations. Assumptions that evaluation and advocacy needs and processes are interchangeable, or that evaluation will provide advocacy material, reveal perspectives with positive bias, interfering with the evaluation process as a reliable assessment of ‘evidence of impact’. Such conflation has been highlighted by literature reviews across the past two decades (Holden 2006; Matarasso 1997; Staricoff 2004 among others) as undermining the quality of evaluative studies conducted within the arts and cultural sector.

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Defensive under fire This terrain can be bewildering, even punishing, for arts organizations and practitioners, with no specialist knowledge of academic research epistemologies. Language such as ‘robust’, ‘rigorous’, ‘data’, ‘valid’, ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ can function as weaponry, turning accountability into a siege situation. Required to use the same vocabulary, but lacking information on the intended interpretations and resonances, arts practitioners develop their own intuitive sense of the meanings of key terms. The resulting anxiety around the languages of ‘evidence’ leaves practitioners vulnerable when evaluating their work. The following account from Natalie Jode of Creative Arts East reflecting the disorientation of an arts and well-being programme director is apposite: At the beginning, our steering group were saying you have to have evidence – clinical, monitory, some kind of hard evidence. Half way through, I went to a cultural commissioning workshop, and was told by a commissioner that if a commissioner asks you for evidence, they are politely telling you they’re not going to commission you. Then at the [name of conference withheld], a commissioner said ‘What we really want as commissioners is the story on the street, the words from the person who’s been affected’. (Raw 2016)

As discussed by Holden (2004), and asserted here by Crossick and Kaszynska, ‘Evaluation in the cultural sector has been too closely tied to meeting the accountability needs of funders, which has had the effect of weakening its ability to inform and support cultural practitioners and organisations’ (2016: 7, 156). Working under pressure to compete for increasingly scarce resources, it is difficult for practitioners in this evaluation/research landscape to assert their specialist expertise and effectively identify the approach most suited to investigating their work. It is often the view of practitioners, struggling with processes required by health sector commissioners, that quantitative assessments of delicate internal human experiences

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yield little valuable or ‘robust’ data. Equally, it is risky to assert that a qualitative methodology is the most adequate design to capture and evaluate any deeply personal, complex impacts from arts processes, which follow no standard or predictable time scale or pattern in their unfolding. Here project manager Oliver, delivering music projects with largely non-verbal participants, outlines the challenge: The difficulty for us is devising ways in which to collect data which provide reliable and robust information. ... Often we’re observing some really profound outcomes, watching some beautiful moments, but have immense difficulty getting the participant to communicate their feelings (without a threat of ‘modelling their response’). ... For us, the real problem is ‘will funders/commissioners take our word for it?’ since it’s our observations, and the feedback from those who work closest to the service users, that often provide the most reliable and robust data. (Raw 2016)

In this time of a ‘quantitative turn’ (Haynes et al. 2012) in accountability requirements for an already-dwindling public resource allocation, the risk of challenging inappropriate evaluation processes, even using expert knowledge, is one few delivery organizations can afford to take. This disquiet practitioners express towards evaluation has for some developed into downright suspicion of quantitative methods. The belief that qualitative methods are good and true, all about real stories of human experience, and that quantitative methods are merely soulless statistics, is oft-heard at practitioner conferences. But this simplistic view needs interrogating further; for example, what if the heartfelt stories are positively biased? What if the hard statistics reveal an otherwise hidden truth? In health and social care provision, patients’ stories and perspectives have provided a rich seam of insight about specific cases and conditions. However, Hargreaves, Bradby and Robson (2010) draw on an alarming case from clinical practice to ask: where are we left, in questions of responsive, sensitive care, if patient stories are ill-informed, only tell one part of a bigger narrative that would disclose other truths, or are partial because of their narrator’s condition? While recognizing

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user perspectives as intrinsically valuable, the authors ‘warn against their adoption as an unqualified good and recommend that their limits be recognized too’ (2010: 78). Critical, professional expertise from practitioners is crucial when assessing such narratives in socially engaged practice: not to judge and determine their veracity but to allow all truths to be told, and to give complex contextual information its due space in understandings of evidence.

Quality principles in jeopardy In a current policy climate where positivist epistemologies dominate, the fundamental good practice of selecting the most appropriate methodology to the needs of an inquiry – named as ‘the key issue in research design, alongside rigour’ by Crossick and Kaszynska (2016: 123) – is especially difficult. While some leaders in public policymaking, and scholars for whom the established hierarchy of evidence remains undisputed, continue to dismiss qualitative approaches as anecdotal, the range of methodologies is constricted. Alternative perspectives have long sought a voice through academic channels to critique the hierarchy of evidence model (Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Denzin 2009; Holden 2006; Raw et al. 2012; White 2009). In a robust challenge to dismissals of qualitative studies per se, Crossick and Kaszynska, for example, conclude: We question the hierarchy of evidence that sees experimental methods and randomised controlled trials as the gold standard even in areas where these cannot effectively be applied, because of the difficulty in isolating variables in complex situations. Qualitative research (with the depth that it gives) need not be less rigorous than quantitative, experimental studies (with the breadth that they provide), but it operates with different criteria of rigour. (2016: 149)

High-quality qualitative research, for example from the field of health, can perhaps provide leadership in establishing a culture of high-quality

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evaluative processes in the field of arts. Expert qualitative researchers will focus on methods which demonstrate ‘trustworthiness’ (Lincoln and Guba 1985); from which evidence that is credible, balanced, consistent and transferable can emerge. However, the evidence-based practice (EBP) demands of policymakers and commissioners do not currently accommodate these broader perspectives, and hence evaluation requirements of arts organizations remain static. While recent academic scholarship begins laying out criteria for rigour in qualitative research (Crossick and Kaszynska 2016: 123), there is currently little comparable but accessible, non-academically directed discourse, enabling distinctions between good and poor quality evaluation processes, particularly in qualitative approaches. A recent Public Health England framework (Daykin and Joss 2016), for example, seeks to bridge the gap between academic and practitioner evaluation knowledges for the arts and health field, but includes little detail on assessing qualitative evaluation methods. Lacking appropriate support, practitioners can neither assess nor assert good quality in their evidencing processes. Project funding sources in this sector are often multiple, presenting a further challenge as organizations find themselves compelled to evaluate under different stipulations from several commissioners on the same project activity. Inevitably such overcomplicated and demanding conditions can lead to stresses and practitioner overload, ‘research fatigue’ for project participants, and resultant research data that are unreliable. Such scenarios lead to frustrations that evaluation processes proposed by commissioners may be awkward to manage and deliver, yet for data quality reasons may still not offer ‘evidence’ that will be assessed as ‘robust’ or of value to wider debates. We note too the general challenge of presenting evidence for policymakers that can engage the confirmed sceptic. In proposing evidence of valuable impacts gained from participatory arts activity, explanation of the mechanisms underpinning the change process is an important evidence component. If evidence of impact is presented without due analysis of the processes or mechanisms explaining how

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any change is achieved, such evidence, however robust, remains not only elusive but also arguably incomplete, and will satisfy neither academic nor policy scrutiny (Raw et al. 2012). While the experience of the current treacherous evidence landscape for practitioners may be harsh, there are projects and delivery organizations that are experimenting with evaluative practices at the fertile ‘edgelands’ of the methodologies terrain (Rapport et al. 2005: 6), with some new and interesting outcomes.

Two examples from practice We now outline two qualitative evaluation approaches, used in community arts projects, both of which were set up using participatory evaluation principles (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014) to give access to a range of contributing perspectives. The first example engages multiple stakeholders and participants in generating and collating ‘data’ for analysis. The second uses immersive, anthropological participant observation processes, ethnographic documentation and reflective processes as evaluation methods.

Example 1: The evidence detectives Roots and Wings is an arts project based largely in inner city primary schools in West Yorkshire, active since 2001 and focusing on children’s social and emotional development. Robson was its director until summer 2016; Raw has been evaluator and critical friend to the project. Three practitioners are based in school and work with children from two-year groups over the academic year, through themes; for example, in 2014, Year 4 became a Medieval Scriptorium, while Year 2 focused on letter forms, with emotional literacy strategies embedded for all. Children develop individual interests within the themes and a celebratory finale in the summer term showcases their research and artwork to the school community and beyond. The project practitioners see reflective practice

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as core to their work and use large square books to document all developments. Scribing children’s verbal contributions to project sessions is standard practice, and is collated with planning notes, photographs and examples of pupils’ work in the books, now known as the ‘family albums’. These are kept in the workspace, and pupils, school staff and parents often look through them, prompting conversations and further reflections. The albums are also a data source, including attendance figures and details of the progress made by children. The current host school funds Roots and Wings through its pupil premium allocation, defined by the Department for Education as ‘additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers’ (DfE 2014). Pupil premium spending is scrutinized by Ofsted, the schools’ inspection agency, with reference to the attainment and progress of the targeted children. So the project required evidence of its outcomes beyond the usual classroom measures, to justify maintaining the resource input. Raw and Robson proposed a framework for an evaluation system that would involve pupils, practitioners, school staff and perhaps some parents in its processes. Raw then consulted with representatives from those groups and developed four themes that formed the backbone of the evaluation. Observations focus on the following: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Imagination, imaginative capacity and activity; Development of an inclusive (learning) culture; Readiness to learn; Developments in speaking and listening skills.

Each theme has a series of success criteria and suggested evidence forms, developed with school and project staff, which were synthesized into a prompt sheet for adults (see Figure 9.1). The team developed visual symbols for each category that made sense to adults and children alike, displaying these prominently on four pillars of the hall where the project is based, to maintain awareness of the learning goals of the project, and to further develop its reflective culture. Everyone has a role in observing, and in recording any evidence: children add comments

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under the posters when they notice something relevant in themselves or in their peers. Practitioners use the categories in their reflection after every session, coding pupils’ contributions and transferring all to the family album. Teaching and support staff add comments about the impact on pupils’ work in the classroom, and parents comment at events. The system required careful set-up, so that all involved were

A A1

IMAGINATION - Keen to start a story, Less repetition or or picture, copying - Pride, enthusiasm; Seeing - Accounts during possibilities reflection or sharing circles; - Prepared to share (recognize the value of their ideas) - Developing ideas, e.g. - Hypothesising - Story-boarding - Building ideas - Conceptualizing through metaphor - Grasping the metaphorical A2 More commitment - Marking an idea/game to ideas/invention happen, - involving others, - realizing an idea Visualizing independently

More confidence in own ideas

A3 Plan activity: inventing Characters, games, ideas Drama

- Original, creative drawing, and - Original, story /creative writing (literacy) - Not dismissing own ideas, or prejudging them as worthkess Pride - Devising process: from no idea, to visualizing, to inventing backstory, to characteristics. - Different original ideas across the class (less copycat) - Imaginative improvisation Freefrom in performance (audience)

Word prompts

Symbol

Ideas moments

Light bulb with smiley face on.

Working on own ideas

Light bulb in a frame.

Playing, and inventing stories

A light bulb with its ideas & creativity coming out (swirls etc).

Figure 9.1 Roots and Wings. Example adults’ prompt sheet.

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familiar with the categories, themes and symbols. There were hiccups: for example, children needed to learn that it was not appropriate to give their peers reciprocal positive (or negative) comments; and that this was not a reward system, familiar from classrooms in the form of points collected to gain treats, or compete between teams. Regular check-ins between school staff and practitioners ensure that observations, trends and perceptions of individual children’s developments are compared. The results are then cross-referenced with school statistics about pupil progress and distilled into reports to account for the pupil premium spend. In the 2014 Ofsted report, inspectors commented: The ‘Roots and Wings’ additional provision provided by the school and currently focusing on medieval literacy, is having a marked impact on pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. (Ofsted Inspection Report, December 2014)

Senior managers recognize that the system impacts positively on pupils’ learning behaviours, and initially attempted to roll it out across the school. This ultimately proved unsuccessful, as the team realized that the system worked well in the slow-paced, self-determining atmosphere of Roots and Wings, where it was key in documenting and evaluating the project, but was less effective as a whole-school approach. This reflective system has become integral to project practice: the categories are still used by artists in considering the process and its outcomes, and reflective practice among all parties has deepened through the continued use of open metaphors, to carry and contain nuanced meanings of developments among diverse groups of children. The school has recognized that the system gives pupils opportunities to reflect on their own and others’ attitudes and fosters better behaviour in school. Meanwhile it has also enabled appropriate and rich evaluation of the project and its outcomes.

Example 2: Reflective practice as ethnographic evaluation ‘Get Started’ is a three-year programme of participatory arts projects taking place in a range of supported housing sites for adults with

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learning disabilities or mental health issues, across the city of Leeds. It is funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s ‘Reaching Communities’ programme, and is delivered by specialist arts organization Artlink West Yorkshire, in partnership with social care support agencies. The programme works with eight freelance artists, facilitating a diverse body of creative activity in paired teams, together with participant groups across ten sites. Participants – all adults – range extensively in age, background, and physical, learning and mental health challenges, including within any given group. Raw is the external evaluation partner, and Robson was until recently chair of the board of Artlink West Yorkshire. To support this participatory programme, an evaluation strategy was adopted that sought to match the inclusive ethos. A framework was proposed with Artlink staff, based on the ‘Get Started’ outcomes agreed with funders. Success indicators were co-devised, drawing on the day-to-day knowledge among staff, facilitators and expert professionals, in how to gauge and understand well-being developments among participants with diverse disabilities and communication challenges. Attention was given to include small, detailed signifiers of change, such as visual indicators of altered mood and interactional body language, as well as evidence from verbal testimony, in order to include a range of abilities and modes of self-expression. While each participant’s expression modes are unique, and indicators cannot be generalized, these pointers help to focus attentiveness in reflective accounts and participant observation and then support the collation of numerous detailed phenomena. The indicators are grouped and organized by colours and symbols, denoting more subtle themes. The set-up process echoes Example 1 in its participatory elements, producing a framework widely used and understood across the project. In observing progress against one project aim of reducing isolation/exclusion for example, real-life meanings were explored, and at a mid-level of detail, included: 1. Less cut-off from world beyond own internal world – emerging from flat, visitors, external engagement;

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2. More included – more noticed by group, keenness to attend activities, verbal interaction, smiles, mood; 3. Occupying more space within social groups – including self as group member, observable social comfort levels, animated. As in Example 1, the strategy involves evaluation contributions observing any changes from several perspectives, using a range of tools. These include informal discussions with participants sometimes using photographs or film footage as dialogue triggers – known as ‘photo elicitation’ (Harper 2002), semi-structured interviews, creative facilitators’ reflective journals and participant observation visits. In this method the evaluator, or project staff member, participates in workshops, writing detailed, deeply reflective and reflexive accounts of the experience immediately following the visit. This is reflective practice, underpinned by an anthropological approach to observation, with ethnographic description as evaluation outputs. As the framework comes to life with moment-by-moment narratives, and reflections from several perspectives, examples (positive and negative) collected under these general themes become very diverse. This opens up interesting questions of interpretation that require reflexive positioning by ethnographers. These systems generate rich, qualitative and reflexive material from a range of sources, of the kind increasingly valued by health researchers as the most authentic source of investigative data in this field (Green and Thorogood 2014). Analysis is both ‘inductive’, allowing themes to emerge along the way, and ‘deductive’, in seeing the data (evaluation material) through the lens of the objectives and criteria framework. Working with personal accounts of experience, a ‘trustworthy’ (Lincoln and Guba 1985) picture of the programme is understood as gradually cumulative. The reliability of this picture requires continual testing through comparing accounts from different perspectives (a form of triangulation). In ‘Get Started’, despite being an arts and health project, no preset scales, tests or scores are applied to produce quantitative measures of success, as is commonly prescribed in such projects funded

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by health sector commissioners. Instead, levels of participation, and the observations and experiences generated by participation, are valued as the best gauge of the quality and success of the programme. This evaluation strategy has proved testing for the delivery organization and involved a lengthy period of acclimatization to the processes of intensive observation, journaling and reflection, with creative facilitators requiring support as well as a degree of pressure to maintain a regular routine of thorough reflection. Ultimately, all those involved have hailed the benefits of the strategy. The in-depth accounting of change processes for individuals and groups longitudinally throughout the programme has thoroughly satisfied commissioners. Participants have expressed interest and enjoyment in the inclusive, reflective, often creative evaluation processes. Delivery partners have described a more dynamic, inclusive culture within this programme than in others they have known. The professional development value of reflecting collectively, and intensively, on the delivery pathway has been appreciated by Artlink and creative facilitators, some of whom have integrated this level of journaling into their practice across other settings. Artlink is now using this evaluation design in other programmes, and is accumulating a luminous archive of project documentation, useful to exhibit and to present the organization’s work.

Conclusion In this chapter we have sought to outline challenges encountered by arts organizations when evaluating project activity to a high standard. We have traced the origins of these challenges and highlighted their impacts on the day-to-day delivery of arts organizations. We have cited two participatory arts project evaluations that use creativity and resilience to traverse the evidence and evaluation terrain. These are proposed as provocations to the dominant quantitative turn in evaluation requirements for public resource allocation, as they demonstrate high-quality, reflexive, qualitative evaluation practice. Each project

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acknowledges an ongoing deepening of understanding of a researchinformed approach to evaluation – in effect a learning culture, with much still to learn. Both examples suggest that using such approaches also brings other benefits to the projects and their stakeholders and settings: as by-products of the evaluation process itself. Indeed, the ways in which engaged and participatory evaluation systems themselves fold back, impacting on the project process and contributing to the richness and texture of its outcomes, is an important aspect requiring reflexivity in analysis. To conclude, we share some summary points, thoughts and questions. We have argued that, for reasons of scale, appropriateness and existing separation between knowledge environments, commissioners cannot reasonably expect project-level evaluation processes to offer research-quality evidence of impact. We show that commissioners’ perspectives currently lack clarity on evidence ‘validity’ and on audiences and purposes for evidence. Evidence and evaluation languages and their interpretations in context are also unclear. We report that this is detrimental to arts evaluation activity and burdensome to arts organizations, especially as competition for scarce resources increases. But we contest, along with Crossick and Kaszynska (2016), that highquality evaluation practice, including using qualitative methodologies, can be found within the sector. Such work reports rigorous and balanced findings to commissioners, but it can also contribute reliable evidence to assess impacts from arts activity. We argue that broadening the range of accepted methodologies can generate higher-quality evaluation, capable of providing reliable evidence in discourses on impact. We note that academic interdisciplinary research projects begin to answer the call for understanding across disciplines, and are increasingly funded, but are challenged by a lack of theory and of clarity in where to publish (Woods 2015). Best practice across disciplines and between knowledge sectors is shared across academic networks (e.g. in the RCUK Connected Communities network), but does not yet reach the practice field quickly or effectively. We identify insular, parallel

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worlds that require bridging with trans- or interdisciplinary, multi- or intersector collaborations, to support best practice in arts and cultural impacts evaluation. We highlight the importance of supporting informed choices on methodologies appropriate to project and context, avoiding stipulating approaches that cost time and money to deliver, yet may yield poor results. We suggest the need for practitioner-orientated guidance on assessing quality in evaluation processes, in formats accessible for non-academic audiences, empowering arts organizations to assert appropriate evaluation approaches for their work, in dialogue with their commissioners. However, ensuring that even high-quality, projectappropriate evaluation processes are meaningful is multifaceted. Ideally, we suggest, processes should be of lasting value to practitioners and to the development of the field, as well as to participants and to commissioners. Following the lead of the two examples we sketch here, training and nurturing critical and reflective practitioners might be both a developmental step and a valuable outcome. Practitioners equipped to reflexively critique their capabilities can contribute to, and not merely be subject to, cultural value evidence debates in increasingly austere times.

Acknowledgements The authors are extremely grateful to the teams whose work or comments we have cited: Roots and Wings, Artlink West Yorkshire, Creative Arts East and Musical Keys. We are also deeply indebted to our dear friend and colleague, Mike White (1955–2015), pioneer and champion of community-based arts in health.

10

The Performance of Prison Theatre Practices: Questions of Evidence Caoimhe McAvinchey

Rogers I’m teaching a drama class later, you coming? Vause

It’s not really my thing.

Rogers Come on. I think it would be good for you. Vause

How do you know what’s good for me? You’ve just met me.

Rogers Look Vause I get it. I get the anger. When a country has more inmates than teachers or engineers we are living in a fucked up society. Prison is bullshit. Vause

Then why work in one?

Rogers Because I think there are people here whose potential is being squandered and I want to make a difference. Vause

(overlapping) … and you want to make a difference. I get it. You’re one of the good guys. But guess what? We all think we’re good guys.

This scene from the American television series Orange is the New Black (Series 3, Episode 3, ‘Empathy is a Bone Killer’) between Berdie Rogers, a prison counsellor, and Alexandra Vause, a returning prisoner, at the fictional Litchfield Penitentiary, illustrates how theatre in prison is recognized both in penal institutions and in popular culture as a potential part of daily life in prison. The credibility of this scene is grounded in historical fact: theatre has taken place in penal institutions across the globe for more than a century. The range of practices accommodated within prison theatre is broad and eclectic. It encompasses prisoner-organized activities in

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individual institutions such as the vaudeville and female impersonator competitions at San Quentin in the early twentieth century to state-funded programmes that seek to address specific issues across a penal system such as the Brazilian Ministry of Justice’s commitment to the Staging Human Rights programme across six states between 2000 and 2006.1 As a generic term, ‘prison theatre’ occludes the rich specificity of practices that respond to particular localized politics or penal policy. For example, the San Quentin Drama Workshop (SQDW) was founded in 1957 by a prisoner, Rick Cluchy, in direct response to the San Francisco Actors’ Company presentation of Waiting for Godot for an audience of 1,400 inmates. The SQDW, run by inmates and volunteers, is still in operation today. In South Africa, Miranda Young-Jahangeer has, since 2000, led a collaborative programme in Westville Female Correctional Facility with students from the University of KwazuluNatal. This work engages with the politics of life within and beyond the prison and draws on traditional Zulu performance traditions. In 2014, theatre was employed as part of a state health education programme in Azerbaijan to try and arrest the spread of tuberculosis in prisons. In Norway, Gyntania, a rock musical version of Peer Gynt, was staged by prisoners within Ullersmo Prison in 2013 as part of a human rights programme that highlighted Article 22 in the Human Rights Declaration that everyone is entitled to the realization ‘of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality’. There are many factors that inform the politics and aesthetics of theatre in different penal contexts. Unless we work in or visit prisons, our access to it is mediated through the documentation created by others including research papers, documentaries about a specific project or films made with participants as part of an artistic project.2 This documentation reflects shifting perceptions of prison theatre and specific audiences it is expected to address. Work from the turn of the twentieth century can be characterized as being organized within the prison (both by prisoners and staff ) and, since the 1950s, often led by volunteer artists as part of a wider social and political project foregrounding the humane treatment

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of prisoners and prisoners’ rights. The primary documentation is often archival photographs or testimonial accounts from prisoners, prison staff, artist volunteers and journalists. However, the advent of state-funded, arts-in-corrections programmes in the United States in the 1970s and the commissioning of arts in criminal justice in the United Kingdom since the 1980s have created a need for a new type of documentation designed to answer particular questions: Does prison theatre contribute to criminal justice outcomes? If so, how? How can this be proved? There has been much greater attention paid to the monitoring and evaluation of work that explicitly proposes and empirically evidences that participation in the arts contributes to, for example, a reduction in recidivism, offenders’ desistance from crime and their increased pathways to employment. The audience for the documentation of work, framed in these terms, are often commissioners who need to know that their money is well spent: that, in the terms of business management, their investment performs well. This is not an unreasonable proposition, but it is imperative that it is not the only one considered. In the UK, arts and advocacy organizations working within the criminal justice system face a particular challenge in evidencing how well their work performs. This ongoing issue was highlighted during the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA) 2016 Annual General Meeting (AGM). There is much greater political awareness of this work from arts, criminal justice and government departments including the Ministry of Justice and Department for Culture, Media and Sport evidenced by the attendance of the minister for culture, communications and creative industries at the NCJAA AGM and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) commissioning of research to develop ‘user-friendly toolkits [for] provider organizations to measure their activities and impacts’ (NOMS 2013: 2). This is all welcome. However, at the same time, arts and voluntary organizations continued to express concern about the evaluation of their work – they face a Sisyphean task of not only funding this work, developing programmes that speak to a prison’s agenda but also monitoring and evaluating them in response to funders’ shifting

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frames of reference. While there is an acknowledgement from prison staff and government bodies that arts in criminal justice can be of benefit for individuals and society, the kinds of evidence demanded and that which is produced are not a good fit. In this chapter I examine how existing evidence has helped produce this credibility gap and also draw on the work of philosophers C. A. J. Coady (1995) and Miranda Fricker (2010) to consider ideas of testimony and testimonial injustice. I then shift focus away from the secondary evidence about the value of prison theatre to consider the primary evidence of the dramatic event itself. Nicole Rafter’s work on popular criminology supports the reframing of these events as text, as testimony, contributing to public understandings about prisons, about the relationship between the state and those who commit what Nils Christie refers to as ‘unwanted acts’ (2004: 24).

An economy of credibility: The value of prison theatre The case for In 2012, the NAACJ, a national network with over 700 members working in criminal justice in the United Kingdom, launched the Evidence Library with, at the time of writing, ninety-five evaluations, ‘testament to the professional approach many arts charities and social enterprises are taking towards measuring their effectiveness’.3 In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funded the ‘Prison Arts Resource Project’, an annotated bibliography of forty-eight evidence-based evaluations of ‘the impact of arts programs in US correctional settings’ (Gardner et al. 2014: 4). This resource includes Laurence Brewster’s highly influential ‘An evaluation of the Arts-in-Corrections Program of the California Department of Corrections’ (1983), the first qualitative and quantitative evaluation of a large-scale, state-funded project that ran in four institutions from 1977 to 1981. Brewster’s evaluation costed the beneficial impact in terms of social benefits for the prisoners, staff and institution as well as the financial imperative for taxpayers. He detailed the actual costs of

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running the programme ($123,110) along with the economic value of the social benefits ($228,522): his evaluation was instrumental in the state of California’s decision to continue funding the Art-in-Corrections programme until 2002. Brewster carried out additional evaluations at various points over the next two decades (1997, 2010, 2012, 2014) which continued to evidence key criminal justice outcomes of a reduction in offending and desistance. Unlocking Value: The Economic Benefit of the Arts In Criminal Justice (2011) by New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) details an economic cost – benefits analysis of three UK organizations that have robust systems of data gathering working with different groups of offenders – Clean Break (women), Only Connect (men) and Unitas (young people). The imperative for this research is clear: two in five adults are reconvicted within a year of release, costing government and, ultimately, the taxpayer, between £9.5 and £13 billion a year. In 2010, the newly elected Conservative-Liberal Democrat government announced a cut to the Ministry of Justice’s budget with a greater emphasis on payment-by-results. In this context, the NPC report details the economic imperative for arts in criminal justice contexts, attending to the cost of an arts intervention as a contributing factor in reduced rates of recidivism against the costs of potential reconviction and return to prison. Ultimately the report offers somewhat complex and conditional evidence that these arts organizations generate value for society with savings to the criminal justice system through reduced reoffending.

The case against In 2013, the NOMS, the executive agency of the Ministry of Justice responsible for prisons and probations in England and Wales, published an analytical summary that sought to ‘identify the kinds of changes that arts projects generate, and understanding how they are linked to reoffending and desistance’ (NOMS 2013: 1). The report continually refers to ‘a lack of good-quality research evidence’, ‘insufficient evidence’, ‘no solid evidence’ and, with frequency, ‘tentative evidence’ (2013: 1, 3, 4 and 5). The assessment of weakness in the documents reviewed is extensive, illustrating the fundamental problem facing arts organizations

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making the case that participation in the arts is a causal contributor to positive criminal justice outcomes. Only sixteen papers from an initial pool of 2,028 originally identified met the ‘quality criteria’ for the review. The NOMS assessment does not attempt to pass judgement on the quality of the arts practices in and of themselves: it is, however, a judgement of the quality of evidence produced in relation to their cause or contribution to positive criminal justice outcomes. Funded by Arts Council England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Unit at the Department for Education and Skills, Doing the Arts Justice (Hughes 2005) was the first extensive consideration of the ‘current evidence and theory base for the arts in the criminal justice sector’ (8), surveying 190 evaluations to examine ‘what it is about participating in the arts that makes a difference’ (9). The report’s reference to social exclusion explicitly positions it within a wave of research prioritized by the Labour government at the turn of the millennium. Hughes identifies various thematic strands: ‘arts to enrich and broaden the education curriculum; arts education; arts as therapeutic interventions; arts as adjunctive therapy; arts for participation and citizenship; arts as a cultural right’ (10) as well as a range of theoretical models employed including cognitive behavioural theory; role theory/social learning theory; resiliency theory; social capital theory; learning theory; intelligence theories; and arts therapies (11). Throughout this richly detailed and considered report, Hughes carefully untangles aspects of the available evidence to identify a number of technical and conceptual weaknesses that undermine the quality of evidence so that it ‘does not generate conclusions that can be used to inform social policy’ (71). This includes a lack of attention to research design, lack of baseline information, lack of controls, small samples and ‘assumptions made about the links between outcome and intervention’ (10). However, despite this lack of admissible evidence, Hughes urges attention to the extensive and enduring claims made about the potential personal, social and criminal justice benefits of participation in arts practices.

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The verdict There is a credibility gap. Substantial evidence, gathered over three decades from international arts organizations, academics in sociology, criminology and psychology or studies funded by government agencies, fails to convincingly make a particular case about the value of arts in prison. Criticisms about research methodology design, inadmissible sample sizes, the lack of a control-sample and a dependence on testimony tip the balance towards uncertainty. This documentation does not make the case convincing to government bodies that are looking for answers to particular questions, articulated in specific ways. So what does this credibility gap reveal about the nature of admissible evidence and, in particular, the role of testimony within this?

Testimony and credibility C. A. J. Coady’s Testimony: A Philosophical Study (1992) was the first to examine the epistemological status of testimony. Coady makes the distinction between ‘formal testimony’, testimony which is delivered within a legal or quasi-legal framework, and ‘natural testimony’, the wider, non-discipline-specific concept of knowledge developed and circulated in daily life (26). Testimony is knowledge based on what others tell us, and stands alongside perception, memory, reason and inference as one of our main sources of knowledge. Think of the countless things that you have been told by others, or that you have read about, or that you have learned in school or from the media. Inquiring into the nature of such testimonial knowledge, and analysing when and how we can acquire knowledge from others by taking their word for it, lies at the heart of the epistemology of testimony. (Gelfert 2014: 1)

Coady considers how knowledge based on the word of others has been neglected as a source of knowledge within the philosophical tradition since Plato: it has ‘either ignored testimony altogether or it

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has been cursory and dismissive’ (6). He argues that testimony is one of the most elemental ways that we construct our knowledge of the world and, therefore, our sense of ourselves: ‘Our trust in the word of others is fundamental to the very idea of serious cognitive activity’ (vii). The epistemological conundrum of testimony can be, according to Coady, addressed in one of two ways, reductivism or anti-reductivism. The reductive approach considers testimony as an epistemological model based on empirical evidence, of being there, of being an eyewitness to events which become evidence to support knowledge. The antireductivist approach considers testimony as a way of knowing which is not based on evidence. Rather, it is an approach which considers the way in which knowledge is built through testimony rather than empirical evidence. Either we reduce the possibilities for developing knowledge and understanding by fitting into a model that requires proof as evidence, or, we dance around this model to find different perspectives or ways to value and give credence to the gaining and disseminating of knowledge through testimony. For Coady, within the realm of philosophy, testimony is based on perception, and therefore we do not have to have reasons for believing it, only an absence of reasons for not believing it (38–48). In terms of my context here, it is possible to see the evidence supporting the value of arts in criminal justice as having been relegated to testimony, and thereby considered by particular and powerful audiences to be methodologically flawed. However, this testimony is still in circulation, shared by, what Welbourne defines as, a community of knowledge: this recognizes others who share in that knowledge, ‘so each can act on the assumption of knowledge in the other and they will be able to act co-operatively’ (Gelfert 2014: 227). In this context, the community of knowledge is participants, artists, prison staff, audiences for prison theatre and external agencies who encounter the work or witness participants’ reflection on it. Some of this may be formally articulated and recorded through interviews, observations or insights too often dismissed as anecdote but, fundamentally, these anti-reductionist testimonial iterations extend the epistemological base for prison theatre practice. Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing expands Coady’s considerations to examine a ‘distinctively epistemic

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kind of injustice’ when someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower (2010: 1). She identifies two specific injustices: testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice: Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word; hermeneutical injustice occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretative resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences. An example of the first might be that the police do not believe you because you are black; an example of the second might be that you suffer sexual harassment in a culture that still lacks that critical concept. We might say that testimonial injustice is caused by prejudice in the economy of credibility; and that hermeneutical injustice is caused by structural prejudice in the economy of collective hermeneutical resources. (1)

For Fricker, the imperative for this work is to highlight ethical aspects of two of our most basic everyday epistemic practices: conveying knowledge to others by telling them, and making sense of our own social experiences. Since the ethical features in question result from the operation of social power in epistemic interactions, to reveal them is also to expose a politics of epistemic practice. (1–2)

Testimonial injustice offers a useful perspective for thinking about the deflated credibility apparent in the reception of documents testifying to the rich, varied ways that prison theatre contributes to a wide range of outcomes. If there is testimonial injustice, then what is the nature of this prejudice against the tellers of this? Could this be because the tellers are artists and there is, potentially, a prejudice about the ways in which they navigate and reveal the world through their practice? Or could this be, in part, a prejudice against participants with experience of the criminal justice system – people who have been identified by their acts of law breaking, who may not be considered credible witnesses? Or could it be that to accept that arts practices offer a genuine possibility for individuals, institutions and societies to understand something of themselves and the systems of power that web

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across life is too bewildering, too fracturing of rational ‘certainties’, to be entertained? The idea of hermeneutic injustice, a gap in collective interpretive resources, is also provocative in thinking about the conceptual and linguistic frameworks for discussing personal testimony related to prison theatre practices. Fricker’s example of the difficulty in talking about sexual abuse in a culture that ‘lacks that critical concept’ is one of violent rupture, where the power dynamics of inequity are inflicted on a teller whose testimony floats in a vacuum of redundancy because there is no conceptual framework to anchor it to. However, hermeneutic injustice may, I propose, be applied to experiences that are disruptive to a human, to their sense of self, in a way that is expansive rather than violent, towards a more capacious sense of self in the world. When interviewing prison theatre participants, I have witnessed people struggle to find words to articulate a feeling or understanding provoked through this experience. Sometimes, when the reaching for words becomes too frustrating, when they fail to convey the nuance of a very particular understanding, a speaker may reduce this to, ‘do you know what I mean?’ or ‘you had to be there’. I wonder if, rather than the words being beyond reach, people are grappling to search for a conceptual resource with which to make sense of a social experience. This has two particular consequences: as data, the fractured sentences appear not to speak about something defined and specific and are dismissed; therefore, conceptual and linguistic frames of references for prison theatre continue to be defined by those set out with reference to the established, validated and understood concepts iterated in arts and criminal justice evaluations such as ‘increased self-confidence’, ‘reduction of rule-breaking in prison’ and ‘increased skills to address anger management’. Researchers working in or alongside prison theatre practices in an ethnographic rather than an evaluative capacity have the opportunity to identify, articulate and evidence observations that emerge through the practice, to develop conceptual resources that frame and analyse work in ways that extend beyond any prescribed notion of what it will reveal. Academic work offering extensive considerations of

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concepts such as joy, beauty, care, witness and role may not immediately appear to answer commissioners’ concerns about the usefulness of a particular prison theatre project in relation to criminal justice outcomes but they do extend the frame of epistemological consideration – not only what is known but how it is known.4 In the following section I redirect attention from the ‘problem’ of evidencing the social and economic benefits of prison theatre with acceptable methodological frameworks towards a consideration of prison theatre as testimony, as evidence.

Towards a popular criminology: Prison theatre as evidence Feminist criminologist Nicole Rafter proposes that cultural texts such as films, television series and novels make a significant but under-recognized contribution to the public’s understanding of criminology – what crime is, who does it, how it is punished and the mechanisms that enable this (2000). This is popular rather than academic criminology. Similarly, we can shift our focus from evidencing what prison theatre does to considering what prison theatre evidences about the socio, cultural and political contexts of its production. If theatre in and about prison is reframed as text, as testimony of the cultural politics of practice, it becomes evidence through the questions asked of it: this has the potential to contribute to new understandings about the role of incarceration as a mechanism of state punishment and how policy frameworks around criminal justice, arts and education play out in these practices. In this final section of the chapter, I consider two examples of documentation that extend the possibilities of prison theatre as an alternative epistemology revealing wider contexts of penal reform, prison education and rehabilitation. Rather than in the case of evaluation reports where evidence is assembled to build an already-defined case, these examples depend on open inquiry, hunches, following and the collaging of evidence.

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Glimpses and snapshots 1: The New York Drama League A 1921 New York Times article, ‘Drama in Prison Reform: Warden Lawes and Thomas Mott Osborne to Address League’, reveals a line-up of topics for discussion at the Drama League that would not be out of place at a gathering of theatre-makers and academics almost one hundred years later – ‘Prison Reform and the Drama’, ‘Drama and Civics’ and ‘Our Young People and the Theatre’. The article details: At the conference of the New York Drama League, to be held in the Town Hall Tuesday afternoon, April 5, when one of the questions to be discussed will be “The Relation of Drama to Prison Reform” Thomas Mott Osborne, the former Warden of Sing Sing, and Major Lewis E. Lawes, the present Warden, will speak on the value of dramatics in prison reform. A year ago the Entertainment Committee of the Mutual Welfare Association at Sing Sing put on two little dramas, together with a vaudeville and musical entertainment, one for the men themselves, and later for three public performances in the prison.

When I happened across this article while researching contemporary prison theatre in the United States, I was surprised by the institutional support structures for such a range of ‘dramatics’ and in the apparent leadership of prison wardens in giving this work a public platform. Both seemed idealistic but improbable today let alone in the early 1900s: I was compelled to pursue the clues woven into these few, short newspaper columns from nearly a century ago. What do these practices reveal of the material conditions and political contexts of this work? What kind of evidence does this prison theatre offer? Archival materials and published accounts of life at Sing Sing from Lawes and Osborne revealed that they were pioneering figures in penal reform. The penitentiary system in the late 1800s was brutal in ideology and material conditions: prisons were about punishment of offenders, not just through the removal of liberty but through additional, daily experiences of corporal punishment and hard labour. Osborne’s publications of his undercover investigations of the brutality of life in Auburn State Prison (1914) and his overhaul of Sing Sing modelled a shift in the idea of prisons as places of reform

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and rehabilitation. Under Osborne’s care, his belief that prisoners were treated with dignity was iterated through the Mutual Welfare League, a self-governed prisoner-led organization that would ‘write and enforce their own prison rules’ informed by Osborne’s motto, ‘Do Good, Make Good’ (Cheli 2003: 53). Both Lawes and Osborne believed that prisons infantalized inmates through limited opportunities to exercise initiative and choice: they argued that prison life should reflect life beyond institutional walls and that culture was an integral part of this. Lawes and Osborne were not developing a state-sanctioned programme – there were no evaluation forms monitoring the social impacts of the benefits of participation on those who lived in Sing Sing during this time. What this newspaper report revealed was prison theatre as the vehicle for and articulation of a humanist concern for the ideological and material reform of penal practice. Lawes and Osborne’s leadership evidences the particularity of life in Sing Sing at a moment in time and how the arts were employed to question the ideology of prisons as sites of additional punishment while modelling an environment where cultural opportunity is valued as an integral part of life. The legacy of this approach permeated beyond the prison walls contributing to penal reform, prisoners’ rights activism and in the experience of the people who live and work in penal institutions. I use this example to emphasize that, despite a proliferation of documentation testifying to the value of prison theatre, our access to prison theatre as a series of cultural practices, with distinct approaches and contexts, is partial. However, glimpses and snapshots of documented practices can, potentially, offer nuanced evidence not only of the rich array of prison theatre practice but how these offer testimony of the relationship between the individual and the state through penal policy and practice.

Glimpses and snapshots 2: Inside – Philip Osment and the National Youth Theatre (UK) Philip Osment’s Inside (2010) is a play about a drama project with young fathers in prison. Osment conducted research for the project with young

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fathers in HMP Rochester and Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institution (UK) in 2007–2008. As the opening scene unfolded, I was acutely aware of the critical work that the audience was invited to do, witnessing a layered, robust and playful critique of the representation of the prison population and how arts and education are employed as part of a twenty-first-century rehabilitative agenda. The following extracts from ‘The First Class’ illustrate aspects of this: The young men and the workshop leaders sit in a circle. Liam, Olu, Jamal, Aswan, Damian, Dom, Browning, Tommy and Hasan. Olu

My name is Olu and I have four children. Two boys and two girls.

Damian

Four?

Olu

The girls are called Kiera and Lateesha and the boys are Tobi and Cameron.

Damian

How did that happen, blud?

Olu

How do you think?

Damian

How old are you?

Olu

Twenty?

Damian

All with the same baby mother?

Olu

Yes.

Damian

For real?

Jamal

Bullshit.

Liam

Let’s move on, can we?

… Dom

Yeah, my name’s Dom and I haven’t got any kids.

Brownie So what’s he doing here? Liam

Dom and I are running the sessions with you.

Damian

Are we going to do some drama?

Liam

Yes, we are.

The Performance of Prison Theatre Practices: Questions of Evidence 153 Damian

When are we going to do it?

Liam

Well this is part of it.

Aswan

Yeah guv told me that we gonna be able to ask like our families to come and watch us at the end.

Liam

That’s right, we’re going to make a piece of theatre and then at the end of the two weeks there’s going to be a performance in the chapel and as long as you’re allowed visitors you can ask your families.

… Brownie So how’s Dom gonna teach us if he ain’t got no kids? Liam

That’s a good point. We’re not really here to teach you. We’re going to learn from each other about being a parent and things you might want to do with your children, how you might want to be with them.

Aswan

Yeah, but like this guy ain’t got no kids.

Dom

But it’s something I aspire to.

… Uproar from the lads. … Damian

We gonna do the drama ting now? I wanna do some acting. (Osment 2010: 9–14)

This fictional drama education programme encourages young fathers to think about what it means to be a dad, their relationship with their children and the children’s mothers, and resonates strongly with Safe Ground’s Fathers Inside, an intensive five-week group-work programme, ‘focusing on parental responsibilities and children’s education, development and wellbeing’. Inside originated through the National Youth Theatre’s (NYT) Playing Up, an outreach programme led by the director Jim Pope, working with young people who had ‘dropped out of education and some had experiences of homelessness, probation or prison’ (Osment 2010: 5). Rather than asking, ‘Did the

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Playing Up project “work”?’ we can consider what the practice of this production and company evidence. The structure and rationale for all aspects of Playing Up and Inside were informed and made possible through the political context that shaped the arts and criminal justice landscape in the UK at the turn of the millennium. The accession of the Labour Party to government in 1997 saw a major step change in how ministers were encouraged to think across departments to develop strategies for collaborative action. One of the most significant areas in relation to arts and criminal justice was the formation of the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) that addressed ‘a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown’ ( Jermyn 2001: 2). Its Policy Action Team 10’s report on ‘The Contribution of Sport and the Arts’ to neighbourhood renewal proposed that participation in arts and culture has significant social benefits. This, in turn, informed the Art Council England’s strategic commitment to fund work addressing social exclusion, including young people considered to be at risk of exclusion, offending and those who were ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’ (NEET), a term first employed in a 1999 SEU report, Bridging the Gap. While the social benefits of participation in the arts have been both hailed and critiqued (Matarasso 1997; Belfiore and Bennett 2010) the impact of targeted funding has played a major role in shaping the cultural, political and economic landscape that informs arts and criminal justice work. Inside models one particular navigation through this: a national theatre organization’s outreach department’s diversification of who it works with, where it works and the subject matter it grapples with; the artists recognized both the potential of the participants and their capacity to extend the theatre practice beyond the prison walls and established Playing On, ‘a theatre company and social enterprise’ to sustain this. Inside is testimony to the opportunities and challenges in developing a responsive approach to prison theatre at this particular cultural and political moment.

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Conclusion This chapter examines ideas of evidence related to prison theatre in a context grappled into being by the rough hands of neo-liberalism: the relentless rise in the global prison population; the increasing commissioning of private companies to build and manage prisons within the state’s administration of justice; and, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the decimation of budgets for health, education and social care in the name of fiscal prudence. I am interested not only in prison theatre practices, but in the arts and penal policy discourses that this work responds to and is situated within and the system of values that these cultural practices reveal. Coady’s work on testimony and Fricker’s articulation of epistemic injustice have been formative when examining frameworks and vocabularies of evidence that circulate to build or discredit the case for prison theatre. Ultimately, I argue, if the only questions asked of prison theatre relate to its efficacy, the only evidence in circulation will be about this and we risk jeopardizing alternative epistemological considerations of this work. By shifting the frame of consideration to prison theatre as evidence, as testimony, we create the opportunity to develop new understandings about the role of incarceration as a mechanism of state punishment and how policy frameworks around criminal justice, arts and education play out through prison theatre and the documentation of practices.

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Researching Applied Arts through Ethnographic Performance: Perspectives from an African Context Kennedy C. Chinyowa

Postcolonial Africa is witnessing the renaissance of a vibrant performance culture that had been suppressed during decades of colonialism and apartheid. In its indigenous context, this theatrical heritage was one of the primary means of articulating the African people’s memory, history, religion, morality and philosophy. The continued survival of this performance tradition not only attests to its resilient capacity to adapt to changing circumstances but also its intrinsic role in human development. Emmanuel Obiechina (1993) has identified a number of features responsible for the staying power of the indigenous African performance traditions. They bear the stamp of the African people’s collective wisdom and communal approval when placed side by side with new ideas, values and practices. There is a tendency among African people to ‘return to the source’ of their indigenous poetics for more enduring forms, styles and techniques. The performance traditions are also part of the African people’s lived experience, and so point beyond the moment to acquire existential value. More importantly, authority is bestowed upon these traditions by an epistemological order in which knowledge is acquired and expressed through analogy, allusion, symbol and metaphor. In the African theatrical tradition, for instance, artistic expression is a function of the people’s lived experience. Through the medium of music, song, dance, narrative, ritual, poetry or other cultural

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performance genres, people express or celebrate moments in their lives that make them what they are or what they want to be. Thus, from an African theatre point of view, the aesthetic is rooted in the people’s oral culture as a language of performance. In this chapter, I adopt the Shona word mutambo, whose English equivalent is ‘play’, to denote a form of human symbolic interaction performed for its own purposes and for the understanding of existence. I therefore apply the term ‘aesthetic’ to refer to ‘play’ as a histrionic cultural phenomenon. In its extended form, the term ‘aesthetic’ will also be regarded as closely implicated in how people create, present, reflect and interpret their world with the possibility of taking action to change their circumstances. Thus, in its oral form, the aesthetic has tended to be relied upon as a means by which African people create meaning out of their experiences of the world; it is how they express themselves through performance and how they adapt to changing forms of artistic expression. This chapter focuses on the ethnography of performance, alternatively referred to as ‘performance ethnography’ (Denzin 2003) and also ‘ethnodrama’ (Saldaña 2011), as a process-based and participatory research methodology for investigating artistic forms that rely closely on the application of the African people’s oral aesthetic. The idea of an ethnography of performance began with American anthropologist, Erving Goffman’s (1959) proposal for researchers to ‘read’ society dramaturgically, to look at those parts of lived experience that are ‘staged’. Later anthropologists like Victor Turner elaborated the concept to include the notion of reflexivity through which people come to know themselves better ‘through observing and participating in performances generated and presented by another set of human beings’ (1988: 80). In Norman Denzin’s (1992) view, everyday life can be understood through embodied performances that can make imagined reality more ‘real’ than the real. It is therefore possible to access the culturally specific signs, symbols, behaviours, language and experiences of those being studied using their embodied performance practices.

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Through ethnographic performance methodology, research takes place as a text-in-performance. The informants’ culture becomes a performative act while research is turned into a collaborative process rather than the mere gathering of information. Informants are involved in constructing their own performance texts as co-performers in each other’s lives. In other words, the informants come to be regarded as knowledgeable actors while the researcher takes on different roles as facilitator, catalyst, observer and/or participant. As participants, the informants become subjects rather than objects of the research process. From the outset, the researcher begins by striking an informal contract with ‘informants’ to make them aware that they will be expected to be participants during the performance process. In terms of empirical evidence, ethnographic performance methodology taps into the Malinowskian ‘native’s point of view’ by virtue of its ability to enable the close observation and participation of the researcher in people’s lived experiences. By combining both participation and observation, ethnographic methods are able to enrich the process of inquiry and generate analytic insights that emerge from moments of interactive engagement, exploration and investigation. The subjects of research (or informants) are studied in their natural settings, thus making the research inquiry more factual, self-evident and experiential. As Michael Genzuk (2003) points out, the researcher shares as intimately as possible in the lived experiences of the people in the observed setting, develops an insider’s view of what is happening and can actually ‘see’ and ‘feel’ what it is like to be part of the group being studied. The chapter will examine how the ethnography of performance can be deployed to research participative arts practice, in particular applied theatre practice in African contexts. In the following discussion I will follow Thomas Weisner (1996) in arguing that performance ethnography should be the most important method in the study of human development because it ensures that the cultural place (or context) is incorporated into the study of human development. The beliefs, practices, meanings and interactional systems of cultural production are brought to bear on development as participants (or informants) will be directly involved in

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exploring, interpreting and reflecting on their own situation, and taking action to transform their unfavourable conditions. Ruth Finnegan adds that the ‘performance’ dimension of ethnography is a fundamental key to human communication and action, ‘often centred round the concept of (applied) drama’ (1996: 91). In Finnegan’s view, this is because as specific acts of communication, the performances are marked out by ‘a heightened and framed quality’ (1996: 91). It is possible to infer therefore, that ethnographic performance research can make use of this ‘framed quality’ or what has also been referred to as a ‘mediating frame’ of signs, symbols and cultural meanings in the investigation of applied drama and theatre as a medium of applied arts.

Framing orality Because of the pervasive influence of orality in indigenous forms of communication, research on performance as a mode of development communication often focuses on orality as a framing device that is rooted in African theatrical performance. As a framing device, orality is popularly referred to as mutambo (play) among the Shona-speaking people of Zimbabwe. The focus on orality or mutambo enables researchers to find out how orality can act as an aesthetic discourse when applied to theatre for development contexts. I adopt Michel Foucault’s use of the term ‘discourse’ to refer to ‘how historically and culturally located systems of power/knowledge construct subjects and their worlds’ (in Denzin and Lincoln 2003: 493). By ‘aesthetic discourse’, therefore, I mean the process by which discovery and recognition occur to participants of an ethnographic performance. Indeed, participants cannot possibly engage in mutambo without being somehow transformed in their attitudes, purposes and behaviours. Hence, the ordering and shaping of mutambo become a way of making ‘something’ come into being. In other words, the oral aesthetic can be regarded as an equivalent of ‘play’ as it functions as a discursive element or mechanism for creating particular kinds of knowledge concerning reality.

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Context of research During the time of research, my initial intention was to begin by revisiting the oral aesthetic in its indigenous cultural performance context in the rural countryside of Zimbabwe where it is still prevalent. The intention was to find out how the aesthetic acts as a function of cultural communication before being applied to theatre for development practice. But this intention was not successful due to the unstable political situation prevailing in Zimbabwe at the time. I therefore decided that the Marondera district, which is only about seventy-five kilometres to the east of the capital city, Harare, would be the most appropriate starting point. The first visit on 31 August 2002 exposed the difficulties of the task that lay ahead. Without delving too much into the surrounding politics, it soon became clear that the rural folk had become highly politicized. Soon after the controversial outcome of the Zimbabwean presidential elections of March 2002, the ruling party ZANU (PF) had established vigilante groups, otherwise known as ‘war veterans’, who were carrying out a ‘cleansing’ exercise to rid the party’s rural support base of suspected opposition party elements (IRIN News, 8 September 2003). ‘Strangers’ were liable for questioning which could easily degenerate into torture and violence. To compound the volatile political situation, we realized that the rural folk were also reeling from the adverse effects of a severe drought. Some families were going for as long as five days without eating their local staple food because they had no maize meal. Thus, oral cultural performances like storytelling, dancing, singing and drumming that usually characterize the rural countryside during the post-harvest period from July to October were conspicuous by their absence. In the midst of such hunger, starvation and poverty, it was apparent that for many of the rural folk, there was nothing to celebrate. On returning from the Marondera district to Harare, I began to figure out how I could possibly adjust my research focus. The option was to search for the aesthetic not so much in indigenous

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cultural performances but through its manifestations in theatre for development workshops.

Data sampling Johnny Saldaña (2011) argues that in performance ethnography, the performance text and the aesthetic are solidly rooted in non-fictional, researched reality so that what is performed and presented is not just realism but reality itself. It is in this respect that performance ethnography is a presentational method in which the researcher has determined that the chosen art forms are the most appropriate and effective methods for communicating observations of cultural, social or personal life. In line with Saldaña’s view, the new shift in approach meant that I had to identify specific popular theatre groups that would constitute the focus of my research. Although the intention was to select those theatre groups that offered more scope for studying the aesthetic, the initial choices were random due to a lack of familiarity with what the various theatre groups offered. The popular theatre groups differed in their use of the aesthetic. While some tended to remain closely inclined towards the literary theatre tradition (see Etherton 1988; Kerr 1995), others were shifting towards using the oral aesthetic as a framing device in their workshops. It was only after carrying out a random sampling exercise that specific target groups that seemed to be employing the oral aesthetic were identified. These groups eventually became my chosen case studies. Scholars have pointed out several advantages of combining ethnography with a qualitative case study approach (see Merriam 1988; Lincoln and Guba 1985). Apart from allowing the researcher to understand a given phenomenon or ‘the case’ being studied, it also enables the phenomenon to be observed, described and interpreted in its proper context (Yin 1984). The phenomenon can be studied as a process or ‘an instance in action’ in order to reveal its properties in

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relation to the area or field being studied. Although other data collection methods were incorporated into the notion of an ethnographic case study, participant observation, which Erve Chambers describes as ‘the mainstay of the ethnographic technique’ (2003: 393), remained the primary research method for gathering data.

Data collection and analysis Following John O’Toole’s (2006) methodological criteria, for each ethnographic case study, I adopted the following framework for data collection and analysis: ●

●

●

●

●

Framing: identifying a particular situation or ‘case’ in which the aesthetic was being investigated, for instance a popular theatre workshop; Capturing: observing, identifying and locating the defining features and discursive frames of the aesthetic within the particular context; Bracketing: extracting and reducing the features and frames of the aesthetic so that its essential manifestations may be revealed; Crystallizing: sifting the extracted data to determine the recurring patterns of the aesthetic for closer analysis. The crystallizing process made it possible to gain access to multiple perspectives on the aesthetic, including contrary or contesting points of view; Interpreting: examining the meaning of key words, phrases or statements that refer to the aesthetic; analysing the views of participants, practitioners and other stakeholders and formulating hypotheses from what had emerged from the findings.

As far as possible the intention was to come up with a thick description of manifestations of the oral aesthetic in each case study based on the different ethnographic techniques that had been chosen. Norman Denzin defines thick description as a ‘deep, dense, detailed account

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of problematic experiences’ (1989: 83). Clifford Geertz (1983) regards thick description as a method of interpreting social systems through ‘clinical inference’, that is, by not beginning with a set of presumptions or predictions but with questions on the nature of cultural signification. Geertz (1983) explains that thick description enables us to gain access to the conceptual world in which subjects live so that we can in some way converse with them. Therefore, ‘thick description’ enables the researcher to account for those ethnographic experiences that focus on ‘the key turning point moments’ in people’s lives (see Denzin 1988; Merriam 1988) such as those associated with theatre for development practice. Denzin uses the term epiphanies to describe ‘interactional moments that leave marks on people’s lives, [and] have the potential to create transformational experiences’ (1988: 15).

Case study: Amakhosi Theatre Productions This section presents a case study that came out of my ethnographic performance research. To an extent, the case study has been informed by Brad Haseman’s (2009) ideas on how to handle a research methodology that is convenient to both researchers and participants. In his view, Haseman makes a case for the acceptance of an alternative methodology where claims to knowledge are arrived at and reported through an aesthetic or symbolic language which is specific to the context. Similarly, ethnographic performance allows qualitative researchers to use symbolic forms such as poetry, music, song and dance to represent their claims to knowledge. The choice of carrying out ethnographic performance research on Amakhosi Theatre Productions during the search for manifestations of the oral aesthetic in applied theatre practice came after an interview with Elvas Mari, director of the National Arts Council in Harare. He referred me to the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) of the University of Zimbabwe, which was coordinating an Integrated Rural Development Program funded by the W. F. Kellogg

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Foundation. The programme involved nine rural districts that had been selected from six southern African countries, namely Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa. The interest in CASS came about when I realized that they were working in collaboration with Amakhosi Theatre Productions, one of the country’s leading urban popular theatre groups based in Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city. CASS had engaged Amakhosi Theatre to assist them in using applied theatre to engage and mobilize rural communities for public policy dialogues on HIV/AIDS. The subsequent association with CASS through its programme manager, Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, enabled me to link up with Cont Mhlanga, the founding artistic director of Amakhosi Theatre. This was a pleasantly surprising turn of events because previously, I had made unsuccessful attempts to contact Amakhosi Theatre. As events unfolded, the CASS/ Amakhosi connection was crucial for collecting data on what Mhlanga called,‘Theatre for Community Action’ (TCA), a form of integrated theatre for development initiative. The Integrated Rural Development Program had already been launched in the Bulilima-Mangwe district of Zimbabwe on 1 September 2002 before the link up with both CASS and Amakhosi Theatre. The Bulilima-Mangwe district is located in the southern province of Matebeleland, where most Ndebele-speaking people live. The majority of Ndebele people were not part of the ruling party’s political support base. Hence, there was less of a threat from the ruling party’s vigilante groups in the rural areas. The only problem I faced was the language barrier since Bulilima-Mangwe was an exclusively Ndebele-speaking district. Fortunately, most of the TCA participants could speak the country’s biggest language, Shona. From my ethnographic research on Amakhosi’s TCA approach, I was able to observe how the theatre can become a ‘laboratory’ for involving the grassroots in researching, designing, implementing and sustaining their own development. From the two community-based performances on HIV/AIDS, namely Vikela I and Vikela II, that were prepared and performed by the Bulilima-Mangwe Community Theatre group after

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being trained by Amakhosi Theatre actor-facilitators, it was easy for me to realize how the oral aesthetic could enable participants to address such sensitive issues as gender, sexuality, power and identity without any adverse consequences. In African culture, it is often regarded as not only taboo but also ‘immoral’ to speak openly about sensitive topics associated with sex, gender and sexuality. I also learnt that when rural communities became ‘partners’ in development, the development process itself can be turned into part of their way of life. While participant observation enabled me to investigate ‘real processes of interaction in their natural settings’ (Friedrichs and Ludtke 1975: 83), not everything could be observed without some limitations such as ‘subjective bias’ and ‘selective perception’ (Holloway and Wheeler 2002). This necessitated the use of other methods of inquiry to validate the data that had been obtained through participant observation. For this reason, other research methods such as interviews, documents and the use of a logbook were incorporated. As Wolcott (1994) has pointed out, data collection strategies for ethnographic researchers include ‘experiencing’ through participant observation, ‘enquiring’ by means of interviews and ‘examining’ by studying different types of documentary materials. I will now describe how these other complementary methods of inquiry enabled me to collect more data within the ambit of performance ethnography.

(i) Interviews The case study observations of the various popular theatre groups discussed above were starting points for structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews. According to Sharan Merriam (1988), structured interviews have questions determined in advance, semistructured interviews are more open-ended and less structured, while unstructured interviews are more conversational and exploratory. From various interviews with informants, the semi-structured type was mainly used because it allowed the researcher to respond

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to divergent views of informants without losing track of the focus of the research. For the selection of interviewees, those chosen were considered to be key representatives of their popular theatre groups, and as people with adequate knowledge of what was under investigation. As Merriam elaborates, respondents are selected ‘on the basis of what they can contribute to the researcher’s understanding of the phenomenon under study’ (1988: 76). To avoid the possibility of affecting the views of those informants not accustomed to interviews such as ordinary members of the community, informal conversations were used. Interviews were held with a number of experienced theatre practitioners, including pioneers of the African theatre for development movement during the 1970s. These included such figures as the late Ngugi wa Mirii, one of the co-facilitators of the famous Kamiriithu workshop in Kenya who later became the artistic director of the Zimbabwe Association of Community Theatre (ZACT); Stephen Chifunyise, one of the organizers of the Chalimbana workshop in Zambia and chairman of the Children’s Performing Arts Workshop (CHIPAWO); and Christopher Kamlongera, founder of the University of Malawi Travelling Theatre and director of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Communication for Development Centre in Harare. Dexter (1970) asserts that the process of interviewing itself is a social phenomenon which can profitably be conducted reflectively. This implies that the interviewer remains sensitive to the verbal and non-verbal nuances being conveyed by the informant. During these interviews an effort was made to listen with keen interest while posing reflective questions to interviewees. In some cases, I had to rephrase and reflect back to the informants what they seemed to be expressing and to summarize their remarks in order to ensure that their point of view was properly understood (Whyte 1982). For instance, when I interviewed Cont Mhlanga, the artistic director of Amakhosi Theatre, on 26 November 2002, the approach adopted was both reflective and interpretive as follows:

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Interviewer My first question is on the term Theatre for Community Action (TCA). Why do you prefer to use that term instead of Theatre for Development (TfD)? Cont Mhlanga (CM) I have problems with the term Theatre for Development because, for me, development sounds like a thing with a beginning and an end. Now when you apply that term to the situation in my village, it will be like something you can measure in time. I mean something that can be measured in quantitative terms. But with me, I’m looking in terms of a process that doesn’t stop. Interviewer You mean an ongoing process? CM Yeah, that’s right. I’m looking at theatre as an ongoing process, a part of everyday activity. Interview Which doesn’t end with ‘development’ theories, something that goes on and on? CM Because people are always in action in many different ways. We are at breakfast now, so we are in action. When we are eating dinner or singing, for me, we are in action. So when I say for action, I mean everything that you do has something to do with the performing arts as a process of action. Interviewer Thank you. Does this make development just one of the things that may result from the action? CM Yeah, for me it’s something like that. It is the result of action. Everything is action. (Interview with Cont Mhlanga, Gaborone, Botswana, 26 November 2002)

The data that was collected from this reflective type of questioning not only enabled the researcher to obtain the type of information that was required but also helped to establish a rapport with most of the respondents. As Merriam (1988) has noted, the researcher presupposes that the respondent has something to contribute, has had an experience worth sharing and has an opinion of interest to the researcher. In Mhlanga’s case, the researcher’s interpretation of his idea of the aesthetic

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in theatre for development was that of ‘an ongoing process of action expressed in performance as a daily activity’.

(ii) Logbook Philip Taylor notes that the logbook is ‘the tool for demonstrating the evolving understanding of particular phenomena’ (2003: 124). It is the researcher’s sourcebook in the sense of keeping a record of the evolving patterns and relationships emerging from what is being observed or investigated. Lofland is perhaps blunter on the purpose of keeping a logbook: All the fun of actually being out and about monkeying around in some setting must also be met by cloistered rigor in committing to paper – and therefore to future usefulness – what has taken place. (1971: 103–4)

The logbook was particularly found to be invaluable when it came to recording workshops and reflecting on events and situations that had been observed. For instance, during the training workshop on African performing arts with CHIPAWO that has been mentioned earlier, the logbook became the source of most of the reflections that I included in the final workshop report. The logbook also became the field guide for reflecting on interviews and group discussions, recording key statements from informants and commenting on observations from popular theatre workshops. It enabled the researcher to keep track of what was being researched. The following is an example of one of the logbook entries: 9 October 2002: I observed Mabvuku Drama Club based in Harare. They were rehearsing an anti-corruption drama entitled Mufakose (Double Trouble) which had been commissioned by Transparency International, a local human rights organisation. The group leader, Anthony, began by reading Transparency International’s comments on their previous rehearsal. The group shared views on how to improve their drama, especially how to incorporate solutions to corruption in line with their

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sponsor’s requirements. They then rehearsed the first three episodes, pausing for comments after each episode. They requested comments on how to improve their drama. I gave suggestions on how they could work on form in order to make the performance more appealing to their target audience. (Extract from personal logbook)

However, from subsequent visits to this group, it was realized that they were more concerned with following the agenda as set down for them by their sponsor than worrying about matters of form and technique. The experience gave some insights into the nature of donordriven popular theatre and how the spirit of commercialism tends to undermine its impact on the urban audience. In what ways did these other methods of inquiry contribute to the ethnographic investigation on the nature of the aesthetic in African theatre for development? According to Norman Denzin (1989), the use of multiple methods of collecting data is a validity procedure that requires the triangulation of different sources of information to find their recurring and/or contesting patterns. Richardson (2000) uses the term ‘crystallization’ to describe the procedure of applying a variety of lenses in data collection and analysis. By triangulating and crystallizing the multiple forms of data, it was possible to obtain both corroborative and contesting evidence regarding the aesthetic in applied theatre practice. For instance, while practitioners like the late Ngugi wa Mirii expressed interest in understanding the aesthetic as a possible means of making popular theatre more relevant to the people, others like Robert McLaren felt that the aesthetic was simply a matter of choice for the theatre director. As Norman Denzin and Yvonne Lincoln (2003) have asserted, the use of a collection of methods reduces the effect of the peculiar biases and assumptions associated with research.

Conclusion Perhaps the major advantage of an ethnographic performance research methodology lies in the way it privileges the Malinowskian ‘native’s

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point of view’ (see Geertz 1983; Chambers 2003; Taylor 2002). Most of the methodological problems in theatre for development seem to have arisen from ‘top-down’ approaches to development communication (see Salhi 1998; Kerr 1995; Prentki 2003; Ahmed 2002). But with ethnographic performance, the research inquiry places culture’s interactional codes and symbols at the centre of human development. Indeed, Erve Chambers was persuaded to conclude: If I can speculate as to where the field (of ethnographic research) will be ten years from now, I would certainly hope for … a greater emphasis upon convincing decision makers and research clients of the importance of paying heed to ‘indigenous knowledge systems’ not only as a means to understanding more fully the needs of the people and their communities but also as a vital source of potential solutions to communities’ problems. (2003: 414–15)

Although it is more than ten years since Chambers (2003) made this prediction, Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson (2013) have argued that more and more contemporary theatre and performance researchers are relying upon performance ethnography as an embodied or body-centred methodology. The advantage of such research practice has been found to lie in how culture can be understood in and through the body, or what has been described as ‘bodily knowing’ (Kershaw and Nicholson 2013: 225). By employing the oral aesthetic as a form of embodied knowing and locating it within its cultural context, performance ethnography creates conditions for investigating, interrogating and understanding bodily perceptions and lived experiences more thoroughly (Denzin 2003: 13). As a people’s language of performance, the aesthetic is closely implicated in the idea of ‘indigenous knowledge systems’ as the folk media through which the people express themselves. Hence, for data collection and analysis, the ethnographic performance method offered more scope for understanding the aesthetic as a mediating discourse in communicating development through the medium of applied theatre.

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Indeed, it was possible to observe and understand the discursive role of the aesthetic in generating performances which, in Dan BenAmos and Kenneth Goldstein’s (2008) view, resonated with the lived experiences of the target community. Moreover, such performances were created within the specific contexts of cultural production due to their rootedness in traditional idioms of expression.

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Thou Art, I Am: Discovery and Recovery in the Art-making Process Olivia Sagan

This chapter explores the experience of making visual art and its interface with mental well-being. It draws on data from empirical narrative research with mentally ill artists (Sagan 2014). Observant of the lived experience of participants and of the meanings made by them of their particular processes of making art, the research is couched within what is still known as the ‘new paradigm’ for psychology (Smith, Hare and Langenhove 1995). This paradigm, borne of the well-founded worry that the application of psychology dehumanized people (Reason and Rowan 1981), is one driven more to understanding and description than to measuring, and towards determining social rather than statistical significance. The messages of research within this paradigm are often sidelined, not considered as offering hard evidence. However, these messages provide important insights into the experience of being human and how that human makes sense of that experience as part of her very being. The research drew on a psychoanalytic, object–relations approach to aesthetic understanding (Glover 2009). This identifies the unconscious and our relationships – real, imagined, longed for or feared – as active ingredients in the making of art. The chapter asks what it is we are seeking or finding in, what Dissanayake (1990) termed, the process of ‘making special’. It explores artistic activity as a unique means of unearthing and addressing a sense of ‘original deficit’ (Wright 2009: 49) which is often part of the package of

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mental illness. The conceptual direction of the chapter is towards an alliance between psychoanalytic concerns with the relational and the phenomenological (Atwood and Stolorow 2014), with its pursuit of the texture of emotional experience. The conclusion makes a brief case for the place of such research and the insights such theory affords. It asks that observant, qualitative study of human experience be used to complement the ‘hard’ data of statistical methods and randomized control trials by offering a ‘beyondness’ to our questioning and an ‘acceptable unresolvedness’ to our answers. It urges that ‘negative capability’ (Keats 1970), the ability to tolerate uncertainties, as developed by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion (1970), be a more valued element in both research and policy, as a move towards emotionally intelligent policymaking (Cooper 2015).

Background After more than a decade of speaking to people who hold that making art contributes in many and subtle ways to their mental well-being, I have to confess that I still do not ‘know’ how making art works. How does it help people through depressions and breakdowns? How does it support them through a formidable array of symptoms and darknesses, instances of pharmacological (mis)interventions and bleak episodes of the errant side effects of medications? How does it offer something – at times of loss and mourning; addiction and compulsion; loneliness, trauma and both the terrible and exhilarating rollercoaster of bipolar conditions – when seemingly all else fails to offer anything? Research that investigates the impact of making art on one’s mental well-being is now a vibrant canon of work. It is a body of work encompassing international collaborations, numerous methodologies, diverse conceptual perspectives and findings both quiet and triumphant. These indicate that art-making, particularly in community settings (White 2009), can lead to an overall improvement in general health; to an improved quality of life and strengthening of self-esteem

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(Odell-Miller et al. 2006; Van Lith et al. 2013); that it contributes to a feeling of being valued; facilitates interpersonal relationships and a strengthening of social ties (Camic 2008; Griffiths 2008; Staricoff 2004; Mowlah et al. 2014); and that art-making offers an effective way of exploring personal issues (Heenan 2006) and of facilitating selfdiscovery (Lloyd, Wong and Petchkovsky 2007). It suggests that artmaking can function therapeutically as cognitive distraction (Drake and Winner 2012), as an alternative to art therapy for vulnerable groups (Argyle and Bolton 2005) and as a means by which to foster hope (Sagan 2015) and rebuild identities (Spandler et al. 2007). There now resides a body of evidence that demonstrates that artmaking positively impacts on our mental well-being. But research in this area continues to be riddled with challenge. There is the perennial problem that measuring X (in this case art-making) and its impact is far from explaining how (and if) X has effected that impact. In fact, many studies are far from clear what ‘X’ is; how it is encountered; by whom; and what the myriad variables of any of the components of psycho-emotional improvement might be. While such challenges within qualitative studies arguably contribute to a perceived lack of evidence base and by extension to limited policy responses, the challenges themselves tell us a great deal about the nature of art-making; of mental illness; and the complex and unique interface between the two. So, while we edge towards further refinement of tools and methodology, towards a greater sophistication of metrics and observation and towards an employment of an even larger panoply of technical tools and instruments now embracing the exciting possibilities of neuroscience, this chapter with its attendant research seeks to do something smaller and quieter. It makes use of biographic data from three qualitative studies (Sagan 2010, 2011, 2014) and revisits it, asking again: What is the experience of making visual art as an adult with enduring mental health difficulties? Does this chapter provide evidence? No, unless like me you hold that one person’s experience is evidence. Does it explain how art works? Perhaps not, but some hardwearing and worthy ideas are revisited and proffered. Is this enough? Well, I’ll let the reader decide.

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Methodology The data drawn on in this chapter span several years and projects, all aimed at gathering ‘thick’ first-person narrative data from adults with enduring mental health issues who were also practising artists. The main project, funded by the Arts Council (Sagan 2011), arose from a series of consultation meetings with mental health service users involved in artistic activity. In total, approximately sixty people gave full-length interviews which were recorded, transcribed verbatim and in most cases anonymized. In the cases where participants preferred to disclose their identity, this was only done if it would not compromise the identity of another participant by association. Ethical clearance was granted by the host universities at the time. Recruitment took place through calls announced through mental health and art networks and through word of mouth in the southeast of Britain. Participants in this sample self-identified as being white British, black British or Asian and were all formally diagnosed as having a mental illness, with diagnoses including schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder (BPD); dissociative identity disorder (DID); obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD); chronic depression; bipolar disorder; psychosis and anxiety. Recorded semi-structured interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, and there was an option to be interviewed more than once. Indeed, around forty of the participants chose to have a longer-term relationship with the process, being interviewed on other occasions and offering further thoughts and reflections on the questions raised for them, sometimes by written account. The span of participation for this group ranged from one to five years. The interview was guided by the schedule rather than dictated by it, allowing for elaboration and digression which invariably was where the rich biographic detail resided within a tradition of interviewing that allows for this (Kvale 2003). Transcripts were analysed according to the principles of

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thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006), which offered sufficient flexibility and clarity to approach and interpret the data through a phenomenological lens. Interpretation and understanding drew on an iterative process of analysis, re-reading and refining, moving attentively between the descriptive and the interpretative processes. A principle of redundancy was applied when sufficient representative data had been extracted to suggest the emergence of salient themes. Influenced by feminist onto-epistemological principles, narrative work of this type continues to remind us of the value of reflexive, first-person interviews that function as a resource on which people can draw as part of their rescripting and narrative rebalancing. As such the approach holds particular currency for work with adults experiencing the compound injuries of mental ill health, the silencing and voicelessness of traumatic pasts, and futures commonly presaturated in the language of deficit. The deliberate ‘slowness’ of the narrative interview, and the flexibility to return to the participant should she or he wish to elaborate on something after having had time to reflect, coupled with the freedom to present and talk about the artworks themselves, lent a special opportunity for people to consider and reflect upon their lives and their work and the role of the latter in interaction with the former. It is work that positions the individual as the unit of analysis (Figert 2010).

Findings Thou art/I am The narratives in this research fall largely into the category of ‘redemption’ narratives (McAdams et al. 2001) in which ‘the storyteller depicts a transformation from a bad, affectively negative life scene to a subsequent good, affectively positive life scene’ (474). The narratives can also be seen to fall into Arthur Frank’s (1995) third category, the ‘quest’ narrative, in which a journey is described in which adversity is now being faced head on, in the belief that something is gained, or to

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be gained from the experience. However, it was not an intention of the research to further refine or categorize types of narrative – rather, to stay close to what each participant said of their experience and how they made sense of that experience. What was striking in this data is that the participants attributed this narrative, its content and direction, to their art-making, and the narrative identity developed through this. It is this project of building a narrative identity (Ricoeur 1986) which was held to be a unique aspect of art-making and its powers of ‘finding the words to say it’. As Liz put it: So all the art work and all the healing that has happened in the last 7 or 8 years has really been about trying to find another language for the thing I didn’t know how to talk about or the thing I didn’t have language for.

Astrid also described how stuff that is within you can be revealed [makes a gesture of a bud opening] through the painting and the drawing. … It’s something there that you’ve made, it gives you a connection with something that is outside of you but still part of you. And that then feeds back into how you understand yourself, how you think of your self … and into how you work.

Here it is worth noting that while narrative processes can be agentic and life-affirming, they may also reproduce toxic stories: some of the participants spoke at length about the perceived limitations of therapy, their weariness and wariness of clinically induced illness-dominated identities (Scheff 1999). In some cases they believed that such stories would condemn them further and were often guarded in responses, especially at the outset of the interview process. Yet art, it seems, in its making and at times through its destruction or rejection offered a conduit for connecting with fragments of themselves, perhaps forgotten; disavowed; or indeed deliberately avoided. Over and again, participants described the experience of reifying an emotion or experience in a way that words did not allow. Tara said simply that the

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story of things that happen to us is ‘deep, too deep for language, but not too deep for the eye’. Philosopher Susan Langer spoke of art as articulating the very shape of human feeling in a way words can never do (Langer 1930). Given the ambivalence towards words and verbal expression felt by many with histories of silences, lies, trauma, secrets and illness, the value of an alternative form for narrative exploration cannot be overstated. The building of an identity through one’s work in a process that was one not pathologized, static or circumscribed by diagnosis or clinical setting was held to be an invaluable component of art-making. It was owned and not open to manipulation by experts; it was highly valued, not least for the recognized change in one’s relationship with others as a result. Here Laura comments: When I paint ... [pause] as an artist, it’s like I’m becoming, like I am someone else, something more than what’s gone on before … and this me seems better at being with others … does that make sense?

At times, this relational work was directly undertaken through the art-making itself, where, in Tom’s words: I ‘do’ repair. I have to work with others all the time in my work, and I’m always having to … to … work at working with others and repair relationships when they go wrong, something I’ve never, ever been able to do before my art, making it.

More poignant, still, were the narrative strands that alluded to this ‘deficit’ in one’s relational world stretching way, way back to primary experiences. Poignant too were the quiet descriptions of the experienced body blow of the suspicion that this was where, in Paul’s words, ‘all this [signals the head] started’. So one thing that these narratives appeared to allude to, time over time, was a process of narrative identity being wrought through one’s making of imagery, and indeed through its very processes. Zak, an abstract painter who dismissed the ‘auto content in my work’ nevertheless mentioned how he gradually noticed his way of storing

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‘art works that had touched a nerve in a particular “lesser” place in my studio’. Whereas some participants claimed they had felt stymied in talking therapies which ‘trapped me’ in ‘well-worn’ stories, perhaps because of the shortcomings of words and verbal expression to people whose main representations of the world were in image and symbol, art-making offered something particular in relation to identity: discovery – through one’s own means, at one’s own pace, in a nonclinical setting.

Discovery Integral to this perceived building of an ‘I’ with its potential for new means of relationships with others was a discovery and integration of parts of the self, even those previously evacuated or denied, which according to Klein are also the ‘source of inspiration in artistic productions’ (1958: 245). Here is Tobias on ‘stumbling’ on an image: I grew up in Cumbria and … I love wild imagery … natural images, and when I was painting what I thought was ‘a landscape’ I suddenly recalled being with my dad, out on the hills [pause] … it was about the experience [pause] … I don’t know … [pause] … the memory, one I’d not thought of for, well decades … it came into my painting, and triggered a lot of other things about my experiences at that time … with my dad ... I reckon I discovered something about myself … and him … that I never knew. But now it was there. Part of me. Kind of owned? Painted.

The point made by Tobias, that making art unearths experiences which then become part of one’s narrative and artistic genre, is one that crops up throughout artists’ stories. It is part of the theme of ‘discovery’ that was so prevalent in this research. Ricoeur (1991: 30) suggests that it is in such eruptions of ‘something else’, where something beyond words and consciousness emerges, that the ‘teller’ is jolted into a new way of thinking and even being – and thus identity evolves.

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Unearthing these experiences and transforming them in some way into images were felt to be pivotal in the relationship between making art and developing an ‘I’ with which to negotiate the ‘Thou’ better. Here is Yelena: Art brings me into contact with sides of my personality that are surprising, and it’s a journey … an exploration …. It creates better understanding and connection to people and the world around me. It’s a discovery as well as a memory.

The process of making was of paramount importance because in this process, unknown or concealed experiences and their attendant emotions emerged and then, as a consequence, became speakable, part of one’s narrative identity. But this journey, one of discovery, was far from easy. Charlie said the ongoing process of ‘uncovery’ meant he had to get used to living ‘on the peripheries of myself ’ and losing a sense of self before finding it, with all the attendant anxiety of that process. Maria Walsh, in writing about this repeated artistic anxiety, described it as ‘pleasurable unpleasure’ (2013: 114). Here is Katie describing how images and thoughts emerged as she was painting ‘something quite unrelated’ which led to her reassessing her psychiatric history and the role of her family and others in it: I kept coming back to being in hospital – over and again these images would present themselves and I just started wondering … how did I get there? What was I doing there, 19 years old, without anyone asking me, really talking about what had happened? That all seemed so wrong, suddenly, but god knows why it took so long for me to ask that.

Art-making was spoken of as involving risk both in its discovery journey and in the element of disclosure, the revealing, sometimes publicly, of that ‘I’. Reflections sometimes led to painful acknowledgements of the forces arrayed in opposition to mental health; the discrimination, inequality, stigma, losses; poverty – and the bleak impact of market forces which require that many of us stay ill. As put by Ayden:

Thou Art, I Am: Discovery and Recovery in the Art-making Process 181 They need us to buy their drugs … buy into their therapies … we being ill makes them well … I started seeing that.

In the recordings, streaked through with sobs, laughter, thick pauses and utterances of exasperation or wonder, the intricate processes of discovery and of affirming an I in relation to a Thou, were described. But these processes were interlinked with a further narrative strand: that of recovery and participants’ diverse, often ambivalent relationships with it.

Recovery Unsurprisingly, references to recovery formed a part of the narratives, and this was explored further, not least because it was the narrative strand that most revealed a notable shifting of positions. Most of the people willing to tell me their story had reached a point where they felt well enough and defiant enough to tell that story. Known to each narrator was the risk of returning to a more ill state, the prospect of relapse to a voicelessness where, as Jil put it, you just had to ‘stay put, stay quiet … try and survive’. Narratives revealed an armoury of health-maintaining strategies, a list topped by art-making. It included daily rituals and thought regulation; better self-management and dietary control; meditation, vigilance, connections with self and peer help groups – and medication, even hospitalization. It was repeated time and again that any or all of one’s symptoms of ill health might return, yet people were for the most part adamant you emerged again by using your own resilience and panoply of life-learnt strategies. One of the ways through which energy was found to face this recurring battle was through a belief in the tenets of the recovery movement. Recovery discourse emerging through research themes is noted elsewhere in the literature (Bonney and Stickley 2008) and in the present data it was clearly detectable in people’s stories. Indeed, the recovery discourse was, in some cases, viewed to have directly enabled

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an alternative life narrative – one of resistance to the labels felt to have been applied before. In today’s therapeutic culture wherein we increasingly construct our problems in professional, medico-scientific language, this more agentic discourse of recovery offers welcome relief, and a cluster of broadly aligned principles have motivated, reassured and galvanized huge numbers of people with mental illness. Particularly widespread in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, the recovery movement offers a counter-narrative to the psychiatric story of mental illness, one which ‘belongs to consumers-survivors’ (Schiff 2004: 212). It was notable in this data, how many of the participants ‘spoke’ the language of recovery, with its people-first descriptors (person in recovery; person with schizophrenia) and its focus on positivity and on individual strengths. So a further undertaking of the research was to explore what use was made of this discourse in conjunction with an art practice, and whether an oppositional identity was enabled. How did this narrative of recovery appear to intersect with that of an art practice? Amid the many references to recovery was a dominant strand of narrative that specifically described how art practice and one’s recovery were interlinked. As Neenah put it, ‘My art practice has been very central to my recovery – it has been there, in tandem.’ For some, there was no separating them. Paul insisted they were the ‘same thing, so can’t talk about one without the other [shrugs]’. For Josh, similarly: My art practice is my recovery. … I don’t get to have one without the other … it’s just not part of the deal.

People also referred to the meandering of their ‘recovery journey’, describing coming to accept an illness and what had happened to them. They spoke of insights into this journey gained, in some cases, exclusively through the making of art as part of its discovery and of facing, at times, one’s hidden ‘demons’. But was the recovery discourse yet another potentially limiting narrative? And did an art practice do anything to challenge this? Harper and Speed (2012) maintain that the very concepts of recovery

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and resilience are individualistic and based on medicalized and neoliberal notions of individual responsibility; a discourse that ‘simply reframes deficits as strengths and is thus implicitly reliant on deficitbased models’ (2012: 10). They also note that structural inequalities are routinely de-emphasized within the neo-liberal framework. Indeed, this sense of individualism, compounded by the enduring notion of artist as individual, was identifiable throughout the interviews with artists. Yet this lone artist, intrapersonal allusion was almost always countered by descriptions of the interpersonal nature of one’s art practice; you communicated to somebody – and an art practice was invariably felt to play a substantive role in supporting relationality. So while the ‘I’ in the narratives of art prevailed, that ‘I’ was ‘found’ in a relational capacity through one’s art-making. Sometimes this was through the pragmatics of being with others in creative collaborations; in Catherine’s words: That thing of being ‘part of a group’ [makes scare marks] has been really good for me. … That’s one of the things that comes from being involved with the arts, being part of a group, who are working on something.

At other times, it was through the more subtle narrative rebalancing, trialling and testing mentioned earlier on. Parr (2012: 8) noted that art can be ‘an important “stepping stone” into wider social geographies’, and it seemed these social geographies were both literal and envisaged, a connecting with others through one’s work, as one worked. But did an art practice in any way unseat the ‘deficit’ contained, nevertheless, in the recovery discourse? Participants spoke, as described, in a ‘language’ saturated with that of recovery. Yet this language appeared to function in tandem with an art practice to nurture a more reflective, sometimes confrontational identity. The language and practice combined seem to have been instrumental in some individuals moving away from the pernicious psychiatric discourse of terminal pathology. They became someone other than patient, paranoid-

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schizophrenic or survivor. They became an artist, a collaborative partner, a painter, a maker, someone else and, most importantly for them, someone more. This was further enhanced through exhibition opportunities; collaborative project work, workshop participation and general broader exposure. Here is Sarah: I was really cautious to begin with, really, really cautious. … I was aware that I was going to be doing something a bit controversial, but then I think I just got a bit rebellious as well … because I thought, if someone has a sore leg they can talk about their sore leg and it’s absolutely fine. If someone has mental health problems, why is there such a stigma around it? Why can’t they talk about this also? I just felt rebellious and thought, well I’m just going to talk about it because if I talk about it then maybe someone else will talk about it.

Art-making, time and again, also seemed to facilitate an engagement with the political, triggered by the processes of selfanalysis and expression that appeared to be the foundation stones of people’s art practice. The interpersonal in art practice – taking the form of an imagined conversation with one’s abuser, a symbolic revisiting of relations with sometimes deceased family members, a rehearsed dialogue with a spectator, interaction in an arts community, conversations with a potential buyer or indeed realized stories to one’s therapist – served as a catalyst for positive social transformation. The recovery narrative took people so far, and one can argue that this has limited longer-term political gain, speaking as it does in a language of deficit. But for these artists it was the art practice, one initially fortified by recovery principles – which then took them beyond the rhetoric. This move beyond pulled them towards a narrative of greater resistance and insight which in some cases led to direct activist involvement, or an allegiance with the many types of art practice nestled under the umbrella of participatory art (Bishop 2012). Parallel to this fledgling narrative identity, a vitalized more integrated self was experimenting with interpersonal manoeuvres and, in many cases, functioning more potently within wider social relations.

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This narrative identity emerged as an outcome of the self-analytic journey which appeared inescapable through a sustained art practice, even for those who had shunned or eschewed this element to begin with. Through this analytic process, which was often claimed to not have been verbally articulated to one’s self, but ‘carried’ in imagery and process, a more coherent, congruent narrative identity was felt to be forged. This was one that rejected not only psychiatric labels, but ‘post’ labels too: Outsider Artist, for example, was not considered by most to be an identity to be aspired to, and some equally shunned terms such as ‘survivor’. Art-making, it seems, was enabling the progressive and regressive autobiographic process that Ricoeur (1986) argues is part and parcel of narrative balancing.

Conclusion This chapter has offered a condensed overview of the salient findings of a number of studies. As such it has obvious limitations, among which would be the inconsistencies that are inevitable when constructing a corpus of data from different projects. And although each project took the same approach to interviewing, with close attention given to enabling free-associative biographic detail to emerge, in an approach that acknowledges, ‘The objects and events of experience are never free-standing but depend for their meaning on their context in the lifeworld’ (Ashworth 2016: 22), for reasons of brevity there is limited presented contextual detail of participants. A largely self-selecting sample too weakens and narrows the experience range; so the reader is urged, in her reading, to be mindful of the voices which are not presented because not heard, because silent, perhaps because silenced. The chapter and the research behind it maintain that for many artists art functions in their lives as a reparative means of unearthing and even addressing a ‘nagging sense of loss’, as Ciara put it, a ‘void’ as others named it, or a nameless lack. This echoes Wright’s (2009) sense of ‘original

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deficit’ which is often part of the experience of mental illness – but also, one might argue, part of being human. Art-making was experienced as reparative; it repaired old and sometimes unacknowledged or disavowed wounds. It repaired a sense of ‘I’ with which to forge a more meaningful ‘we’ in repaired or more ‘ease-full’ relationality. Many of these aims or experiences are indeed the staple of psychoanalytically informed art therapy; but these narrated experiences had been forged on one’s own, in a non-clinical, and non-expert-driven context, and this in itself may have been the active ingredient in achieving a more agentic and congruent narrative identity. Art-based practices have attracted increasing support in mental health settings in the past decade in particular. These offer a positive, recoveryoriented, sometimes radical approach that attends to the emotional, the social and even the spiritual needs of people on their path through illness and wellness. Yet the described benefits of making art and their domains cannot easily be disentangled. The temporal, spatial and subtle experience of making art bestows minutely varying benefits in different domains at different times and, indeed, at different points of a person’s recovery or illness. Repeated contact with the experience of making art nurtures it, accumulating over time to produce transformation (DeNora 2013) and so cannot usefully be gauged, substantively, through short-term interventions and snapshot evaluation. Art, its making and unmaking, consumption and displaying, is a complex activity to which we bring multifaceted selves with myriad intersections – and it is time that we put the ‘does it work?’ question behind us. Let us move on more creatively to exploring and watching the ‘how’. It is slow, patient, observant work; requiring the ability to suspend judgement; bear uncertainty and stay still amid the construction noise generated by the building of hierarchies of evidence (Clift 2012). A deliberate slowness and uncertainty in research processes are anathema to our current demands for academic quick-wins within a ‘hard evidence’ hungry culture. These demands are a poor response, aligned though they are with our short-term, non-deliberative

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approach to policymaking in a particular sociopolitical moment. Such an approach to research and policymaking demands rather than asks, exhorts rather than suggests and draws comfort from the imagined security of numbers as explanations for the opaque uncertainties of being human. In so doing, we are missing too, the nuanced brilliance of being human.

Part Three

Researching Participatory Arts: Practice-Orientated Case Studies

Section Introduction Nick Rowe and Matthew Reason

In this section of the book we hear from practitioners and practicebased researchers considering the challenges and frustrations they face in fulfilling the requirement to produce evidence for the impact of their practice. The projects they tell us about often exist precariously, depending on the next injection of funding in order to continue to deliver programmes or activities. As more and more projects call on grant-making trusts and funders for support, the demands for evidence only intensify. In this section, across nine short chapters, the authors discuss a variety of approaches to gathering and presenting this evidence. As they share their experiences and the challenges, it becomes possible to trace a number of recurring concerns, which include the following: 1. Epistemological: In terms of evidence, what status does a single person’s story or indeed a poem have? How can the subtleties and nuances of arts experience be communicated through impact reports? 2. Relational: How to sufficiently listen in order to catch the finegrained texture of arts engagement, and how to meaningfully engage participants who are often excluded from public discourses (such as those with disabilities, young people or in prison)? 3. Practical: With limited resources, how to measure change over time and conduct and fund robust research and evaluation? 4. Presentational: How to most persuasively present evidence of the work? Who is the audience and what communicates most effectively? One of the particular joys of the shorter contributions in the section is the invitation they present to engage with them as a collection – to read across the different accounts and find new connections. In this

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collection we have ordered them broadly by art form, with those working with music, for example, placed together. As readers you will trace and track your own interconnections according to your own interests and knowledge. Here, as an introduction to this section, we trace some of the insights that we find emerging from setting different chapters alongside each other. In discussions of evidence in the participatory arts, single case studies can be criticized for being anecdotal, yet Mary Cohen and Perry Miller’s vivid account that opens this section challenges this view as they explore the potential of creative activities in a prison setting. Their chapter illustrates the persuasive power of one person’s story; it captures what Scott Rankin terms ‘the poetics of social change’. Rankin’s own chapter is a polemic against the rhetoric of ‘social impact’ that can devalue the subtleties of arts engagement. Faced with the ephemeral indeterminacy of art practice, some art workers have, he argues, found safety in ‘strategies, target groups and impacts’. In a somewhat similar vein, as a storyteller, Catherine Heinemeyer explores the impossibility of predicting participants’ reception of her stories and argues that this inevitable indeterminacy calls for braver and more collaborative relationships characterized by careful listening to the stories participants wish to tell. Heinemeyer’s sensitivity to the ‘subjects’ of our evaluations and research is alluded to in Jennifer Gilbert’s chapter. She is concerned with the ways in which we can engage artists with disabilities in evaluation and is acutely aware that to do so can seem intrusive and present considerable challenges when artists do not have a means of verbal communication. She explores how ‘Outside In’ has addressed these challenges and offers insights from those experiences. It often proves impossible for participatory arts practitioners to conduct follow-up evaluations that could detect any sustained changes. They do not usually have the resources or funding to be able to conduct such a study. Matthew Hahn, Lungile Dlamini and Marius Botha describe practical challenges in gathering evidence for a theatre project raising issues of human rights in South Africa. In their work they aim to

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change behaviours in relation to human rights and to celebrate cultural differences; however, it is enormously difficult to prove any long-term behaviour or attitudinal change beyond the initial positive reception of the work. It has proved very difficult to surmount the practical difficulties and financial challenges of tracing participants after the event has taken place. Despite the challenges and the problems of engaging people in meaningful evaluations, Linda Boyles in her chapter encourages us not to give up trying. She takes an overarching view of the possible ways to gather evidence of participatory arts practice. Drawing on her experience in the field she discusses a range of qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches. In our Introduction to this book, we refer to the legal concept of compelling evidence being comprised of a cord made up of many strands and we argue that this is a valuable way forward. Mixed-methods approaches are one way in which to thicken the cord of evidence. Christine Bates and Liz Mellor explore the experiences and perspectives of people who use mental health services engaging in music classes. They employ a range of approaches to achieve this, noting that the approach elicited a rich variety of responses. Natalie Russo, Melissa Luke, Kevin Heffernan, Luis Columna and Elizabeth Ingram present some of the evidence for the impact of their theatre project, All Star Cast, through stories and poems. ‘Healing is like a fire / That slowly purifies’, writes Laurie, a participant in the project. They argue for the ‘evidential status’ of such a response to their work. In Chapter 16, we consider the traditions of performative social sciences and arts-based research that can provide a robust means of strengthening the persuasive power of such personal responses. To a considerable extent, these are as much questions of presentation as of ‘validity’. Paul Sutton encourages participatory arts practitioners to embrace the digital revolution and find the means of presenting the detail of practice through such means as data visualizations of evidence and online appreciative enquiry approaches. The work of C&T suggests new digital tools for evaluating our work alongside participants, even when separated by considerable distances.

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We anticipate that readers with experience of working in participatory arts practice will find resonances and moments of recognition across the different chapters presented here. The epistemological, relational, practical and presentational issues they raise echo much of what has come before in this book and, as we did in the Introduction, we invite readers to weave together the strands, the perspectives, the knowledge and the evidence over the course of the collection. What is certain is that the creativity and dedication with which these questions are being actively addressed is considerable.

13

‘Dear Younger Me’: Writing, Songwriting and Choral Singing while Incarcerated as a Means to Build Identities and Bridge Communities Mary L. Cohen and Perry Miller

This chapter presents a case study of an adult male’s reflection upon his participation in a writers’ workshop, a songwriters’ workshop and two different combined inmate-volunteer choirs while he was incarcerated at two different prisons. Taking the form of an edited interview, it examines how those experiences influenced his time behind bars and his social support system after incarceration. The title of the chapter comes from an original song he wrote while incarcerated – titled ‘Dear Younger Me’ – in response to the prompt to write a message to himself as a younger person. What advice would you give yourself? The lyrics to Verse 4 are: The truth is always best, Even when you feel hard-pressed, Ask for help when you need it most, No matter what you’ve got, don’t boast, Always claim your blame, Don’t unload on someone’s name, Send hatred quickly on its way, it kills you if you let it stay. (Perry Miller 2011)

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How did you hear about the Oakdale Choir? I arrived at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center (IMCC), commonly known as Oakdale Prison, in November of 2008 to begin a fifteen-year sentence for a sex crime. This was my second time in prison. I was incarcerated for a drug offence from November of 2000 to September of 2003. This second incarceration was going to last longer because of the nature of the offence. I mention this only because being a sex offender is the lowest of the low in the prison hierarchy, and provides a great deal of motivation to fit in with the rest of prison society. Participation in certain activities, the choir included, is considered ‘gay’ and not worthy of respect from the so-called ‘hardcore’ criminals, which make up the larger part of the population at any correctional institution. For quite some time, I kept my status as a sex offender private and was determined not to do anything that would cause others to suspect that I was anything other than a career drug dealer, a reputation that I brought with me both from ‘the street’ and my first incarceration. I first heard about the choir from one of my cellmates. He was very enthusiastic and, when he found out through conversation that I had a fair amount of singing experience, he urged me repeatedly to join. My response was typical for a drug offender and I poked mild fun at him, suggesting that the only reason he was there was to look at the female volunteers. His enthusiasm was unabated, however, and he continued to press for me to join the choir. What I didn’t know at that point was that he had already spoken to Dr Cohen about me and that she was encouraging his efforts to recruit me into the Oakdale Community Choir. In August 2009 I joined another of IMCC’s programmes, the Writers’ Workshop, under the supervision of University of Iowa professor, Mary Trachsel. This activity seemed to be more acceptable to the general population, and I became a charter member of the workshop. I was beginning to write again: prose, poetry and what could easily be considered song lyrics. Then I found out that Trachsel was in the choir, and when she learnt about my singing background, she urged me to join.

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As the spring concert of 2010 drew closer, my roommate and Trachsel pleaded with me to attend the performance. My resolve to stay clear of the choir began to weaken, and on the night of the concert, I found myself sitting in the IMCC gym, perched nervously on the edge of a folding chair, waiting for the music to begin. What I saw that night was a revelation. The choir was good! Here was a large group of individuals, much larger than I had expected, standing on stage (so to speak) and smiling back at their captive audience like there was nowhere on earth that they’d rather be. And the music was excellent. Somehow Dr Cohen had managed to take this mixed group of volunteers and this ragtag bunch of inmates and turn them into a real singing group. And it was clear from the attitudes of the volunteers that there was no stigma attached to them being around these inmates; they showed no misgivings and interacted freely with all the men from the prison. I left the gym that night with a different view of the choir, and though I still did not join, my mind had already taken a big step in that direction. Shortly after the concert, it was announced that Cohen was starting a songwriters’ workshop during the choir’s 2010 summer break. Deeming this a more acceptable forum and a place where I might showcase some of the lyrics I had been working on, I decided to join. By the end of the summer, Dr Cohen had set some of those lyrics to music and urged me to allow the choir to perform the song, ‘Tapestry’, at the winter concert. Of course the song would sound so much better if I sang it with the choir. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Throwing caution to the wind, I joined the Oakdale Community Choir.

Describe your initial experiences with the choir On my first night with the choir I was very nervous. I remember little of my introduction to the volunteers, and the following day, I remembered none of their names. But all of them treated me with a great deal of

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courtesy and respect, and I sensed the sincerity behind their words, a sincerity that is lacking in normal inmate interactions. I certainly remember the music, however. The music was challenging: serious pieces in four-part harmony, presenting me with the need to relearn how not to sing the melody, and how to blend my voice with others in order to produce a uniform sound.

What memories stick out strongest with respect to the choir? The concerts were always a high point where we were allowed to let the prison administrators, outside visitors and the inmates see how far we’d come over a few months. It was an opportunity to present material that I did not have any other venue for doing so. Most of the fondest memories revolved around the outside singers and the fellowship and friendship I shared with them. Their presence, heartfelt love and care were amazing and tangible. I was overwhelmed by the sense that not only could I do something worthwhile, but that I could have approval from people outside of prison. I always like the beginnings when we sang our opening song, and dreaded the endings when we would have to go back to the population and the volunteers left.

What memories stick out strongest with respect to the songwriters’ workshop? My main memory of the songwriters’ workshop was the great energy level and enthusiasm in the room. Everyone was always so upbeat. Dr Cohen and other facilitators exemplified the best of what it is to write music in a cooperative setting. I wrote a number of songs that might never have been produced and additional lyrics that have not been set to music. Because of all the encouragement, I became more prolific at writing and broadminded in my topics. And I also became more knowledgeable about rhythms and how they translate

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poetically to the written word. It was instrumental in helping me rebuild a sense of identity. Without that inspiration, without that care and concern, I probably would not have flourished as much as I did in the prison setting.

What memories stick out strongest with respect to the writers’ workshop? The Oakdale Writers’ Workshop was one of the best uses of my time from my period of incarceration. I renewed a love for the written word and a desire to produce things that invoked emotions in others. The non-critical setting enabled me and others to write on any topic that concerned us without fear of criticism. The feedback from writers was valuable along with their encouragement to keep sharpening our skills. It was always interesting to hear what others were writing and depending on the genre, I tried to link what they were writing with what I knew of the person. I learnt a great deal about myself and others from the writers’ workshop. I reread what they wrote and compared that with what I knew about the person. It was interesting to know some of their motivations for their pieces. Thinking about the people I know at Oakdale, the men who were involved in social programmes are the ones that I think will make it when they are out. If they are unable to get involved with other people when given a huge amount of free time, how will they connect with others when they are released into society?

Describe your experiences with the Mount Pleasant Prison Choir When I arrived at Mount Pleasant Prison in November of 2011, I was appalled to find a lack of social programmes available to inmates – no choir, no writers’ workshop, no songwriters’ workshop, no classes presented by volunteers. There was no job club or any efforts along

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those lines to prepare inmates for a job search when they left prison. An inmate who had a positive experience at the Hubub Job Club at Oakdale and I co-founded the ICAN career club at Mount Pleasant. With a little help from the administration, we taught a couple a dozen inmates how to prepare a job. We wrote for materials and utilized every resource in the library to continue the programme that we thought was vital. In the fall of 2013, I saw a notice that a choir was starting. I was one of the first ones in line. Although we were slow getting started, the singing under the direction of Heather Herschberger steadily improved. Although some men dropped out, a considerable group performed at the first concert in the spring of 2014. Because I had spent so much time with the Oakdale Choir, I helped facilitate the Mount Pleasant choir as it began and was amazed by the change that came over the men who became involved in the choir. The people who rarely smiled before went around beaming. And people who rarely conversed went around humming tunes we learnt in the choir. Although there were exceptions, some of the men who were constantly in trouble before the choir started seemed to have more of an incentive to stay out of trouble so they could remain active with the choir and attend the practices. Just before the second performance of the choir, I was diagnosed with colon cancer, and transferred back to Oakdale to a medical unit. I was unable to attend the concert at Mount Pleasant where they performed a song that I wrote called ‘Seeds of Peace’ but I did get to hear it later on CD. My participation with the choirs slowed at first because of my disease and second because of my release and my inability to get back into the prison as a volunteer. The people that I met in the choir remained steadfast in their support of me and my music. They offered many opportunities for food, fellowship and fun now that I had my freedom. I participated for a short time in the Celebration Community Choir in Kalona, Iowa. This came about through volunteers whom I met through the Oakdale and Mount Pleasant choirs.

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What other thoughts do you have about your experiences in these arts-based programmes while incarcerated? During the time of my incarceration, the arts-based programmes provided the most support and opportunity of anything that was offered in the prison system. They allowed me to keep busy doing things that were positive with people who were headed in the right direction. At the same time, they were like a beacon of light on the horizon. I knew that these groups were going to be very important to me when I would be released. I have talked to others who think these programmes should be mandatory, but I think that would be counterproductive. The willingness to reach out to a group of people is more important than being forced to participate in a programme you are not interested in. Without these programmes, little hope exists for people who are incarcerated. It is sad that many programmes are offered at one institution and few or none at others. I think it is important that the people note the benefit of these programmes in reducing recidivism and bringing solid citizens into the community. From Mary Cohen: When Perry came back to Oakdale for medical treatment, he attended a choir rehearsal on 28 October 2014. I recall that he shared, in tears, with the whole group how the choir experiences were the most meaningful and positive parts of his incarceration. Intellectual, emotional and relational experiences are vital for people transitioning from prison to society, and are core aspects of arts activities. In Miller’s life, choral singing, songwriting and writing while he was in prison replaced negative behaviours with positive qualities, and changed his life. After release, he sang in the Celebration Community Choir and continued contact with outside singers who provided great emotional and spiritual support as his health declined. In November 2015, Miller died. His friends from choir sang at his funeral.

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Exploring the Perceived Benefits of Shared Musical Experience Christine Bates and Liz Mellor

This chapter reports on the challenges that faced us as researchers in examining the benefits of shared musical experience for people who use mental health services. Our specific context is Converge, a partnership between York St John University (YSJU) and mental health service providers in the York region of the UK. Converge offers a range of educational courses for mental health service users, including music, which take place on the university campus. At the time of writing, the benefit of shared musical experience is attracting increasing media and research interest (Clift et al. 2016; Varvarigou et al. 2016), begging the question of how benefit might be evidenced. In this chapter we explore the challenges of doing this with specific reference to research in music, social context and mental health. We describe the research project, drawing out challenges for the design and research process and present key examples to illustrate how some of these challenges may have been overcome.

Mapping the ground: Setting out the challenges for research Given the diversity of the claims for the benefit to mental health and well-being of shared musical experience our main challenge was how to position the study and what specifically to investigate. These claims are

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made from a range of perspectives (e.g. anthropology, ethnomusicology, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, music education, music therapy, community music and community music therapy), and this diversity of approaches complicates the picture. There are many tensions in mapping the ‘what’, ‘where’ and the ‘how’ of researching shared musical experience. In research terms, these tensions need to consider what methods and findings might be credible and of value to stakeholders who in this case comprise the UK’s National Health Service and YSJU, as well as the participants themselves. In musical terms, tensions are situated between how to measure a musically specific event (e.g. listening to a song, composing to a brief), while at the same time capturing the richness of the musical process. In personal terms, tensions are situated between pinpointing significant and meaningful in-themoment musical experiences, while at the same time contributing an understanding of the shared values and impact of the experience to a specific group over time. Furthermore, in mapping the ground, Clift (2012) draws attention to how quantitative clinical evidence is culturally privileged in the field of arts and mental health and calls for further qualitative research studies in non-clinical settings to assess the value of the impact of the creative arts for participants and professionals. Crucial here is the need for research to develop appropriate conceptual and ethical frameworks which support claims for music in health within a social model. Taking into account the elusive aspects of music making as both a space and a process is also important in mapping the ground. DeNora highlights the value of the ‘socio-musical’ space that is the collective and collaborative musical activity, claiming that it creates an arena where ‘the traceable outward manifestations of an otherwise inaccessible process’ are displayed (DeNora 2013: 272). Benzon (2001), DeNora (2000) and Ansdell and Pavlicevic (2005) propose musical communication as an enabler of a felt-sense of existence in any one moment, space or time. For ourselves, the challenge was to ensure the research framework allowed for the felt-sense of music in an educational setting to emerge and be captured.

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Research design In addressing the challenges set out above, a small-scale study comprising mixed methods within a qualitative paradigm was designed to address the research brief. Henley’s Activity System (2012), developed after Engeström’s Activity Theory (1999) and applied in music by Welch (2011), underpins the research design (see Mellor, Bates and Bonshor 2016). The activity system sets out a research framework where participatory music making is recognized as social action, acknowledging the combined potential of all the group members as a community of musical peers to effect change. This supports an understanding of how individuals perceive themselves and how they might initiate personal change or come to reidentify themselves, not only at an individual level (i.e. an individual working towards an individual musical goal/object), but within the social context of the group working towards group goals in music. Our key research question was, ‘Do Converge music courses benefit students and if so, in what way(s)?’ The subsidiary research questions of interest here were: 1. How is the term ‘benefit’ understood by those facilitating the music courses? 2. What benefits, if any, are generic across music courses? 3. What benefits, if any, are specific to particular music activities/ types of musical engagement? 4. Are there memorable and or significant moments for facilitators and participants in Converge music courses? 5. What characterizes these moments? 6. To what extent can the research process and outcomes be mapped within Activity Theory? 7. What has changed for those involved in the Converge music courses/research process? To ensure that there was scope to consider social action (fundamental to the activity system) as well as individual perspectives, the ‘sample’ group included all perspectives: Converge music facilitators (university

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staff and graduates), undergraduate music students and Converge music students from a range of courses comprising of musical activities. The research was undertaken across one academic semester (2015), and included three phases of data collection. In Phase 1 a focus group for Converge music facilitators was recorded and transcribed in order to elicit responses which referred to their perceived understandings benefit. Phase 2 gave Converge music students and facilitators the opportunity to reflect upon significant incidents and memorable moments at the end of each session. In Phase 3 a set of semi-structured interviews was carried out with a self-selecting sample of Converge music students and facilitators. The design of the research overcame specific challenges in order to make the research practicable in a university educational setting, especially in Phase 2 where it was important that the research was inclusive for those taking part and where reflections on sessions were integrated into teaching sessions. For example, a research tool was developed to capture memorable moments from sessions, adapted from a reflective ‘quilting’ process by Crabtree and Miller (1999). This consisted of an octagon-shaped pro-forma (see Figure 14.1). Participants were invited to submit a memorable moment anonymously at the end of sessions. To make comparisons possible between the University student group and the Converge student group, octagons were printed in two different colours. The tick boxes were replicated as part of the facilitators’ pro-forma in order to make possible a comparative analysis between participants and facilitators.

The findings Each of the three phases of research yielded a rich set of responses. From the data analysis across each of the three phases, key themes were identified to show a range of benefits of shared music making for Converge music students. The two overarching categories of benefit which emerged were: (i) psychosocial benefits, which included responses referring to changes

A memorable moment in the CONVERGE MUSIC SESSION TODAY was:

Please describe your memorable moment in more detail

Please turn over and complete

Figure 14.1 Converge research project: Data set 2b: Research tool.

Applied Practice

STUDENT

How did you experience your memorable moment? (please tick as applicable, you can tick more than one) Singing Listening to music Playing an instrument Learning about music Fealing something Creating your own music Remembering something Other Learning from others

CONVERGE

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CONVERGE STUDENT

Thank you

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in attitude, social identity, positive attributes and positive affect; and (ii) musical learning, which included responses referring to aspects of the music experience, the facilitation of sessions and the values in practice. Of particular interest was how the emergent themes were elaborated and affirmed within and across different Converge music courses. For example, Toby (Converge facilitator, Music Development) responds: ‘The Converge students are quite in on themselves and then throughout the weeks they start to open up and start to laugh more, they start to smile more.’ It is elaborated by Debs (Converge facilitator, Music Discovery), who remembers, ‘A Converge music student came in, in a very quiet withdrawn way clutching a plastic bag with a CD in. … After a little smile he said “I want to play this.” … We put it on … and his eyes changed, his demeanour changed and he was present in the room.’ Both responses suggest a psychosocial benefit in each case. The reflective research tools developed in Phase 2 resulted in a rich set of data where the interrelationship of the data (analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively) evidenced the particular value of the creative processes of collective music making. For example, Figure 14.2 illustrates the findings for the Converge music students on the Converge Music Improvisation course showing the widest range and most equally distributed responses, memorable for participants. The semi-structured interviews at Phase 3 deepen and elaborate the key themes and suggest an increasing level of interrelation between the psychosocial benefits, the music educational benefits and the transforming benefits of developing creative musical identities. For example, Sam, a Converge music student, reflects on his experience within the singing group which reveals his emerging new identity as a performing musician. This is evidenced by his reference to his musical learning, including the various singing techniques that have been learnt in sessions and the value of these for a successful performance. You learn new breathing techniques, about voice exercises … it makes you more aware of where your voice comes from, and … over the couple of years I’ve been doing it – it’s made my voice stronger.

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Learning from others

Playing an instrument Creating your own music

Feeling something

Remembering something

Learning about music

Listening to music

Figure 14.2 The distribution of responses by Converge music students in improvisation.

In terms of future directions it becomes evident that this participant now identifies as an aspirational performer wanting to give his best musical performance. A further interview with a Converge music student shows the high value placed on the musical learning through developing guitar technique, ‘and with the guitar, I’ve learnt a heck of a lot … like, listening to the sound and expression’. One further interview provides a personal and moving account of how the debilitations of mental illness had stripped away one participant’s confidence as a musician and how Converge had enabled a route towards retrieving her musical identity. Positive changes have taken place.

Discussion and conclusion The Converge Music Research Project demonstrates not only that Converge music courses benefit the participants in this study, but

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also the range of benefits within the categories of (i) psychosocial and (ii) musical learning. What the research offers to the field is a deeper understanding of specific musical benefits and the increased social capital afforded by shared musical experience, especially for music students enrolled on courses through mental health. The research set out to elicit three sets of data and each point of data collection, rich in itself, when triangulated could affirm and support the claim for benefit across the research as a whole. Particularly in Phase 2, the relationship between a quantitative analysis and a qualitative analysis served to evidence comparative accountability across five Converge music courses without losing the richness of personal responses which met a key challenge set out above. The full scope of the data cannot be represented within this chapter; however, the findings across the data as a whole substantiate the claim that participatory music making within a social and educational model initiates and supports individual change. Research offers a glimpse of how the benefits of shared musical experience can create a world where positive self-identity can be developed. It is from the point of view of music facilitators, singers, instrumentalists, performers, improvisers, composers and active listeners that the respective voices were heard. As Rita says: It’s always good to think about the journey through Converge, and I’ve absolutely no doubt that my recovery wouldn’t have been so smooth without Converge existing, both in terms of the music, and in terms of some contact with an academic environment. So I’ve been lucky, you know, that it existed. Very lucky indeed.

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The Wisdom of Crowds: Applied Theatre, Social Media and Data Visualization Paul Sutton

In 2016 the digital age was driven by data. The period of the internet revolutionizing publishing is over. The transformational powers of social media are now settling into the rhythms of our daily lives. However, the possibilities offered by the data from our interactions, preferences and searches are yet to be fully revealed. For example, in the week that I write Google has announced its latest digital artificial intelligence (AI) tool set to rival Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. Google Assistant will apparently leapfrog these AI systems, drawing on the 18 billion (and rising) interactions we have made with the search giant, to anticipate our needs in the workplace and at home, from adjusting our central heating, guiding us to our car in the local multistorey or, in a conversational tone, telling us if it will be warmer than 25 degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5 pm on the day after tomorrow. By the time these words are finally distributed to you by the technology pioneered by Guttenberg, these prophecies will probably seem antique. Theatre has been slow to embrace this digital revolution. Arts Council England’s (ACE) annual survey of digital trends shows that adoption of these technologies in the arts has stalled, with those ranking technology as either essential or important falling by 2 per cent (NESTA/AHRC/ Arts Council England: Digital Culture 2015). More specifically, the use of technologies as assessment tools in the arts is a largely unknown quantity. While arts education organizations, Theatre-in-Education (TiE) companies and facilitators are increasingly more familiar with

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the need to measure impact than their box-office-driven counterparts, there remains an emphasis on surveys and questionnaires, neither being exceptional tools to evaluate the impact of arts practices on individual and class learning. For a sector hard-pressed for resources, investment in digital tools and online systems is a low priority, often seen as an overly complex way of understanding the value of work that is essentially human and child centred. This is not the case for applied theatre company C&T. Founded in 1988 as the TiE company for Worcestershire in the rural West Midlands of England, C&T (then Collar and TiE) focused its efforts on making participatory theatre centred on localized experiences, relevant to particular geographic interests and curriculum concerns. The C&T of 2016 models a different form of applied theatre practice, while still holding true to the values and methodologies that have always underpinned its drama practices with children and young people.

C&T and Networked Theatre C&T’s practice embraces digital technology, working through theatre to discover productive synergies with a range of online tools and platforms. From video games to social media, citizen journalism to digital mapping, augmented reality to motion tracking, C&T seeks to find playful ways of bringing the resources of the digital age to bear on applied theatre practices. These interests mean that C&T has been able to shape a new model of applied theatre making which enables the company to simultaneously work in multiple locations, with diverse cultures and demographics. C&T calls this approach Networked Theatre: building meaningful engagement around common themes and ideas but rooted in local circumstances and needs. Such collaborations can typically involve young people from locations such as New York City, Nairobi, Berlin or C&T’s home in Worcester, UK. Examples of this practice are well documented (Freebody and Finneran 2016; Anderson, Cameron and Sutton 2014). However, little scrutiny has been given to the role of technology in evaluating this work.

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This was largely due to the fact that the company had done little to apply themselves to this particular role or need. There was one preoccupying reason for this. In common with much applied or educational theatre, C&T’s evaluative work addressed bespoke interests. Different projects were funded by different agencies or charities, each with disparate evaluative requirements. A standardized system would not easily capture these diverse assessment needs. Similarly, each C&T partner school would bring different curriculum or pastoral priorities to the material under scrutiny and would consequently feel better placed to undertake student evaluations themselves. For example, one school proudly asserted that they were ‘known for their data’ and that C&T would be unlikely to match their internal systems that could track ‘an individual student to half a grade point’. In 2015, however, C&T began work on developing a social media platform which could exist in harmony with the strategies and methodologies required by these external partners or agents. The company wanted to track the dialogic journeys of participants engaged in C&T’s projects and programmes, rather than the increasing preoccupation of agencies with final outcomes. C&T’s Networked Theatre collaborations usually evolve over a period of months as the processes of mediated research, exchange and creative development across distance and time zones require a durational approach rather than short, intensive activities. A tool that could evidence not only the qualitative nature of such educative journeys but also offer data-driven representations of this work could attend to both ends of the evaluation process.

Open Space Technology For some time C&T had used Open Space Technology (OST) as a tool for public and participant consultation. Developed by Harrison Owen for debating, agenda setting and problem-solving, OST is

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effective in situations where a diverse group of people must deal with complex and potentially conflicting material in innovative and productive ways. It is particularly powerful when nobody knows the answer and the ongoing participation of a number of people is required to deal with the questions. (Owen 2008: 15)

Most regularly associated with the un-conferencing movement, an OST event follows a fixed structure, rules and conventions. Typically implemented over two days, an OST event is provoked by an initial ‘Invitation’: an open question which draws participants into a productive relationship with commonly held sets of issues or challenges. When all the participants are gathered in a room, the invitation is opened up for fragmentation, with delegates proposing a number of fractal subquestions or themes. Over the subsequent two days participants rotate through these topics, identifying areas where their interests or expertise can be used productively. Rules such as ‘The Law of Two Feet’ impose liberating, productive constraints on the methodology, engaging participants in a fluid, social, problemsolving dynamic. This is of course an oversimplification of a nuanced and sophisticated model. In common with theatre, the best way to understand OST is to see it in action. In the UK the methodology has been modelled annually by Phelim McDermott and Improbable Theatre’s Devoted and Disgruntled Open Space events that regularly problematize the topical challenges of the theatre and arts sectors, with up to 600 practitioners attending. Having used OST in its work in schools to map, track and evaluate Networked Theatre collaborations (e.g. enabling students to develop editorial values for their drama-based citizen journalism work as part of our livingnewspaper.net docudrama project), it was a logical progression to develop a web-based version of the system. Wisdomofcrowds.info is the resulting website now being used across a range of C&T collaborations and beyond.

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Wisdom of Crowds First, C&T creates a debate on the website, mirroring the values and expectations of an OST invitation. Next, participants are invited to join this debate through their unique email address. They create a profile on the site and are then free to pose questions or topics that cascade from the framing debate question. Finally, the debate goes live and participants can move between questions, contributing ideas, thinking or creative materials. Contributions are posted in tweet-like messages (no more than 140 characters), but these can be embedded with web links, images, video or other media. Debates can last days or weeks. So, for example, in 2016 C&T created a Networked Theatre collaboration between young people with learning disabilities in a special school in Queens, New York City, and a counterpart school in Wem, a rural market town in Shropshire, UK. Over three months students in both settings used first-person video gaming techniques as tools for deconstructing social challenges they faced in their local communities, where their disabilities were not always respected or supported. In parallel to the project activities, wisdomofcrowds.info was available to students to critically reflect on the project process: identifying the challenging social situations they faced (and comparing these issues across the 3,000 miles that separated them), dramatically representing and sharing these through Image Theatre methods or Tableau Vivant captured on smartphones. The use of the social media form and the website architecture also helped to create notions of distance, allowing participants to give more objective, weighted feedback to their peers. As the project drew to a close new topics were proposed, enabling the group to frame and debate evaluative questions that would not have been apparent at the outset of a traditional paperdriven benchmarking process, but which are more easily embodied in the fluid structures of the Wisdom of Crowds methodology and website. Beyond these reflective commentaries, the site was also able to offer a collective analysis of the project process through the use of

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data visualization techniques. Such approaches are common in the fields of business and commerce where ‘shapes and diagrams travel … those of us in global businesses need our thinking to be able to work across borders and there lies the values of visuals’ (De Groose 2015: ix). Wisdomofcrowds.info attempts to transpose these values to applied theatre practices, generating real-time graphic sequences of expanding and contracting circles, reflecting the fluctuations of content, interest and conclusions of a particular debate. As interest in particular themes or issues grows, so the data visualizations expand and contract to reflect these priorities, providing tangible quantitative evidence of a subjective qualitative debate. Each new Wisdom of Crowds debate resets this calibration, allowing for new questions, ethical dilemmas or sets of opinions to be weighted to their own distinct characteristics. In many ways these data visualizations are a graphic representation of the flow of opinion evident in any OST event: people move between groups, discussions expand and contract, and volume levels rise and fall. This means that the evaluator can observe different qualities and characteristics of the reflective process, gaining qualitative insights from quantitative data. For example, the Wisdom of Crowds website

Figure 15.1 Wisdom of Crowds. C&T data visualization by Paul Sutton.

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can replay the flow of the evaluative debate, enabling the user to see messages and comments as they were posted in real time. This means you can observe the patterns of discussion, which provocations sparked most interest, where clusters of debate are focused and, thereby, interpret this flow in terms of engagement, controversy or popularity. It is possible to see strings of messages from a variety of participants posted in quick succession, indicating the topic has provoked participants to engage. Similarly, when contributions pose questions, they are more likely to open up debate, creating spikes in the replay, while statements or judgements ‘flatten’ contributions as they are generally less about social discourse and more about categoric positions. Ultimately it is the evaluator or practitioners who have to interpret this flow of data. An understanding of the initial theatre practice is usually essential, as context and expositionary information are vital components to the debate. However, the real-time flow of these messages alongside the shifting data visualization provides a different set of indictors from traditional paper-based documentation. Wisdom of Crowds attempts to encode these performative qualities in a digital format, offering the applied theatre practitioner new tools for evaluating their work alongside participants, particularly if those participants are separated by thousands of miles.

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A Community-based Theatre Arts Programme for Adults with Disabilities: Finding Evidence through Research, Observation and Individual Transformation Natalie Russo, Melissa Luke, Kevin Heffernan, Luis Columna and Elizabeth Ingram

There are few opportunities for adults with developmental, physical and psychiatric difficulties to immerse themselves in meaningful opportunities for growth. This is particularly the case within our context of the United States, where it was only in 1999 that the US Supreme Court ruled that states were required to provide communitybased services for people with psychiatric disabilities. One area that has shown promise in improving self-empowerment and engagement is theatre, and this chapter presents a case study of the All Star CAST (ASC): a community-based theatre programme that engages adult actors with disabilities and university drama student facilitators in a year-long community-based theatre art group. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the ASC and the outcomes of a research programme that was developed to evaluate its efficacy. Though the group-level data suggest that the ASC is an effective intervention with physical and social benefits, the impact is more clearly noted in the qualitative changes in both the student facilitators and the actors. We hope this chapter serves as a call to arms to programme developers and funding bodies alike to understand and

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support the transformative experience that community theatre (CT) and the arts can provide.

All Star CAST Over twenty years ago, Elizabeth Ingram of Syracuse University’s (USA) drama department, began the ASC to give undergraduate drama students the experience of working with adult actors with disabilities within a CT context. The mission of the ASC is to provide a safe, nonjudgemental space in which actors and student facilitators can explore their creativity through play. The group explores improvisation work to encourage communication, group awareness, sensitivity, confidence and personal affirmation. This is a group where labels are not important, and where the individuals can be seen and heard for who they are. As persons with psychiatric, intellectual and physical disabilities enjoy few opportunities to develop peer interaction (Cowie and Hutson 2005), to pursue their artistic interests without caregiver intrusion (Heller, Rowitz and Farber 1992), this kind of intervention remains far too rare. Each week, the student facilitators and actors come together for two hours to work on vocal, movement and acting exercises to strengthen their bodies and voices and to explore freedom of breath, expression and range. Participants engage with real-life material and experiences, and experiment within the peer group (Dewey 1969). The workshops incorporate physical and psychosocial warm-ups before delving into more traditional voice and physical theatre exercises, followed by a closing activity. The sixteen-week semester concludes with a semiimprovised theatre performance that is open to friends and family, as well as community members. The inclusive environment used in the ASC is designed for participants to experience the joy of learning through transformative artistic experience. The emphasis is on the creative process (Bruhn 2005), rather than the final product, giving both student facilitators and adult actors an opportunity to experiment as they build autonomy, relatedness and confidence in their acting skills.

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Empirical evidence for the value of community theatre Drama broadly, and CT in particular, have traditionally been conceptualized as a ‘life long experience rather than being a specific intervention’ (Slade 1998). Although the models of CT vary (Bernardi 2009), CT shows promise for people with disabilities (Walsh, Kosidoy and Swanson 1991) as an agent of social change (Taylor 2003; Thompson 2003). De Certeau (1984) postulated that CT can change the environment and the individual, while it has also been proposed that within CT the dramatic arts increase the self-advocacy and empowerment of people with disabilities (Peters 2000a, 2000b). Schnapp and Olsen (2003) allege that the communication and group experience involved in CT are fundamental to the development of self-advocacy. Others have implicated concepts such as ‘personal engagement’ as encouraging ‘effective and appropriate emotional responses in social interaction’ (Jindale-Snape and Vettraino 2007: 107). The limited research suggests that training in the arts improves social function among individuals with autism (Corbett et al. 2015) and improves memory, creativity, problem-solving and quality of life in the elderly (Noice, Noice and Staines 2011). These findings indicate that CT and the arts might provide an alternative path to supporting success, among persons with disabilities. In spite of this, few programmes exist, and little funding is available to determine the efficacy of theatre programmes on the shortand long-term outcomes of adults with psychiatric or developmental disorders. Drama and CT appear to be conceived by funding bodies as ‘a nice thing to do’ rather than a potential agent of social change. In 2011, several researchers at Syracuse University came together to assess the benefits of the ASC for the student facilitators, the actors and their families across broad areas of functioning. These included changes in student facilitators’ openness to, and appreciation for, the abilities of individuals with physical, psychiatric and developmental disorders, and changes in the physical health, and social and emotional well-being of the actors. The research utilized both qualitative and quantitative measures both prior to and after the intervention, in order to assess for

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change. This was a challenging endeavour as the researchers were blind to diagnosis, had limited time and resources, and wanted to intrude as little as possible on the group. This lack of ‘experimental control,’ is a challenge faced by many applied researchers but our quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that participating in the ASC led to positive changes in all of the stakeholders, including parents. For the actors themselves, we found that there were important quantitative changes in physical and social functioning, including increases in physical activity, decreases in blood pressure (Nunemacher et al. 2015) and increases in perceived social support (Robles et al. 2013) between the beginning and the end of their ASC participation. Further, actors and their parents reported that the ASC positively impacted actors’ communication skills, self-confidence and sense of personal well-being. Although the actors’ parents do not participate directly in the ASC, many reported an increased sense of community and interpersonal validation resulting from their adult child’s involvement. Qualitative findings suggest that the student facilitators changed the language that they used to describe the ASC, moving away from the us–them language to a more inclusive ‘we’ perspective, supporting the notion that participation in the ASC led to a more open and accepting view of disability and group identity. One example, of many, that illustrates this fundamental attitudinal change was: I began to recognize the idea that I wasn’t helping someone by trying to get them to act the way mainstream society expects, and that maybe I need to work harder to understand where they are coming from. This idea shook me to my very core, because all of my beliefs about disability were tested.

This remark, and others like it, suggests that even among wellmeaning students who volunteer their time to this work, the language of stigma and bias is present at the outset, but that this language, and therefore attitudes, undergo transformation through engagement and participating in the ASC. Since the experience of stigma decreases quality of life (e.g. Corrigan, Watson and Barr 2006), transforming the

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perceptions of those who work with disabled groups can go a long way in reducing the internalization of stigma and its negative consequences.

Individual transformations Though the findings from our work suggest group-level improvements for the stakeholders involved, they do not tell the whole story of the transformative experience that can occur at the individual level for the actors themselves, which is impossible to capture in the ‘group means’ that so often define empirical research. These transformations, by their very individual nature, are best captured through observation and anecdotes. One example of this might be the story of Seth, who arrived at the ASC with his coat buttoned up, lunch box in hand. He sat away from the group and did not speak to any actors or facilitators, despite their efforts to engage him. On the second week of class, the group leader sat near him, a little way away. On Week 3, she sat a little bit closer. On Week 4, they sat side by side, whispering to one another. Meanwhile, the dance party raucously ensued 15 feet away. On Week 5, instead of coaxing Seth to join the group, the group came to him, danced around him, but never forced him to join. As the weeks went by, Seth visibly relaxed. He put down his lunchbox and unbuttoned his coat. Every week, the group closed with the following chant: I take from the earth all that I need And bring it into me. I take from the heavens all that I need And bring it into me. And when I have it inside me I give it away.

Movements accompany this chant, and, week by week, Seth joined in these with the group. During the end-of-semester show, in front of families and friends, Seth led the chant, both vocally and in movement. The group had joined him, with no expectations about what he would

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do, or who he would be, and Seth’s comfort, confidence and desire to be with the group allowed him to overcome whatever had caused his initial retreat. Our closing example is ‘My Self Portrait’, a poem written by the catalyst for the ASC, and its first member, Becci Ingram: I have a dream that can open your eyes I believe that a dream never dies. I dream of a world where all people can be free, Overweight people, and gay people, and people like me. I am a King sitting on my throne, All people like me have Down Syndrome. If you have people picking on you Oh, what can you do? Oh, what can you do? So what if you’re overweight or if you are gay, Just turn away, just turn away. If that person wants a fight You can just hold on tight. If they start to call you names You will not play their silly games. We are the people that can fight back By leaving those other people on that same track. We are the people of a different kind We learn to let those other people unwind. It doesn’t matter if you’re white or black Teach those people to change or they need never come back. But say that you will be their friend And that this friendship won’t never end.

As anecdotes or stories, the evidential status of these might be questioned. However, we hope that these serve as a call to arms in supporting the development of programmes and research that examines the transformative experiences that come from providing meaningful,

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non-judgemental and immersive opportunities for individuals with developmental, physical and psychiatric differences.

Conclusion Although the ASC has received support from private foundations as well as from Syracuse University to continue and expand the programme, external funding to assess the efficacy of this group has been difficult to obtain. How is it that a group, which has been a catalyst for change in its members, is of little to no interest to research funders despite the obvious need for effective programming for adults with disability when they leave the school setting at age 21? We think part of the problem has to do with the difficulty in conducting process-based community research that necessitates measuring change in applied settings that do not, by their very nature, conform to the sterile, unchanging laboratory environments in which experimental control is possible and in part by the dramatic changes at the level of the individual that are hard to quantify. Despite the challenges associated with conducting research in applied settings, it is clear that there is no shortage of people who believe in the social benefits of the ASC programme, so much so, that they are committed to beginning their own.

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Bespoke Practices: A Practitioner’s Perspective on Documenting and Evaluating the Experiences of Artists with Disabilities Jennifer Gilbert

Outside In is a UK-wide project founded by Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, which provides a platform for artists who define themselves as facing barriers to the art world for reasons including health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. These barriers are created by the mainstream art world and range from inaccessible submission processes for exhibitions due to extensive form filling and high costs, to a lack of knowledge about how to work appropriately with artists with disabilities. Since its inception in 2006 by Marc Steene, Outside In has worked with over 5,000 artists and showcased artworks to over a quarter of a million audience members nationally and internationally. The project currently supports over 2,300 artists, who all have a digital presence of their artwork on the Outside In website (www.outsidein.org.uk). Given the range of artists supported by the project, and the number of organizations it partners and collaborates with, it is crucial for Outside In to document and evaluate the effectiveness of its work. Each year, prescribed aims and objectives are established by the Outside In team and agreed with the project’s core funders – with examples that include reaching out to new and isolated artists; seeing a change in an artist’s behaviour and/or health; changing attitudes and artist/

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exhibition selections in new venues – and data is collected and analysed in line with these ambitions. However, despite such attempts to clarify and agree aims and objectives, the documentation and evaluation of projects remain particularly difficult due to the barriers faced by many participating artists. Some are not able to communicate verbally; some find questioning intrusive; some avoid form filling because of the abundance they already do for healthcare reasons, while others fear they may say or write the wrong thing. Overcoming these challenges can be very difficult, and this chapter will explore some of the necessarily flexible approaches that Outside In has adopted in gathering and interpreting data.

Sensitive approaches to gathering data Drawing on the diversity of experiences outlined above, Outside In staff have become astute at dealing with artists on an individual basis, depending on their needs and circumstances, in a manner that enables the establishment of genuine relationships. The tone of conversations, the words used and the length of sentences are all paramount in helping artists, especially those with learning disabilities, to gain a better understanding of what is happening. These experiences in running projects have informed our attitudes to documentation and evaluation, and Outside In has often found it imperative to collect evidence on a one-to-one basis, in environments that the artists find safe and familiar, and in a manner that does not raise anxiety levels. The forms we use employ less text, an easier-toread language and more symbols or images to engage the artists and aid their understanding. This is especially true for artists with learning disabilities, whose voices and opinions are often overlooked due to more time needing to be spent with them when collecting their experiences. Having someone present who knows the artist well, like a family member, carer or support worker, is also useful as an aid when collecting

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data. This often makes the artist feel safer, empowered and more able to answer questions frankly. This person may be able to simplify the questions further, use language they know the artist will understand or may be able to grasp what the artist is saying when it is difficult for them to communicate. A form of effective data collection was highlighted at an arts and health conference at the Southbank Centre, London, in 2016. Magpie Dance, an organization that works with non-verbal learning disabled people through dance, described how they collected data and monitored progress in non-verbal ways. They utilized active and visual techniques such as asking participants to show a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ if they liked or disliked something. Another example is the work of ActionSpace, a London-based organization supporting artists with learning disabilities. Sheryll Catto, co-director of ActionSpace, said of their data collection methods: Almost 70% of our artists have low or no verbal skills, so the facilitators, who are themselves practising artists, employ a process of observation and experimentation. They use their knowledge of the artists to inform the provision of art materials and equipment. They carefully observe the artists’ response to stimuli around them and support them to develop ideas, experiment and create artwork. The facilitators write weekly session reports in which they reflect on the artists’ development, record their responses to the work they and their fellow studio artists have created during the session, and identify areas for further experimentation and development. (Catto 2016)

Evaluators working in these contexts must be equipped with the right skills to be able to observe, record and comment on even the smallest of things. It is for this reason that Outside In has worked with the same external evaluator – Susan Potter – since the inception of the project. Having the same evaluator means that as she watches the project grow she offers advice from the data collected, from changes in the field more broadly and from her personal experience of being immersed in the project.

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Potter asks questions sensitively (so as not to cause upset or offence) of the artists at the beginning, during and at the end of activities, events and exhibitions through questionnaires. One-to-one interaction by Potter includes the recording of conversations (which are then transcribed) and film footage (with the artists’ consent). In considering her role, Potter comments: Special consideration should be given to the most appropriate ways of generating data, whilst acknowledging the artist’s expertise and unique position on the subject of inquiry, in this instance their own practice. A mutual respect between evaluator and artist, taking time to build trusting relationships, listening and truly understanding what is being described, all of these qualities will support the processes of evaluation when working with artists facing barriers to the mainstream. (Potter 2016)

In addition to this range of approaches to gathering data from the artists themselves, Outside In also draws upon other voices including feedback from sector professionals, gallery staff and visitors at exhibitions and events. Potter, for example, also interviews or sends questionnaires to those who support the artists, enabling her to evaluate the artists’ development and progress more accurately. This allows for a broader reflection on the artists, their work and the effectiveness of the organizations that support them. This in turn highlights further aims and objectives that need to be set. In addition, Outside In has also become increasingly interested in how the arts process itself can be more centrally considered within evaluation processes, and it is this that will be explored next.

The place of art in arts evaluation One of the challenges of collecting data in the contexts in which Outside In operates is that for artists who are unable to communicate verbally their primary form of communication is often their artwork. Even those close to the artist can only give their personal opinion on how

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they think it makes the artists feel – this could be based on movement, emotion and interaction. While difficult to quantify, hard to measure or even see, Outside In is interested in how the art itself – from the making process, to the exhibition of finished products – can be recognized through documentation and evaluation. One example of the importance of the exhibition of artists’ work is Nigel Kingsbury, who, until recently, attended an arts group run by ActionSpace. Kingsbury was predominantly non-verbal, occasionally using Makaton, but his physical enjoyment at seeing his artwork on display was palpable. He would wear a beaming smile, greet people at the door to show them his work, point to red dots if the work was sold and shake visitors’ hands if they had commented on his work. The fact that Kingsbury attended a weekly art group, and his continued interest in making new work, showed his enjoyment not only of art creation but also of being in a creative space alongside others. This example demonstrates the importance, for some artists, of exhibiting and the public validation of their artwork. Often, however, Outside In has discovered that it is the process of making the work that is more important to the artists than the finished product. Outside In artist Carlo Keshishian, for example, comments, ‘I think sometimes the process is the product. … The value of the process remains with those that are there at the time. … You don’t need anything more as that is the most important thing’ (Keshishian 2015). Catherine Morris observes something similar in the practice of celebrated non-verbal outsider artist Judith Scott, who made wrapped textile sculptures. Morris writes of Scott’s work: It was solely the making of her objects that interested her: the activity of gathering her raw materials and the often lengthy process of producing her compelling sculpture. The life of things she produced once she was done with them did not engage her. (Morris and Higgs 2014: 9)

Indeed, it is often the experiments and emotions that artists have experienced while creating the work that stay with them longer and affect them more than seeing the finished artwork. From this it is clear

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that we also need to find a way to better evaluate the process itself and to capture the importance of this for artists. We also need to make funders more aware of the importance of this process, which is often comparatively invisible. It is for these reasons that Outside In has begun to think about how some of the artists’ processes can be documented in exhibitions for audiences (and funders) to see and appreciate. One of the first implementations of this was Intuitive Visions: Shifting the Margins at Phoenix Brighton in 2015. In this exhibition sketchbooks featuring original felt-tip and collage images by Sally Ward captured the ideas that led to her textile wall hangings; maquettes from Aradne showed how her final three-dimensional textile pieces were layered together, while a description of how Paul Bellingham went about creating his blind drawings gave an insight into his creative practice. This proved successful in enabling artists, audiences and funders to see why and how creativity is so important for the participating artists’ vision, health and well-being. On other occasions Outside In has commissioned short films to sit alongside exhibitions to highlight the artists’ stories and offer an insight into their lives. They aim to demystify and destigmatize these artists, their art and their lives. Films are also a very accessible medium and, by including sound and subtitles, can be accessed by much wider audiences.

Conclusion Outside In has learnt many lessons over the years in relation to collecting evidence from artists who face barriers to the mainstream art world – and I am sure more will continue to be sought and learnt. Data need to be collected in a range of ways, including on a one-to-one basis, in manners suitable to the artists and their needs, adhering to their well-being and safety. It is crucial that artist’s wishes are adhered to, that their voices are heard and documented, and ultimately that they are given opportunities to develop and grow as artists.

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The thorough and appropriate collection of data for evaluation purposes allows Outside In to evaluate whether it has achieved its aims and objectives. In doing so it not only increases its ability to support the artists and their development, but also helps with maintaining existing funding opportunities and finding new ones that enable it to support access and inclusion for all. All artists have the right to a creative life, and it is up to facilitators, organizations and funders to support the implementation of this.

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‘There’s No Pill For That’: A Practitioner’s Perspective on The Evidence Imperative in the Arts and Mental Health Linda Boyles

A project participant once said to me, ‘The arts gave me back my self-esteem. There’s no pill for that.’ A passing comment, but one that exemplifies the ongoing debate about the value of the arts, and why it is hard to measure its impact. Outcomes such as self-esteem are hard to measure, and research may not reveal the benefits that are actually of greatest importance to the participant. However this does not mean that such outcomes are not worth measuring, or that we should give up trying. I have worked in arts development in a range of arts and mental health contexts for twenty-five years, in the NHS and in communities. During this time participants consistently tell me of the value of the arts to their mental health, so we need to explore why this is. My roles in the arts and health have included exhibiting artist, community artist, occupational therapist and currently development manager for an arts and mental health project (Arts & Minds Network, www.artsandmindsnetwork.org.uk). I was also previously partner to an artist who found great solace in his creativity despite his mental health problems. However, when he was sectioned with schizophrenia, the opportunities for creativity were limited and he lost hope. He finally took his own life on an acute ward. All of these perspectives have informed and guided me on the journey that I will describe. In this reflective chapter I will describe the paths I have explored to investigate art’s impact on people’s mental health, and discuss what I have learnt.

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Establishing aims The numerous ‘stakeholders’ in any participatory project – including funders, artists, clinicians and the participants themselves – are likely to be seeking different outcomes from it (see Figure 18.1). These different perspectives may result in conflicting and not necessarily compatible aims. Aims are frequently (but not necessarily) shared between the participant, artist and clinician, who commonly want to improve the

ARTS FUNDER Increase employment of artists

PARTICIPANT

Create quality artistic products Develop creative skills Develop artist’s artistic practice and group works skills

Increase in self-esteem & confidence Progress on from art project

ARTIST

Reduction in medication

To have fun

Meet people and get out of the house

Reduction in symptoms of mental illness

CLINICIAN Reduction in the particpant’s use of health services

HEALTH FUNDER

Figure 18.1 Illustration of common aims of different stakeholders involved in an arts project.

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participant’s confidence and self-esteem; reduce social isolation; increase social interaction; and develop creative skills (though not necessarily in an agreed order of priority). However, the participant’s main concern may be to have fun; the artist’s to develop their own creative practice; the clinician’s to reduce the patient’s use of medication; the arts funder’s to see quality artistic products created; and the health funder’s to reduce the patient’s use of the health service. In addition, other stakeholders such as the patient’s carer, and/or their family, may also have different hopes and expectations for a project (see Figure 18.1). Given that priorities inevitably influence the focus of any evaluation, the results are unlikely to be of equal interest or relevance to each party. Though there is often a wide range of motivations for seeking evidence, what drives most research is determined by who is funding it and their priorities. I believe the most meaningful evaluation is one where all stakeholders plan a project together from the outset and agree a set of main shared aims, while acknowledging that other aims may not be shared. If projects start with the same agreed aims, they will have the same starting point for evaluating success in achieving them. Unfortunately there is not one tool that will reveal everything or that will suit every project. Arts practitioners may seek the one mighty research tool that will address all questions, but the relationship between arts and health is too complex to be fully examined by one tool. Similarly, research that will once and for all prove the efficacy of this work has remained elusive because one study cannot explain it all. The important thing is to find, or develop, an evaluation tool that is best suited to look at the questions you want to explore, and what is appropriate to the project and the participants. What the most important questions are will be a matter of debate. I would suggest that some art projects might be asking the wrong questions in terms of what is important to the participant, steered instead by the funder’s priorities. Funding limitations may also influence the choice of methodology in favour of short-term quantitative methods, rather than more costly and time-consuming long-term qualitative studies that could be more revealing.

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Finding the right research method Standardized methods such as the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS)1 or Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE)2 outcome measures are widely recognized as validated scales that measure mental health outcomes. The results give headline statistics that are easily digestible, but they also have their limitations. They do not tell the whole story, and in fact may leave out the most interesting and important questions, such as, ‘What makes a person’s life worth living?’ They also do not measure unanticipated outcomes that often emerge organically from creative projects. The appearance of such questionnaires might also be perceived as intrusive to participants (who often feel they are over-assessed in the mental health system) and jar with the informal flow of a project. They also require skilled practitioners to administer and analyse them, and time and resources to do so, both of which are often in short supply on creative projects. Conversely, qualitative methods such as ethnographic research, narrative research or case studies may be dismissed because of their (usually) small sample size. Critics argue that they may not be generalized or replicated to the wider population. Interviews, and their transcription and analysis, are also time-consuming, which again puts strain on limited budgets. The results are often harder to assimilate quickly, and subsequently may get overlooked. However, in my experience, they also reveal a richer and deeply meaningful picture that is of relevance to participants. Their implementation is also often less intrusive as it can be incorporated more naturally into the creative flow of a project where discussion is a familiar process. I therefore advocate for a mixed methodology through which results will relate to different audiences. In my view the best tools are those developed by all stakeholders working together to find common ground of what works for them, and where participants are also involved in the design and implementation of the research.

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The involvement of participants challenges the power imbalance common in the relationship of researcher and participant, where knowledge can be perceived as being ‘extracted’ and taken away to benefit funding bodies or commissioners. The results may be seen as irrelevant and of no benefit to the participants who should be at the heart of the process. We should always question why we are evaluating, and who will benefit from it. If the answers are ‘to help participants evaluate their progress’ or ‘to make our practice better’, our approach is likely to have integrity.

Personal stories My experiences of presenting evidence to health funding bodies have taught me that personal stories are often the most effective in convincing sceptics of the power of the arts to change people’s lives. For example, the story below happened years ago but is still quoted by health board members as a vivid illustration of how change can take place: Alan struggled with agoraphobia and had difficulties using public transport. He had not been into Leeds city centre for years, or used public transport. He submitted his artwork for Arts and Minds annual exhibition, and had two pieces accepted. When he was invited to the opening of the exhibition in Leeds city centre, he said ‘I was determined that this was one thing I wasn’t going to miss. I was going to make myself do it.’ Despite his difficulties he came into Leeds alone, and by public transport, both to the opening and closing of the exhibition.

However, to fully demonstrate impact we need to use many methods, including quantitative data. Statistics can be an effective shorthand way of conveying a project’s impact in an executive summary. They are also a more familiar language to outcome-driven health services and/or funders who often do not have the time, structure or frame of reference to hear or value stories. However, statistics do not tell the full story

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either. Impact is the ‘what happened’ story, but the other story that often does not get explored is the process of ‘how’ and ‘why?’

The case for the arts Are the arts different compared with other participatory activities, and if so what is it that makes them different? In my view, it is the creative process in a collective context that makes the crucial difference. An aerobics class may have similarly positive outcomes to a creative dance class in terms of aspects such as improved fitness, giving structure to a day and opportunities to make friends, but a creative dance class also draws on participants’ imagination to create something unique. It is this special added ingredient of self-expression that can change how people see themselves, and thus has the potential for greater transformation. Kilroy describes this process of transformation in her study on the impact of creativity, culture and the arts on health and well-being: There is a lift in mood and expectation, which opens up perceived possibilities for change; people begin to see things differently and from this arises a greater sense of wellbeing. (2008: 5)

The urgent need for alternative methods of support for mental health problems is starkly illustrated by indicators such as the rising use of antidepressant medication, and high suicide rates in the developed world. There is the potential to use the arts to reduce some people’s dependency on drugs, and even save lives. However, we also need to be wary of seeing the arts only as a utilitarian way of reducing healthcare costs and of focusing evaluation within this limited frame of reference. If we follow this path, we will lose the richness of creativity’s role in making life worth living. The lack of hard outcomes perceived by some funders is also sometimes used as an easy ‘get out clause’ to deny funding. The same demands for evidence are not necessarily made of other interventions

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that are sometimes funded for historical reasons, rather than because of their effectiveness. For example, many patients experience multiple admissions to hospital in a ‘revolving door syndrome’, which would suggest that this intervention is not working. The health service’s riskaverse approach to using new or different interventions perpetuates this system, instead of asking what might work better. I would suggest that the cause of this is the fear of using public money on ineffective interventions that may appear as simply being for ‘fun’. Yet medication and acute admissions can also be ineffective, and are a lot costlier than art ‘interventions’. Surely it is worth ‘taking the risk’ if it saves lives?

Conclusion In conclusion, I would therefore propose that we need research that looks at a person’s journey from start to finish over a long period and that we need to ask other questions such as, what is it about the creative process that may be vital in a person’s recovery? In all cases, questioning the purpose of the evaluation and who benefits from it is vital. Ultimately, the main beneficiary should be the person recovering from mental health issues. I am hopeful that our quest for evidence now involves many more researchers from all fields than it did when I started in this work twentyfive years ago. The body of evidence is also rapidly growing that could enable practitioners to make their practice more creative and effective.

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Embracing Indeterminacy in Participatory Storytelling Catherine Heinemeyer

As an oral storyteller I put myths, folktales, fictions and true stories at the service of groups of young people in schools, mental health and youth work settings. As a practice researcher, I often seek to open stories up for exploration and retelling through drama, creative writing and other art forms; I am interested in how young people use fictional, oral stories as a space for dialogue and expression of their own perspectives. As I bring these two elements together, I am interested in how what I can know through my research is shaped by the nature of the medium I am working through, and specifically in this chapter by what I term the ‘indeterminacy’ that seems a positive value within participatory storytelling practice. Patricia Leavy suggests that ‘Arts-based researchers are not “discovering” new research tools, they are carving them’ (cited in O’Connor and Anderson 2015: 23). If so, then the material from which each practitioner-researcher carves is likely to consist of the values and methods of their own particular artistic practice. Deriving our methodologies from our art forms will influence our approach to ethics, shape our relationships with participants and admit aesthetic criteria into our evaluation. The implied or explicit tenets inherent to our art forms will also place certain parameters around the interpretation and reporting of our research, and the evidence we can provide of its impact. My own storytelling practice and research is shaped by an observation I made early in my career and later discovered to be held

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dear by most storytellers: listeners’ reactions to the stories I tell are ultimately unfathomable. By extension, it is impossible to know just what a participant has taken away from a storytelling project. This indeterminacy of oral storytelling has, in fact, at least three layers: in the performance of a story, in its reception by the listener, and in its ongoing role as a subject for reflection over time. Clearly, this multistorey indeterminacy poses a challenge to evidencing the benefits of the long term, participatory storytelling work that I have been undertaking in an adolescent residential psychiatric setting (referred to as ‘Maple House’ within this chapter). Indeed, it problematizes the very idea of ‘benefits’ or ‘effects’, and thus has a bearing on the question of how we can evidence the social value of the arts. Rather than resisting this indeterminacy, I propose that it should be embraced. In this short chapter I will first explore these layers of indeterminacy, before discussing them in relation to my work with one young person, and finally suggesting their implications for evaluation processes. In doing so, I am taking storytelling as an exemplary case for indeterminacy, but find it likely that practitioners of other art forms will have come to similar realizations.

Layers of indeterminacy First, a story cannot be formed solely by the performer’s intent. Usually unscripted and little rehearsed, oral storytelling is made unpredictable by ‘the immediate reciprocity of the relationship between the teller and the audience’ (Maguire 2015: 10). What Erika Fischer-Lichte describes as an ‘autopoietic feedback loop’ (2008: 59) influences the words the story is clothed in, the resonances it strikes and the meanings it takes on. Even when a teller accepts the participants’ influence over the performance, efforts to evaluate their creative reception of a story, or storytelling workshop, can run against the fact that this process may

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occur on the participants’ own terms. The listeners are given the teller’s first- or second-hand ‘experience’ (Benjamin 1973 [1955]) and are trusted to interpret and respond to it as they will, in freedom. Where storytelling is used towards specific ends, such as in projects aimed at behaviour change, it risks violating this principle. Ruth Sawyer’s expression of what story conveys as ‘not moral persuasion, not a deliberate teaching of anything … simply … the passing of fairy gold’ (1942: 84) is not romantic but precise: in Celtic folktales, fairy gold multiplies and brings blessings when freely given, but often vanishes when used to manipulate others. Geoff Mead too urges storytellers to accept that in the triad of storyteller, listener and story, ‘All three are in relationship with each other but the crucial relationship between the audience and the story is beyond the storyteller’s grasp’ (2011: 39–40). As a storyteller working in applied contexts, I have therefore needed to learn how to tread the fine line between providing space for young people to make a story their own, and encroaching into this ‘crucial relationship’. For example, in proposing creative activities in response to storytelling, I risk echoing the assessment-saturated institutional contexts of many young people’s lives. In a focus group reflecting back on two years of storytelling sessions with a secondary school group, one 12-year-old boy sought to convince me that the valuable creative work was done when he was not visibly joining in, but when he was silent and immobile: It’s just – you know when you’re telling a story and some of us put our heads down like that – it’s only because some of us do it to, like, picture the images in our heads …. (18 March 2015)

For this boy, the value of storytelling lay in providing space for a private zone of sense-making and experience, in contrast with the majority of lessons, in which learning must be continually demonstrated and assessed, for example, through strategies developed to ensure active listening, currently ascendant in UK English and humanities education (Nicola Towle 2015, pers. comm.).

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This warning was echoed in a reflective dialogue with the teachers at Maple House. They suggested that while some young people enjoyed the opportunity to respond creatively to a story, others experienced this as coercion: They almost universally love listening to a story, but the feeling that something may be expected from them afterwards disengages some. (Maple House teacher, 15 July 2015)

In a context where young people were (in the same teacher’s words) ‘sickened’ by the sensation of being constantly under psychological assessment, this sense of expectation was doubly problematic. Until I learnt to ensure genuine freedom to engage on their own terms, some residents, uncertain of my agenda (as perhaps I was myself), preferred to avoid the workshops entirely. A third and vital layer of indeterminacy is that the value of the activity to the participants may be realized over a much longer timescale than that of the storytelling project, a point made by Peter O’Connor and Michael Anderson (2015) in relation to all applied theatre work. For Walter Benjamin, a story ‘preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time’ (1973 [1955]: 90). I experience this for myself, when a story heard or a play seen long ago arises, seemingly unbidden, in my mind to illuminate a current experience; the unexpected retelling by a young person of a story I told them a year ago suggests they are no different. Indeed, Matthew Reason argues against considering any artistic experience as having a definitive endpoint; rather, it can be understood as ‘something actively constructed by individuals in negotiation and in relation to their sense of selves, of others and of the world around them’ (2010: 24), and this interaction between artistic experience and self is an ‘ongoing, limitless, and plural process’ (25). These are far from new realizations: Patrick Ryan and Donna Schatt discuss the storytelling of educators in the 1920s ‘Progressive Era’, and their emphasis on the accumulated and lifelong emotional, cultural and

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cognitive impacts of listening to stories – effects they accepted could not be measured in the short term. When Ryan and Schatt interviewed adults who were regularly told oral folktales in their early school years, few could remember the content of these stories, but all gave ‘emotional, visceral, vivid and powerful’ accounts of the experience (2014: 139), and considered it to have profoundly influenced their career choices, attitudes and psychological makeup in multifarious ways.

Beyond ‘obliquity’ Embracing indeterminacy goes beyond a therapeutic appreciation of obliquity, to a model that is fundamentally artistic. Obliquity (see also Chapter 1 of this book) is the well-attested strength of remaining within a metaphor, as Margot Sunderland (2000) urges fellow storytelling therapists, so as to enable people to look at their powerful and difficult feelings from the safe distance of the story. It nonetheless implies that the therapist may discover what the participants need to take away from the session (a recognition of their anger, say, or a range of ways to deal with it) and choose stories or strategies accordingly. In contrast, to remain within the story – within the zone of narrative, non-propositional thinking – is to accept that I will probably never know how it may intersect with their past and future life experiences and thus influence them over time. Participants may be well aware that I hope they may take something away with them from our interactions – as I will myself. Yet participatory storytelling cannot straightforwardly claim to reduce anxiety, change behaviour or increase empathy; any contribution to these aims will be through what John Dewey called ‘collateral learning’ (1938: 48). This declared acceptance of indeterminacy presents not only limitations, but opportunities and ethical benefits. First, it provides a layer of protection from scrutiny for the young people at Maple House – what one resident called ‘the confidentiality we need’ to enter bravely into collaborative projects and relationships. It becomes participants’ own decision whether or not to connect a story openly to their own experiences. Secondly, a

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practice built on an ethic of respect for young people’s complex, syncretic practices of sense-making (as irreducible as our own) clearly invites not just their ‘deficits’ or difficulties, but their other identities and resources, to the processes of story listening and storytelling. To illustrate this debate I will share an account of one young person’s involvement with the storytelling workshops at Maple House. The young person chose her own pseudonym, ‘Luna’, and has given her consent for this material to be used in this context.

Storytelling with Luna Luna was sixteen, and her eating disorder kept her at Maple House for many months. Selfishly, I was pleased to see her still there each week, as her contributions to storytelling sessions were invaluable. She listened to every story thoughtfully, participating in and often gently proposing collage, poetry and storytelling activities in response, particularly bringing her talents in visual art. Indeed, her enthusiasm, artistry and sensitivity opened the door for more recalcitrant or anxious young people to participate – she was, in effect, an assistant facilitator at times. There was a spirit of collaboration and reciprocity between us. Although I was not privy to any information about Luna’s (or any other inpatient’s) illness, and she never shared any with me, it saddened me that she did not appear to be getting better. Yet I had learnt from previous mistakes. I knew I must resist the temptation to intrude even obliquely into her difficulties, such as by choosing particular ‘beneficial’ stories. There were qualified people in the setting whose speciality was her treatment, and even they seemed to be struggling; she was perhaps the only person who could develop a clear understanding of her issues, and I was one of the few adults present who had no obligation to peer into this doubtless exhausting process. It was notable, in fact, that she had a natural affinity for the otherworldly vocabulary of fantastical and fairy stories. We carried on as we were, in the creative and enjoyable pursuit of exploring distant story worlds for their own intrinsic sake.

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Eventually, Luna’s health started to improve, and she was ready to leave the setting. At her last session, I told the group one of my favourite stories, ‘The Stolen Child’, in which a destitute young woman has to create something valuable from what she can find on the beach, in order to buy her baby back from the Shining Ones. While we wove our own sculptures from natural materials and the conversation broadened to other stories this brought to people’s minds, she was keen to say some parting words. She did not say that my storytelling sessions had been a contributing cause of her recovery; this would have been too facile a claim, even if it were ‘true’. Rather, she told me that the stories had always made her think, lingered in her mind during the week, and she had even written some of them down in her notebook so as to remember them. I gave her my sculpture and she gave me hers. The question of whether storytelling sessions helped Luna’s recovery is ultimately unanswerable, and to ask it would violate the spirit of our working relationship. If I challenge myself to analyse it, I hover around her striking resourcefulness; in retrospect I suspect that my summoning of the brave, inventive young heroine of ‘The Stolen Child’ was the closest I came to embedding a ‘message’ in a story for her. I would hypothesize that the sessions provided a space where she could exercise her talents, imagination and care for others; that they intersected with her many other interests and intellectual resources in helping her make sense of her life and illness; that she listened to some stories with fascination and others merely with attentive courtesy, yet invariably made the best of each session; that she may in the future make artworks that weave some strands of my stories in with other richly coloured strands from her own experience.

Listening to the indeterminate To embrace indeterminacy does not mean abandoning the idea of evidencing the value of the participatory arts, rather resisting the temptation to oversimplify the role projects may play within the wider

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context of individual participants’ lives. There are at least two fruitful paths of evaluation we might follow, both of which would respect the autonomy of participants’ own practice using the resources we provide, rather than purporting to state the projects’ effects. First we might seek indicators of the participants’ choice to dedicate personal resources and creativity to working with us – what we might call ‘indicators of will’. In the case above, I might cite Luna’s ongoing enthusiastic participation in my workshops throughout her illness, and Maple House staff ’s longterm devotion of time and energy to supporting the sessions. Indicators of will might also include the simple capture of attendance figures and participant-initiated spin-off projects that encapsulate their investment into the value of the work. Secondly, we can often draw on participants’ own reflective understanding of our collaborative projects, ideally some time after they are complete, to lend rigour and triangulation to our own analysis. One template is suggested by Ryan and Schatt’s (2014) aforementioned study which sought the long-term influences rather than the impacts of participation, and which drew its evaluation from participants’ own reflective assimilation – their stories – of their experience of storytelling. To this end, nine months after her departure, I discussed this analysis with Luna (now a college student) and sent her this chapter in draft form to corroborate or edit; she felt it accurately described the role storytelling fulfilled for her at Maple House. In seeking evaluative approaches which reconcile the demands to assess the impact and cost-effectiveness of our work with the realities of arts-based and people-centred practice, we may find genuine rigour and validity by starting from what our art forms teach us to be true.

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Art Knows No Boundaries: Cross-Cultural Bridge Building through a Transnational Arts Project Matthew Hahn, Lungile Dlamini and Marius Botha

As is the case with many countries around the world, twenty-two years after South Africa’s first democratic election, there are still great disparities in wealth distribution and the application of human rights. South Africa’s well-worn story of a divided history, ongoing problems of crushing poverty, lack of opportunities and wealth inequality can create low self-esteem in her young people who have little understanding of the dynamics of the past and present. Cultural activities such as music and theatre played decisive roles in South Africa’s Liberation Movement; today, they are needed for the new struggle for gender equality and poverty eradication. Art Knows No Boundaries (AKNB) is an organization created by artists from South Africa and the United Kingdom in 2012. It is based in Durban and run by community artists Lungile Dlamini and Marius Botha, with support from British-based artist Matthew Hahn. AKNB reaches out into communities and schools throughout the rural South Coast bringing a programme of drama, dance and music to areas that historically have not had access to these creative arts. AKNB has been warmly embraced by community leaders who say that it has brought hope back to communities devastated by drugs and poverty and has helped keep the youth out of trouble. Embedded within this community outreach activity is an international cultural exchange programme between South African and

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British university students who are studying applied theatre. The two aims of this programme are to examine and learn from the similarities and differences of each culture and to create a rewarding experience for the various communities with whom they work in South Africa. The focus of this chapter will be on this programme and the difficulties faced in evidencing and evaluating its impact.

International exchange The International Cultural Exchange Programme (ICEP) was piloted in 2012 with BA Applied Theatre students from St Mary’s University, London, spending ten days in Durban, the South Coast and Harding, South Africa, working alongside MA Applied Theatre students from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The students delivered and participated in a range of drama and music workshops as well as public interactive theatre performances. There are two specific projects within ICEP: interactive theatre practice (based on Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre) and celebratory community theatre performances. Interactive theatre aims to examine the current situation with regard to human rights within both countries and experiment with positive behaviour changes to those rights. Community theatre performances celebrate the culture of the host country through theatre performances and music concerts. AKNB aims to introduce students to the key challenges in using drama to support national and international development by providing the opportunity for an active dialogue between student-practitioners. It is hoped that students from the global south and north will gain confidence and an understanding of the potential use of interactive drama skills as a tool for changing behaviour and advocating for human rights. Through ongoing reflection and feeding-forward sessions, the students are asked to consider the important political and sociological issues arising from working in this way and listen to and learn from drama practitioners operating in a significantly different context from

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their own. AKNB seeks to celebrate South African culture and use it as a platform for more positive cross-cultural exchanges and to counter negative stereotypes about both hemispheres. Underpinning all of this is the belief in bottom-up development and advocacy to support human rights.

Interactive theatre AKNB’s interactive theatre projects aim to equip participants with the awareness, knowledge and communication skills to transform their own lives and the lives of others personally, socially and professionally through positively changing the behaviour of participants and those with whom they interact. The first step in this process is to devise short plays that explore issues of mutual concern to the participants which end ineffectively due to a breakdown in communication. The audience, who may face similar issues, is then invited to view the play again, but this time to enter into its world to experiment with other behaviours in order to improve the final outcome. It is via experiential participation that individuals generate the awareness and ability to implement positive practical changes in their own lives and gain a voice in society as a whole. At an interactive theatre performance on gender equality in Durban in 2013, British students presented an intimate scene that portrayed the highly charged moment when condom negotiation was failing: the woman was trying unsuccessfully to get the man to wear a condom. Female South African ‘spect-actors’/students had no problem standing up for their rights and quickly put in place the British student actor who could not counter the barrage of reasonable, yet strongly asserted, retorts to his advances. Conversely, in the South African students’ portrayal of a domestic scene between a husband and wife, British students were visibly taken aback by the overt physical and verbal domination of the man over the woman. When the British ‘spec-actors’ intervened, tactics that had worked in a similar scene they created (such as that of verbal

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negotiation), were of no use when confronting the physical and vocal domination of the male antagonist. The post-performance evaluation by the students centred on the portrayal of rampant gender inequality within both countries. British students commented that the scenes they created were much more covert in their gender dynamic imbalance, whereas the South African-created scenes were much more overt, although both contained elements of repression and violence. The students reflected on the different behaviours as well as the responses to those behaviours and what that revealed about each culture: the British students were impressed by the ability of the South African female ‘spect-actors’ to advocate for their gender rights, but were cowed by the male domination in many of the scenes created by the South Africans. The South African students were impressed by the calm dialogue that the British ‘spect-actors’ attempted to use in the scenes. These interventions and evaluations clearly evidenced the current knowledge and attitudes around gender rights of the British and South African students as well as their communication skills to advocate for human rights.

Celebratory community theatre performance The celebratory community theatre performance utilizes South African poets and writers to dramatize age-old morality tales, stories and myths as a bridge for positive cross-cultural exchanges as well as to teach the younger generation of South African children their oral history. In 2014, this culminated in a schools touring performance of a play based on a South African book, The Story Magic, by Gcina Mhlophe. South African and British students presented a bare-bones version of the play. Once that performance was finished, they incorporated the school’s students to create a whole new piece of theatre utilizing Mhlophe’s beautifully created animal characters and scenarios. The British students worked with a range of ages and broke them into three groups during the rehearsal process. The youngest – four-

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to six-year-olds – were the lions, trees and snakes in the story. The middle group – six- to nine-year-olds – were the birds and rabbits, while the oldest group – ten- to fifteen-year-olds – were the narrators and other speaking roles. After the performance, the British students were taken on a tour of the surrounding community by the school students. This has always proven to be a powerful aspect of the AKNB’s outreach programme because it exposes the British students to a level of poverty than none had ever seen. Several were visibly shaken and so disturbed that they commented that they wish they had not seen such circumstances. Others commented on the joy that they saw in the children’s faces when introducing the visiting students to their families. During the evaluation session once the students had left the school and community, most commented that they greatly enjoyed the experience of working in a school and having the opportunity to see the community, but said that they were physically exhausted by the leadership needs and because of the very basic set-up of the school. A few commented that they would not be able to learn under such circumstances and were greatly impressed by the students’ ability to concentrate.

Evidencing and evaluating the impact of the International Cultural Exchange Programme The ICEP is funded by a mixture of student and university contributions. In order for the programme to be sustainable, the ICEP recognizes the need to demonstrate the impact and value of its cultural and social programmes through the measuring of outcomes that the university, students and parents recognize. However, the ICEP has found that conveying such measurements presents particular challenges when seeking recognition for and validation of the work of an artistic and developmental nature. In part these challenges are due to difficulties in evidencing the longterm behaviour change outcomes of what are finite and time-limited theatre programmes. As noted in the case study above, gathering evidence

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of positive behaviour change through participation in this programme (through acting and ‘spec-acting’ performance opportunities) provides insight into changes in attitudes and behaviours. These behavioural changes are rich in detail and evocative, but often informal and, perhaps, fleeting. Because AKNB does not have a constant presence in the communities, it has proven challenging to evidence the programme’s impact in positively changing behaviour in the long term. AKNB often encounters audiences and participants in what the Transtheoretical (or ‘Stages of Change’) model of behaviour change (Prochaska and DiClemente 1983) would consider the ‘precontemplation’ stage (i.e. when participants have never thought about the need to change a certain behaviour) or perhaps at the ‘contemplation’ stage (when participants begin to think about a behaviour that needs changing but have not been motivated to actively pursue this change). AKNB’s interactive theatre is an effective way to move the audience from there to a ‘determination’ or ‘action’ stage of behaviour change as the short pieces often alert and then prepare the participants and audiences mentally and physically for change. This change is then practised under very real circumstances. Participants and facilitators see successful and ‘unsuccessful’ strategies employed (even unsuccessful strategies succeed in the sense that they reveal the mechanics of an oppressive situation and, as a result, often lead to action against the oppression). The penultimate stage of Prochaska and DiClemente’s Stages of Change is ‘maintenance’ (making a change and attempting to stick to that change in the long term). This is where AKNB’s ongoing presence to support participants and audiences is most sorely needed in order to attempt to prevent Prochaska and DiClemente’s final stage, ‘relapse’. Changed behaviour cannot just be in one moment by one person or a small group of people. It must be continuous and supported by the community. The enjoyment of one piece of interactive theatre and the discovered strategies within the interventions are not enough to maintain the change. Personal habits, collusion of family and friends and existing systems that are often stuck in the status quo make it

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difficult for an individual to maintain behavioural change. This is where a long-term commitment by AKNB to maintain participants’ behavioural change and to support interactive theatre workshops and performances within their community would be of great service. In its celebratory programme, evidencing changes in attitudes about one’s own culture and a foreign culture has also proven to be difficult because of the ephemeral nature of the subject matter and the general positivity around the performances which then tend to create a ‘positivity bias’ when reflecting on the outcomes of the programme. Again, long-term attitudinal change is difficult to evidence because of the finite and time-limited nature of the programmes. One particular approach that has been more successfully employed to make the impact of the programme knowable and visible has been the employment of a transnational and collaborative student blog. Before, during and after the cultural exchange programme, both sets of university students are encouraged to contribute to a blog to share their thoughts around the programme. British students have written about travelling to South Africa for the first time; both sets have written about meeting and working with other students from different backgrounds and training, collaborating and providing strong workshops and performances for all audiences in a very different context than they are used to working in. Once the programme has finished, the students are encouraged to provide feedback through this blog to give them an opportunity to evaluate the programme and the value of what it is trying to achieve. AKNB encourages the students to honestly explain problems, discuss activities that were not successful, as well as show what the activity achieved. The blog has become a record of contribution to the field of theatre for development which can help others working in this field. Blog posts have been used in evaluations to report back to the funders and stakeholders both in the United Kingdom and South Africa and have helped to evaluate and share the work. It has also given potential contributors the opportunity to contextualize the work, develop new ideas and learn from what previous students have accomplished.

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A less successful strategy of evidencing the impacts that the facilitators and participants very strongly experience during the live performances has been the use of video recordings. Because of a lack of equipment for reviewing the material as well as time to edit down to showcase ‘best practice’ of positive behavioural change strategies, this evidence is often left underutilized and thus is ineffective. More could be used of this sort of evidence if resources were available. In particular, baseline and end line performances that examine (current and changed) behaviours would be strong evidence of behaviour change, although it would not address the issues around long-term behaviour change. Within all of this it has also been imperative to consider how to ethically evidence, evaluate and disseminate stories of a very personal nature which often use challenging material – sex, violence and prejudice – as a stimulus. For both programmes, AKNB needs to have a long-term commitment by the community, young people and funders in order to truly measure sustained positive behaviour change. AKNB hopes that the students’ learning and impact will change into action at the individual, group and community levels as they reflect on how it has affected them and given them another perspective. It is also hoped that personal evaluation will form the basis of a stronger strategy of development and culture in their own lives. There is often great anecdotal evidence of the positive impact of these programmes, but robust evaluation and evidencing are more difficult. Any evidence tends to be very narrowly situated in time and place, which makes it difficult to generalize to other communities or across time. While powerfully illustrated within the case study and through the experiences recorded in the student blog, AKNB has found measuring cultural and developmental values – sustainability, diversity, creativity, advocacy and human rights – in quantitative terms difficult. Yet these are the values at the heart of the programme. The importance of these activities should not be underestimated just because they are difficult to express.

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Foot in Snout, Snout in Trough: Doing Good, Evaluation and Other Megalomania Scott Rankin

Until just a few decades ago in Australia, the First People of this continent were considered to be part of the flora and fauna. In the state of Western Australia, the last of the Spinifex people walked out of the desert and saw white people for the first time in 1986. Further north in this vast state, you come to a harsh landscape called the Pilbara where the great deserts of Western Australia sweep down to the sea. A coastline left unexplored by Europeans till just 150 years ago. It is one of the most isolated places on earth, 1,500 kilometres north of Perth – itself the most isolated modern city on earth. The region is a corporate cowboy’s paradise, incredibly rich in mineral resources. Iron ore is being shipped out along a continual maritime conveyor belt made up of mega tonne ships loading twenty-four hours a day, day in, day out, to provide the steel to build apartments and cars and appliances for the ever-expanding aspirational classes across China and Asia. As well as a mineral resources boom in the Pilbara, in recent times there has been a cultural resources boom. For the last six years the organization Big hART – a boutique not-for-profit media, arts and social change company made up of artists and cultural workers – has been working in a small frontier town called Roebourne delivering an intergenerational, intercultural project called Yijala Yala (meaning ‘Now!’ in the two main indigenous languages of the region). One of the young people working with the project is a man called Angus. For four years he has been creating and making theatre,

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Figure 21.1 Big hART’s Yijala Yala Project. Featuring Timara Bradshaw and Jennifer Daniel. Roebourne. Western Australia. Photograph Claire Leach.

animations and video, and touring the country. He is from the Yindjirbarndi nation, a nation that has lived continuously in the Pilbara for the last 50,000 years – part of the oldest continuous culture in human history. Over his time working with Big hART on this awardwinning project, Angus has been functionally illiterate, often stoned and in and out of the juvenile justice system. He is also an extremely talented performer and has all the makings of a cultural leader. Angus’s grandmother, Anna, has also been working on the project, touring shows made in Roebourne to arts festivals and featuring in interactive animations on iPads, on video, in art and in song. She is a very busy matriarch in her local community and an important cultural woman. Mostly she thinks about her grandchildren, like Angus. Her

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heart breaks as she watches him teetering on the edge of the minefield of statistics that face this talented kid, as he crosses the threshold from childhood to adolescence. The last time Angus appeared in court, the magistrate was at his wit’s end as to what to do with him – there is no stigma attached to going to gaol in the Pilbara, most young men go, the cells are air-conditioned, there is good food, it is a rite of passage. (Some 51.8 per cent of young people in the juvenile justice system in Australia are indigenous, yet indigenous people make up about 2 per cent of the population.) On this occasion, however, instead of going inside, the magistrate ‘sentenced’ Angus to work with Big hART. He was required to read and rehearse and learn and then finally tour with the company – in what turned out to be a starring role – in a large and ambitious professional performance piece about this incredible place where he lived, which is almost unknown even to Australians. The tour culminated at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, of which ABC Arts commented ‘Big hART’s Hipbone Sticking Out is gobsmacking in its ambition and its achievement. It’s a landmark work of Australian theatre that writes its own rules (and then breaks them)’ (Croggon 2014). Angus was required to meet his obligations to the touring ensemble, work hard as part of a team, do school work every day on the road and, finally, document the tour and his work on video, and return to court to play the video for the judge – or risk gaol. Angus toured with his grandmother and each night on stage she wept tears of joy as she watched him struggle not to self-sabotage and to deal with the emotional, cultural, literacy and physical issues that were holding him back and making him a prime candidate to either take his own life or become a dangerous man in society.

Evaluation and evidence As I sat and wrote this in 2016, Angus has gone from being viewed as an illiterate, stoned, prison candidate, to starting at one of the most

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prestigious private schools in the country – Wesley College – at a special desert outpost, preparing him to travel to Melbourne to boarding school. I can hear the evaluators sharpening their pencils now, applying for research grants, in search of that ‘elusive evidence’ of ‘actual impact’ from the use of applied arts. (‘Exxxcelllent’; ah yes, the sweet sound of soft evaluators’ hands rubbing together, in their ivory towers, as they dip their snouts into the trough of the research dollar.) Roebourne has a transient population of around 900 indigenous people, 400 of them being teenagers – it is like Lord of the Flies out there. He is one of many young people from this group who have been involved in Big hART’s Yijala Yala project. Surely, it is ripe for evaluation, measuring the impacts to ensure that the taxpayer dollar, or the dynastic philanthropic dollar or the sponsor’s dollar is being wisely spent. After all, this wealth has very important provenance; it was in large part built and consolidated in the last 400 years as globalization gripped the West, extracting money from the far corners of the globe, claiming ownership as it went and developing resources in places similar to the Pilbara. Is the act of collecting this evidence vital to ensuring that people like Angus have the chance to receive only best-practice opportunities in the future, or is this interest in evidence, matrix, data collection and analysis itself part of the brutalization of imperialism? Are we really interested in the effectiveness of our work as applied arts practitioners, or are those who fund us really more concerned about the possibility of wasting ‘our’ money? Or is it perhaps a worthy and desperate attempt to try and prove the value of the arts so as to ensure that project funding continues to flow to arts workers like us, and into our mortgages?

Communities and the art of intervention The social trajectory of all communities is always in a state of flux, changing and developing all the time, both positively and negatively. When we, as artists, or community and cultural development workers, work in a community and apply our theatre or music or arts projects,

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we do so mostly thinking we are making some kind of intervention. There has been an assessment that change is needed, and an invitation made to apply for funding, to deliver that arts intervention – a carrot from the cultural domain to create a shift, rather than a stick from the legislative domain to enforce one. There will be an expectation on behalf of the funder – government or philanthropic – for a tangible, measurable positive change, an outcome, an output, as a result of the money spent. The terminology used in evaluating the success of a project is the language of manufacturing, or even war: outputs, outcomes, impacts, targets. In recent years every funding body and most organizations have become mesmerized by impact. Everybody wants an impact producer, yet few know what it means – mostly they mean fancy marketing. Impact suggests a force, from the outside, having a substantial effect on a subject (like Angus, for instance), with or without their consent – measured by an evaluator drone from above. It is very different to an ‘engagement with’, where who is teaching and who is learning is a twoway street; where ‘applying arts’ is a subtle combination of diplomacy and dramaturgy in a community setting. Exemplar, deeply engaged cultural and community projects are created by embedding applied arts workers in communities using process-based exchange. These are not constructed from the binary assumption that change is a top-down strategy based on the formula that evidence leads to good policy, which leads to ‘targeted’ funding, which leads to good programmes, which leads to positive change on the ground, which is then measured and provides more evidence and which creates better policy, onwards and upwards – a staircase to utopia. Big hART expresses the place that art plays in this process simply in the phrase ‘it’s harder to hurt someone if you know their story’. The arts (an old indigenous approach where art is the whole of life, craftrather than icon based, and participatory) have both a protective and prophetic role. Narrative builds understanding of the parts of a person’s story that we have become blind to and have trouble seeing, and then narrative can help distil possible versions of a better future, in the present. Everyone has a right to be involved in this process. Artistic

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virtuosity, from years of practice in this narrative exploration can and should be also rewarded. And, in this process there are also things that can and should be measured. Impact, however, tends to become exclusively results focused. An end point. Measurable. However in this kind of work, the applied poetic counts, and it requires a new kind of virtuosity to be effective in a community setting. The evaluator, who seeks evidence of its effectiveness, requires a similar kind of new virtuosity to see it, and measure it, that allows the evidence to remain elusive and evolving, while still remaining as evidence. It needs to be captured and described in new ways, through new and changing versions of micro-ethnographic approaches, reflexivity and deep grounded theory. Language can be insidious. It can incrementally numb till the community is comatose with weasel words, or it can illuminate and inspire. The word impact should fill us with suspicion. Impact subjugates. Engagement frees, it is an exchange … should we seek to measure the impact or to illuminate the depth of engagement? Impact is part of the lexicon of war; part of the masculine, machine, industrial, competitive language that is so ubiquitous and pervasive – from the seemingly innocuous ‘in the ball park’, to the blind use of ‘target groups’. It is a language that excludes half the world’s genders and many cultures, and has its provenance in the preoccupations of the immature, narcissistic adversarial male high achiever. The depth of engagement (impact) of crafts such as theatre, music and art, when applied as a practice in a community setting is more than elusive, it is something deeply poetic, reaching into the future, in both tangible and measurable ways, and it ripples with uncertain consequences and possibilities. It rests on the community’s provenance of thinking and creating. It rarely has its strongest effect in the present moment. It has its measurable consequences in the future – in the lives of individuals, make up of communities, design of policies, influence on art and intergenerational knowledge transfer – longitudinally. Try studying that by all means but not from a drone hovering, not from the outside of a project, but from within it. Get in the petri dish, dirty it up.

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Beginnings and endings Angus, after four intense years of working with Big hART, has kept himself alive, shown and explored his talent, struggled and dropped out and joined in again. The evidence is clear – Angus is still alive. He is also engaged, contributing more than most deadbeat privileged teens from the suburbs. He has been through traditional Yindjirbarndi law and become a man. He is an intercultural ambassador. Yet we subject him – and his journey to making a contribution to his community – to evaluations other young people are never subjected to. Is it more impactful that Angus keeps himself alive, or that he finishes high school? That he creates a pathway to Western-style employment or avoids prison? Is this how we judge the programmes and projects that have worked with him? The first young person Big hART worked with on the Yijala Yala project was a young woman called Emily. Exquisitely beautiful, shy, talented, quick-witted and so good at giving cheek, she frequently ‘did time’. She came right through the project and became a junior ranger, looking after country, a full-time job, with ironed ranger’s shirt with badges. The last time I saw her she was in front of a whiteboard, marker in hand, commanding a room full of government officials. Emily is dead now. Slashed her wrists. Coloured her mum’s carpet crimson. Emily had easily as much to offer as Angus, more maybe. Go evaluate that… we did with tears and embraces and reminiscence with her family. Usually impact is not measured as part of the empathetic values of the project, the shonky ones are linked to the original contract – do the outcomes conform to the original agreement? Can we keep the government minister safe from criticism through a firewall of dodgy shelved, unread reporting and evaluation? We have to be very, very careful here. Our good self-congratulatory ferreting out of evidence can look important for promoting best practice in the moment, but seen against history is perhaps just a glossy ad for a continuing form of prejudice, paternalism and genocide.

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There is something deeply troubling in evaluating whether programmes are effective for assimilating Angus and his peers into the world of opportunity that we compassionately deem to be something he deserves – ‘Congratulations Angus on your first rate education. You are a credit to your people to be able to successfully emulate this glossy version of “us”. ’ And thank you for being a successful statistic; now this project can receive ongoing funding (look scalable and replicable!) and we as arts workers and evaluators can continue our work, and pay our mortgages, happy with our snout in the trough. Don’t get me wrong, evaluation processes are vital and can be useful, providing evaluators are getting their hands dirty; the evaluation is part of the project; the myth of independence is tossed away; the evaluating is holistic and part of a continuum, a glimpse in time; it is done from a position of humility and participation; looking for the asset behind the apparent disadvantage; looking beyond the deficit. In other words, providing the search for evidence is part of the narrative of the project and community itself, involving and building the agency of those ‘being evaluated’, and is an act of enhancing trust. Evaluation, research and evidence do not sit outside the petri dish. They are essential tools, they are foundations, they are part of the plan. They must be harnessed and used persuasively as part of the community dramaturgy, in the context that the whole process is based on a lie of purity of data, and that the lie is part of an unfolding messy narrative, not part of the myth of manufactured empirical truth.

Afterword: Confidence in Art as Evidence Ross W. Prior

In having the honour of the final word, I do so by not attempting to summarize the excellent work contained within, nor shall I evaluate it, but I wish to leave the reader with an understanding of my own position on the subject as I continually encounter both the pressure and resistance to play the ‘evidence and impact game’ in applied arts practice. As someone who encounters this on an almost-daily basis as Principal Editor of the Journal of Applied Arts and Health (JAAH), a journal I founded in 2010, I am not unfamiliar with the struggle many have in serving this ‘elephant in the room’. Incidentally, two key reasons for establishing JAAH were to clarify our practice by using the precise term ‘applied arts and health’ for the first time and to raise the quality of research through a very conscious effort to develop our understanding of evidence. In my 2010 editorial I wrote: Evidencing applied arts practices has been variously dealt with but has largely been ignored in the scholarly canon. To these ends there appears to be a significant, but not insurmountable, tension between the arts and health sciences. … The nature of how we evidence the effectiveness of applied arts practices is very much at the core of this journal. In fact the very idea of what actually constitutes ‘evidence’ is a particularly interesting one, and we hope that we will see lively scholarly debate within future editions of JAAH. (Prior 2010: 5)

Since 2010 we have seen a range of approaches employed in order to evidence the outcomes of applied arts projects. However, we are still to see the lively debate in JAAH that I had originally anticipated. Helpfully, at the start of this book we read that most epistemologists explain knowledge in terms of evidence and that knowledge requires sufficient

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evidence to make a justification – the image of the scales of justice come to my mind. In fact we frequently hear terms such as ‘weight of evidence’ or the ‘burden of proof ’. Evidence, it seems must be heavy. But is this really a true measure of what is convincing? Further, is knowledge something that is static enough to place on these imagined scales? We have heard from a number of authors in this book who struggle with their own questions of evidence and impact. There are clearly no all-encompassing prescriptions for what constitutes either evidence or impact. What particular meaning these terms have is very much situated within specific contexts. However, within art (and I use ‘art’ to render all art forms with no need to use that silo-creating term ‘arts’) we have different ways of creating evidence and impact. As I wrote in my foreword to Shaun McNiff ’s Art as Research: Opportunities and Challenges in 2013: I am deeply influenced by Michael Polanyi’s most famous work Personal Knowledge ([1958] 1998) and whose thinking tendered the belief that creative acts of discovery are charged with strong personal feelings and commitments which form tacit knowledge. (ix–x)

Polanyi clearly knew that science was not ‘value-free’, yet since the 1950s the general orthodoxy (and frequently the equally less-informed funding bureaucrats, as well meaning as they might be) tends to imply that somehow science supersedes all with a ‘pure way of knowing’. In other words, ‘If it can’t be measured it has no value.’ As a consequence, art was (and sometimes still is), in comparison, seen as representing something less desirable and derisibly subjective. On both accounts I believe this to be wrong. What is fallacious with this argument is that ways of knowing and being are powerful and are of no less interest to an art researcher than data might be to scientists or the social scientists. In more recent years we have seen a growing collection of published work on embodied knowledge(s). This has, in many ways, assisted a broader understanding and importance of personal knowledge. In my book Teaching Actors: Knowledge Transfer in Actor Training (2012), I attempted to gain deeper

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insights into practitioner knowledge using an interview and case study approach. Tacit knowledge, knowledge that is richly embedded by experience but not necessarily something readily communicable in words, is a significant component of expertise and facility. My research demonstrates that actor trainers’ ‘knowledge is generated through direct, personal and experientially derived meaning’ (Prior 2012: 193). This view values the importance of knowledge that is incrementally gained through the act of doing and being. It was Jerome Bruner in the 1980s who drew a distinction between the ‘paradigmatic or logico-scientific’ mode of knowing from the ‘narrative’ mode of knowing (1986: 12). Bruner points out that narrative is built around the concern for the ‘human condition’, and therefore it is not expressed without feeling. Of course, feeling is the distinctive quality of an aesthetic education and applied use of art. Feeling is deeply and unashamedly personal at its core. On the issue of subjectivity, it must be remembered that art may be subjective but so too can science or social science be subjective. After all, who chooses the questions? Art is actually empirical – art research can be based on, concerned with or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. Art and art processes are observable. Further, subjective knowing can be divided into two ontological levels of knowing: explicit and tacit. I have previously written that ‘as researchers we must find time and ways to stop, step back and reflect, particularly during artistic creation. This allows the reflective artist or artist-researcher to fully recognize what it is they know’ (Prior 2013: 165). This is precisely why we can call it ‘research’. As such the Art-Based Research (ABR) or Art as Research movement offers us the illumination we require within the applied arts field. It provides a confidence in the artist and the artistic process. Shaun McNiff has contributed monumentally to advancing our understanding of ABR. He advocates: Art is a way of knowing, problem solving, healing and transformation that we marginalize if we do not embrace it as a vehicle of research.

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There is a striking disconnect when people and professions understanding the unique resources of the arts in addressing problems and issues inaccessible to verbal analysis nevertheless persist in the use of the latter as an exclusive foundation of research. (McNiff 2013: xiii)

As I see it, many of the problems in our research into applied arts practice stem from trying to put into words, or force into non-artfriendly research frameworks, what art or the aesthetic form does distinctly from science and social science. In applied art, be it music, theatre, dance, painting and so on, the nature of the work is in relation to feelings engendered through doing and being. McNiff reminds us that ‘the creative act involves doing things differently, sometimes even in unthinkable and illogical ways, which can be risky when the world values conformity and prescribed truths’ (2015: 2). If I can point to where we still have much work to do, it would have to be our continued lack of confidence in using art as that vehicle of research and the urgent need to stop relying upon other disciplines to justify the power of art. Time and time again I see research reports that have become almost meaningless in the reporting of how an applied art form was used in a project. The results are often presented in an unimaginative quasi-scientific structure and the lived experience of participants reduced to a series of tables or artificially constructed schema. Even the use of survey lets us down with frequently stultifying questions being asked of participants. I have also witnessed a desire to prove the longitudinal benefits of applied arts projects. Longitudinal studies of this type are most likely never to be fulfilling to the researchers concerned as correlation rather than causality is the likely outcome. Much intervenes in a person’s life and this complexity cannot be reduced to attributing moments of applied art ‘intervention’. I use the word ‘intervention’ with great caution as it sits somewhat uncomfortably with me. I know that some health and community workers may accord preference to the use of this word, but I do not entirely see art as an intervention but rather a creative act we can do willingly either individually or collaboratively.

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However, this is a point for further debate and analysis to be taken up elsewhere. Occupational therapy has an established tradition of understanding the importance of doing. However, applied arts practice offers participants more than just doing, otherwise we could be discussing any activity such as sport or other recreational activity, which of course has its place. However, the communal aspect of applied arts practice is clearly a decisive strength of the work, but it does not rest there. The act of personal creating is a rich process leading to new outcomes. The creative process, as applied to art, allows for the participant or participants to understand what is at stake, identify problems, discover gaps in knowledge, search for solutions, play with alternatives and develop more complete understandings, all through active artistic practice. Art is powerful as it leads us to the deepest places of human feeling, provides enlightenment and raises the human spirit. McNiff reminds us that creative action must essentially also contain moments of pausing in order to go deeper as any good research purports to do: An action focus does not have to be forced or driven. Movement is subtle as well as overt. It incorporates elements of stillness, quiet, and reflection – but in keeping with the nature of any living thing, kinesis is ongoing, even if unseen. Again, the best model is breadth and the instinctive gestures of the body. (2015: 32)

Applied drama and applied theatre practitioners have, from the beginning, used the power of the pause as an integral component of their applied practice. Pausing or freezing the action allows for essential moments of analysis, contemplation, comment and reflection. Other possibilities and deeper understandings are generated in ways that may not ordinarily be possible without these pauses. The true skill of the facilitator comes into play in not only managing these pauses but also engendering a conducive atmosphere for reflection.

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We must also acknowledge the need for different research methods to be employed in a range of circumstances. The interplay between art and science may be interesting. However, artists or artist-researchers should not ignore what it is that art can teach us and how art may be used as the research method. Full confidence in art being used as a research method with artistic research outcomes must be supported. When partnering with health organizations, for example, there needs to be an acknowledgement that scientific methods of research may not be appropriate, nor might they provide useful ways of verifying the value of the work. While of demonstrated and observable benefit to the human condition, the use of applied arts is not a scientific medical treatment per se; therefore, clarity of purpose and method must be a first consideration in applying the arts to a range of circumstances such as therapy, education or social impact. Much more work needs to be encouraged in this area of research by asking some fundamental questions to some very fundamental problems. I trust that this book will add to your own explorations and inform your future needs to evidence and evaluate impact in theatre, music and art in more meaningful ways.

Notes Chapter 6 1 AHRC project application, JES 914665, September 2011 to March 2014. 2 The diagnostic criteria changed while the project was in progress with the transition from DSM IV to DSM 5. 3 Children were assessed using the ADOS and Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scale, second edition (Sparrow et al. 2005). Evidence of change at the group level was observed on two ADOS domains, the Vineland and the Emotion Recognition test. 4 The results in the creativity/play domain were reported as not statistically significant (z = 0.863 p = 0.405, d = 0.08). However, two children showed noteworthy changes in their imaginative play on the ADOS. 5 All participants’ names have been changed to preserve confidentiality.

Chapter 7 1 Wild at Heart is available from the CuriousWorks website: http://www. curiousworks.com.au/project/episode-6-wild-at-heart/

Chapter 8 1 Quotations from participants are taken from focus group discussions and responses to research cycle prompts with participants and facilitators from three arts in mental health groups. These were recorded through mind mapping, creative writing responses and researcher field notes occurring between November 2013 and April 2014. All responses are anonymized.

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Chapter 10 1 Staging Human Rights, a project initiated by Paul Heritage (QMUL) and People’s Palace Projects, was supported by a range of partners and funders including the Brazilian Ministry of Justice, the British Council, The Arts and Humanities Research Board and the National Lottery Charities Board. For more information, see www.peoplespalace.org.uk. 2 There are a number of documentaries that give access to prison theatre including Medea Project: Concrete Jungle (2006), dir. R. Jones, USA; Mickey B. (2008), dir. T. Magill, Northern Ireland; Shakespeare Behind Bars (2004), dir. H. Rogerson, USA; We Just Telling Stories (2001), dir. L. Andrews, USA; What I Want My Words to Do to You: Voices from inside a Women’s Maximum Security Prison (2003), dir. J. Katz, USA. 3 National Criminal Justice Alliance Evidence Library, https://www. artsincriminaljustice.org.uk/evidence-library (accessed 16 June 2016). 4 For example, see Thompson (2009), Winston (2011) and Woodland (2016).

Chapter 18 1 The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMBWEBS), http:// www.healthscotland.com/documents/1467.aspx 2 CORE-OM Outcome Measurement Tool, http://www.coreims.co.uk/ About_Measurement_CORE_Tools.html

References Introduction Arnstein, S. R. (1969), ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, Journal of American Planning Association, 35 (4): 216–24. Faulkner, A. (2004), The Ethics of Survivor Research: Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Research Carried out by Mental Health Service Users and Survivors, Bristol: The Policy Press. Finkelpearl, T. (2014), ‘Participatory Art’, in M. Kelly (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haraway, D. (1988), ‘Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, Feminist Studies, 14 (1): 575–99. Latour, B. (2004), ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry, 30: 225–48. Raw, A., S. Lewis, A. Russell and J. Macnaughton (2012), ‘A Hole in the Heart: Confronting the Drive for Evidence-based Impact Research in Arts in Health’, Arts & Health, an International Journal for Research, Policy & Practice, 4 (2): 97–108. Stickley, T. (2012), ‘Introduction’, in T. Stickley (ed.), Qualitative Research in Arts and Mental Health, vii–xi, Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

Chapter 1 Carey, J. (2005), What Good are the Arts? London: Faber and Faber. Clift, S. (2012), ‘Creative Arts as a Public Health Resource: Moving from Practice-based Research to Evidence-based Practice’, Perspectives in Public Health, 132 (3): 120–7. de Botton, A. (2014), ‘Alain de Botton’s Guide to Art as Therapy’, The Guardian, 2 January. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2014/jan/02/alain-de-botton-guide-art-therapy (accessed 6 August 2016).

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Chapter 2 Belfiore, E. (2016), ‘The Arts and Healing: The Power of an Idea’, in S. Clift and P. M. Camic (eds), Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing, 11–17, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Belfiore, E. and O. Bennett (2008), The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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Chapter 8 Arnoldi, J. (2009), Risk, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bergold, J. and S. Thomas (2012), ‘Participatory Research Methods: A Methodological Approach in Motion’, Historical Social Research, 37 (4): 191–222. Bracken, P., P. Thomas, S. Timimi, E. Asen, G. Behr, C. Beuster, S. Bhunnoo, et al. (2012), ‘Psychiatry Beyond the Current Paradigm’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 201 (6): 430–4.

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Van Lith, T., M. J. Schofield and P. Fenner (2013), ‘Identifying the Evidencebase for Art-based Practices and their Potential Benefit for Mental Health Recovery: A Critical Review’, Disability and Rehabilitation, 35, (16): 1309–23. Walsh, M. (2013), Art and Psychoanalysis, London: I. B. Tauris. White, M. (2009), Arts Development in Community Health: A Social Tonic, London: Radcliffe. Wright, K. (2009), Mirroring and Attunement: Self-realization in Psychoanalysis and Art, Hove: Routledge.

Chapter 14 Ansdell, G. and M. Pavlicevic (2005), ‘Musical Companionship, Musical Community. Music Therapy and the Process and Value of Musical Communication’, in D. Miell, R. MacDonald and D. Hargreaves (eds), Musical Communication, 193–214, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benzon, W. (2001), Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture, New York: Basic Books. Clift, S. (2012), ‘Creative Arts as a Public Health Resource: Moving from Practice-based Research to Evidence-based Practice’, Perspectives in Public Health, 132: 120–7. Clift, S., G. Hancox, I. Morrison, M. Shipton, S. Page, A. Skingley and T. Vella-Burrows (2016), ‘Group Singing as a Public Health Resource’, in S. Clift and P. M. Camic (eds), Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crabtree, B. F. and W. Miller (1999), Doing Qualitative Research, London: Sage Publications. DeNora, T. (2000), Music in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DeNora, T. (2013), Music Asylums: Wellbeing Through Music in Everyday Life, Farnham: Ashgate. Engeström, Y. (1999), ‘Activity Theory and Individual Transformation’, in Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen and R-L. Punamaki (eds), Perspectives on Activity Theory, 19–38, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Henley, J., L. S. Caulfield, D. Wilson and D. Wilkinson (2012), ‘Good Vibrations: Positive Change through Social Music-making’, Music Education Research, 14 (4): 499–520. Mellor, L., C. Bates and M. Bonshor (2016), Converge Music Research Project: A Report on the Impact and Benefits of Shared Musical Experience with Adults who use Mental Health Services with Converge, a Social Enterprise in a University Setting, York St John University : ICCM. Varvarigou, M., S. Hallam, A. Creech and H. McQueen (2016), ‘Intergenerational Music-making: a Vehicle for Active-aging for Children and Older People’, in S. Clift and P. M. Camic (eds), Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Welch, G. (2011), ‘Culture and Gender in a Cathedral Music Context: An Activity Theory Exploration’, in M. S. Barrett (ed.), A Cultural Psychology of Music Education, 225–58, New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 15 Anderson, M., D. Cameron and P. Sutton, eds (2014), Innovation, Technology and Converging Practices in Drama Education and Applied Theatre, London: Routledge. De Groose, T (2015), ‘Foreword’, in K. Duncan (ed.), The Diagrams Book: 50 Ways to Solve any Problem Visually, London: LID Publishing. Freebody, K. and M. Finneran, eds (2016), Drama and Social Justice: Theory Research and Practice in International Contexts, London: Routledge. NESTA/AHRC/Arts Council England (2015), ‘Digital Culture 2015: How Arts and Cultural Organisations in England Use Technology’. Available online: http://artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Digital-Culture2015-Final.pdf (accessed 9 October 2016). Owen, H. (2008), Open Space Technology, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Inc.

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Chapter 16 Bernardi, C. (2009), ‘On the Dramaturgy of Communities’, in S. Jennings (ed.), Dramatherapy and Social Theatre: Necessary Dialogues, East Sussex: Routledge. Bruhn, J. G. (2005), The Sociology of Community Connections, New York: Springer. Corbett, B. A., A. P. Key, L. Qualls, S. Fecteau, C. Newsom, C. Coke and P. Yoder (2015), ‘Improvement in Social Competence Using a Randomized Trial of a Theatre Intervention for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1–15. Corrigan, P. W., A. C. Watson and L. Barr (2006), ‘The Self-stigma of Mental Illness: Implications for Self-esteem and Self-efficacy’, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25 (8): 875–84. Cowie, H. and N. Hutson (2005), ‘Peer Support: A Strategy to Help Bystanders Challenge School Bullying’, Pastoral Care in Education, 23 (2): 40–4. De Certeau, M. (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life, London: University of California Press. Dewey, J. (1969), Interest and Efforts in Education, Bath: Chivers. Heller, T., L. Rowitz and B. Farber (1992), The Domestic Cycle of Families of Persons with Mental Retardation, Chicago: University of Illinois Affiliated Programme in Developmental Disabilities and School of Public Health. Jindal-Snape, D. and E. Vettraino (2007), ‘Drama Techniques for the Enhancement of Social-motional Development in People with Special Needs: Review of Research’, International Journal of Special Education, 22 (1): 107–17. Noice, H., T. Noice and G. Staines (2004), ‘A Short-term Intervention to Enhance Cognitive and Affective Functioning in Older Adults’, Journal of Aging and Health, 16 (4): 562–85. Nunemacher, K., J. Augustine, E. Benevento, L. Columna, M. Luke, T. Lowney, E. Ingram, N. Russo and K. Heffernan (May 2015), Social Inclusion,

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Movement and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Adults with Intellectual Disabilities, San Diego, CA: American College of Sports Medicine. Peter, M. (2000a), ‘Developing Drama with Children with Autism’, Good Autism Practice, 1 (1): 9–20. Peter, M. (2000b), ‘Drama: Communicating with People with Learning Disabilities’, Journal of Nursing and Residential Care, 2: 78–82. Robles, A. M., N. Russo, M. Luke, E. Ingram, L. Columna and K. Heffernan (2013), ‘The Social Benefits of the “All Star C.A.S.T.”: A Community Theatre Programme for Adults with Development, Physical and Psychiatric Difficulties’, PRIDE Symposium, Syracuse University, Syracuse. Schnapp, L. and C. Olsen (2003), ‘Teaching Self-advocating Strategies through Drama’, Intervention in School and Clinic, 38 (4): 211–19. Slade, P. (1998), ‘The Importance of Dramatic Play in Education and Therapy’, Child Psychology and Psychiatry Review, 3 (3): 110–12. Taylor, P. (2003), Applied Theater: Creating Transformative Encounters in the Community, London: Greenwood Press. Thompson, J. (2003), ‘Applied theater: Bewilderment and beyond’, in B. P. Lang (ed.), Digging Up Stories: Applied Theater, Performance and War, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Walsh, R. T., M. Kosidoy and L. Swanson (1991), ‘Promoting Social-emotional Development through Creative Drama for Students with Special Needs’, Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 10 (1): 153–66.

Chapter 17 Catto, S. (2016), Personal conversation via email, 23 February. Keshishian, C. (2015), Group conversation called ‘Connecting the Conversation’, London, 17 March. Morris, C. and M. Higgs (2014), Judith Scott: Bound and Unbound, Brooklyn Museum: del Monico Books. Potter, S. (2016), Personal conversation via email, 12 February. Woodland, S. (2016), ‘The Art of Living in Prison: The Poetics of Renewal in an Applied Theatre Program with Women Prisoners’, unpublished PhD thesis, Griffith University, Australia.

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Chapter 18 Kilroy, Amanda (2008), Invest to Save. Arts in Health Evaluation. Exploring the Impact of Creativity, Culture, and the Arts, on Health and Wellbeing, Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University.

Chapter 19 Benjamin, W. (1973 [1955]), ‘The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov’, in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, London: Fontana. Dewey, J. (1938), Experience and Education, New York: Collier Books. Print. Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008), The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, trans. Saskia Iris Jain, London: Routledge. Maguire, T. (2015), Performing Story on the Contemporary Stage, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Mead, G. (2011), Coming Home to Story: Storytelling Beyond Happily Ever After, Bristol: Vala Publishing. O’Connor, P. and M. Anderson (2015), Applied Theatre: Research – Radical Departures, London: Bloomsbury. Reason, M. (2010), ‘Asking the Audience: Audience Research and the Experience of Theatre’, About Performance, 10: 15–34. Ryan, P. and Donna S. (2014), ‘Can You Describe the Experience?’ Storytelling, Self, Society, 10 (2): 131–55. Sawyer, R. (1942), The Way of the Storyteller, New York: The Viking Press.

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Chapter 21 Croggon, A. (2014), ‘Melbourne Festival: Hipbone Sticking Out – Review’, ABC Arts. Available online: http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/AlisonCroggon/Melbourne-Festival-Hipbone-Team-of-Life-review-141020/ default.htm (accessed 20 October 2014).

Afterword Bruner, J. (1986), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McNiff, S., ed. (2013), Art as Research: Opportunities and Challenges, Bristol: Intellect. McNiff, S. (2015), Imagination in Action: Secrets for Unleashing Creative Expression, Boston, MA: Shambhala. Polanyi, M. ([1958] 1998), Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post Critical Philosophy, London: Routledge. Prior, R. W. (2010), ‘Editorial’, Journal of Applied Arts and Health, Bristol: Intellect, 1(1): 3–6. Prior, R. W. (2012), Teaching Actors: Knowledge Transfer in Actor Training, Bristol: Intellect. Prior, R. W. (2013), ‘Foreword’, in S. McNiff (ed.), Art as Research: Opportunities and Challenges, ix–xi, Bristol: Intellect

Index accountability 126, 127 action research 52–3, 112–13 advocacy 31, 83, 125 Aesop 72 aesthetics 31, 64, 96, 98, 100, 157; aesthetic experience 41–2, 43– 4, 47, 100; aesthetic knowledge 100–1; aesthetic turn 41 affect 32, 37, 42–3, 46, 90–1, 94, 96, 105; affective knowing 57 All Star CAST 193, 217–23 Amakhosi Theatre 163–5 anecdotes 35, 48, 86, 192 appropriateness of methodology 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 137, 138 Art Knows No Boundaries 246 Arts and Minds Network 231, 235 arts-based research 48, 56–8, 227, 238 Arts Council of England (ACE) 69, 80, 144, 154 arts in health 67–79 Aurier, Philippe 105, 106, 284 autism 80, 83, 85–6, 88–93

Clift, Stephen 14, 20, 34, 202 Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation (CORE) 77, 234 Coady, C.A.J. 145–6 configurational act 92–3 Conquergood, Dwight 32, 33 Converge 14, 19, 109–10, 118–20, 202–9, 226 cost effectiveness 34, 35, 69, 76, 138, 143, 245 Craft, Anna 115–16 creative risk-taking 109–10, 113–15, 118, 119–20, 121 creativity 94, 113, 115–17, 118, 120–1, 218, 231, 236; facilitated creativity 116, 122 Crossick, Geoffrey 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 137 cultural value 97, 123, 125, 138 dance

Badacchino, John 32 beauty 44–7, 96–108, 149 Belfiore, Eleonora 28, 30, 31, 41 Bellingham, Paul 229 Bennett, Oliver 28, 31, 41 Bergold, Jarg 53, 55, 111, 112 Big hART 254–60 Borgdorff, Henk 31–2 Bradby, Hannah 127

40, 58, 107, 109, 118–20, 156, 163, 221, 236, 246 data visualization 215, 216 de Botton, Alain 12, 30 deficit 172, 176, 178, 183, 186 Denzin, Norman 49, 56, 157, 159, 163, 169 Dewey, John 43, 242 disability 52, 111, 192, 218, 224; learning disability 222, 224, 226 Disability Research and Indpendent Living 52 documentation 87, 140–1, 151, 225; ethnographic documentation 130; logbook 168–9

C&T 211–14 Carey, John 12 Chambers, Erve 162, 170

efficacy 13, 219, 220, 223 embodied objectivity 46–7 emotions 104–5

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Index

epistemic injustice 146–8 ethics 16, 49, 88, 146, 147, 203, 238, 253; and aesthetics 87, 93–4; and participation 4, 16, 54 ethnography, ethnographic 65, 127, 130, 133, 135, 148, 157–9, 161, 169, 170 evaluation 15–17, 19, 23, 93, 97–9, 107–8, 141–2, 245, 249–53 evidence 1–2, 24–6, 30; and art processes 12, 48, 58; behaviour change 250–3; credibility gap 145; hierarchy of 27, 28, 33, 36, 70, 72, 111, 128, 186; instrumentality 35, 39, 42, 46; law 7, 8, 193, 263; rigour 6, 7, 35, 69, 70, 72, 76; scientific method 2, 50, 71, 85 evidence-based practice 26, 27–8, 31, 70, 78, 129 expert, death of 4–5

Imagining Autism 81–2, 87, 90–1 impact: economic 69, 76, 143, 149; educational 14, 19–20, 44, 152–3, 202, 207; intrinsic 30, 41; long term 193, 245, 251–2, 253; social 30–1, 37–9, 41, 46, 154, 192 Improbable Theatre 213 improvisation 119–20 inclusive culture / environment 131, 134, 136, 218 indeterminacy 15, 238–42 instrumentalism 38–42, 46, 82, 88, 97–8 interdisciplinary 71, 80, 81–2, 91, 137; hybridity 33, 83; transdiciplinarity 64, 82, 87 intersubjective 31, 100, 101, 104, 113

falsification 13, 14 feedback loop 87, 94, 239 Finnegan, Ruth 159 Foster, Susan 119 Fricker, Miranda 146–7 funders 15, 16, 21, 35, 49, 52, 65, 125, 126, 134, 141, 219, 232, 233, 236–7, 253, 257 Geddes, John 27 Geertz, Clifford 163 Goffman, Erving 19, 157 Graeae Theatre Company 14 Guintcheva, Guergana 105, 106, 284

Kaszynaska, Patrycja 123, 124, 126, 128, 129, 137 Kay, John 21 Kelly, Owen 110 Keshishian, Carlo 228 Kester, Grant 112 Kingsbury, Nigel 228 Kitcher, Phillip 6–7 knowledge 24, 27–9, 43, 50, 53, 146; a priori 25, 29; embodied 53, 170, 263; indigenous 156–7, 170–1; situated 5, 31, 32, 111–12, 121; tacit 26, 31, 32, 38, 109, 263, 264 Kossak, Mitchell 30, 35

Haraway, Donna 5, 47, 111 Hargreaves, Janet 127 Haseman, Brad 41, 42–3, 163 Holden, John 123, 125, 126, 128 Holmes, Sherlock 25 Hughes, Jenny 144

language, limitation of 98, 148, 178 Latour, Bruno 5–6 law 7–8 lived experience 5–7, 51, 65, 112, 156, 172, 265

Joyce, Jim

25

Index McNiff, Shaun 11, 30, 57, 263, 264–5, 266 Magpie Dance 226 Maslow, Abraham 115 Matarasso, François 38, 98, 99 Medical Research Council (UK) 71 mental health 16–17, 19, 48, 75–7, 109–22, 172–3, 177–87, 201, 209, 217, 231, 236, 238; recovery 181–5 Mind the Gap Theatre Company 18 Miyahara, Kojiro 100–1 Murdoch, Iris 45 music 29, 30, 37, 40, 43–4, 47, 88, 127, 202–9, 246; choir/singing 73–8, 196, 197, 201, 207, 209 narrative: discovery narrative 179–81; recovery narrative 48, 181–5 narrative identity 93, 177–8; research 175 Networked Theatre 211, 213, 214 objectification 111, 112 objectivity 5, 52, 85, 86, 101, 111, 112 obliquity 20–2, 49, 242 Ockleford, Adam 88 Open Space Technology 212 orality 157, 159–60 Orange is the New Black 139 Osborne, Thomas Mott 150–1 Osment, Philip (Inside) 151–4 Outside In 224–30 outsider artist 185, 228 participation, tyranny of 54 participatory: democracy 7; research 48–59, 157–8 Pearce, Eilunen 39–40 peer review 98 performative social science 49, 56, 58–9

305

Petticrew, Mark 33, 68, 71 Popper, Karl 13 popular criminology 149 positive bias 83, 125, 127, 252 positivism 25, 128 postcolonialism 96, 156 Potter, Susan 226 Prior, Ross 30, 31 prison 65, 139–55, 192, 195, 201, 256 Public Health England 72 qualitative research 51, 75, 79, 81, 85, 87, 95, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 135, 136, 137, 172–4, 203; interviews 165–7, 175–6 quality, quality indicators 123, 125, 128, 129, 136, 137, 138 quality of life 73–4, 173 quantitative research 64, 70, 76–8, 79, 80, 83, 85; quantitative turn 127 race-based discrimination 95, 104 Rafter, Nicole 149 randomised control trials (RCTs) 14, 27, 33, 49–50, 76 Reason, Matthew 113, 241 Reason, Peter 53 reflective practice 71, 130 Ricoeur, Paul 92, 177, 179 risk 180 (see also creative risktaking); avoidance 114 Roberts, Helen 33, 71 Robson, Mary 127 Ruti, Mari 121 Sagan, Olivia 7, 27, 30, 31, 35, 115 Saldaña, Johnny 161 Scarry, Elaine 45, 46, 95, 96, 98, 100, 104, 106 scientific method 11, 13, 14–15, 20, 49, 52, 57 Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health 72–7

306

Index

Simonton, D.K. 115 Small, Christopher 40 Snow, C.P. 11–12 social capital 67, 209 social media 210, 212, 214 Stages of Change 251 Staricoff, Rosalia 68 Steene, Mark 224 Steiner, Wendy 100 Stepping Out Theatre Company 14 Stickley, Theo 2, 29, 35 storytelling 96, 238 subjective 6–7, 47, 49, 165, 263, 264; subjective experience 79, 91, 99 subjectivity 5, 11, 47, 86, 104, 112, 264 testimony 7–8, 34, 87, 134, 145–6, 149, 155 theatre 64, 97, 217, 246; community theatre 218–19, 247, 249; for development 159–61, 168–9; Forum Theatre 247–8; immersive/interactive theatre 88, 90, 94, 211, 247–52; prison theatre 139–55

therapy, therapeutic 19, 30, 82, 88, 121, 144, 174, 177, 186, 266 thick description 162–3, 172, 175 Thomas, Stefan 53, 55, 111, 112 Thompson, James 42, 44, 99, 100, 106 Trinder, Liz 26–7, 28 trustworthiness 129, 135 Turner, Victor 157 two cultures 12 unblinding 86–7 Walmsley, Ben 97 Ward, Sally 229 Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale 19–20, 234 Weiss, Gail 92–3 White, Garth 42 White, Mike 14, 37–8, 70–1 Williams, Raymond 43 Winston, Joe 41, 42–3, 44, 45–6 Wisdom of Crowds 214–15 young people 44, 153–4, 211, 238, 240–5, 249–50, 256–7