Volume 9, numéro 2, 2025 Artful Futures: Reflections on the Evolution of the Arts in Research

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In this short, invited piece for the journal’s 10th anniversary issue, co- founding editors of Art/Research International, Diane Conrad and Patricia Leavy, reflect upon their experiences of envisioning an open access online journal for the publication of creative scholarly research. The journal that evolved realized the inclusive forum they sought to showcase through international and transdisciplinary scholarship that embraced the myriads of creative forms and provocative themes authors were exploring. They are honoured to have played a role in bringing Art/Research to life.

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This article draws attention to the evolution of arts integrated research from the academic margins to broader acceptance by documenting the use of arts integrated research within The HOPE Collaboratory, a global initiative pursuing an HIV cure through the block-lock-stop (BLS) strategy. It highlights the HOPE Community Arts Integrated Research (CAIR) program’s role in fostering community engagement, empathy, inclusion, and hope; enhancing scientific communication and public education; and promoting collaborative knowledge creation for reparative and residual research possibilities. Using the Parallaxic Praxis framework, the project demonstrates how art—through poetry, visual installations, social media, and participatory events—makes complex scientific concepts accessible, amplifies the voices of those affected by HIV, and bridges connections among researchers, communities, and the public. As an example, the article also documents the pedagogical and research significance of the Ecosystem chessboard artwork, a permanent exhibit at four international research sites.

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In 1996, while at a conference in New York City, I happened upon an art exhibit that changed the trajectory of my academic career. In this article, I recount part of my experience of engaging with the installation art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz and its transformative impact on my scholarly work. I reflect on some of the ways in which that chance moment unleashed my latent frustrations about the hegemonic conventions of academic research and inspired a path of possibilities for how social science research could be more meaningful in the lives of individuals and communities. I conclude with a note on the importance of open-mindedness, imagination, and a respect for serendipity in inspiring creativity, informing and, possibly, transforming research.

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In this dialogic exploration of our shared experience of a community-based theatre project (CBT), we consider decisions, processes, and activities we selected to enhance the power of this arts-based research (ABR) form. We chose CBT as we believed it was the best approach to explore activists’ experiences of the challenges of feminist coalition politics within and across equality-seeking organisations. Our dialogues surfaced some key aspects of community theatre-making which we believe contribute to its quality, that is, its value and power to lead us to collaborate, listen deeply, tell stories, imagine a different world, and rehearse for action.

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Welcome the stranger within is a short video danced poem which draws on embodied and poetic ways of inquiry to express the welcoming of all parts of oneself. Integrating contemporary dance and poetry, it is a site-specific performance taken on Denman Island in British Columbia, Canada. The performer, Celeste Nazeli Snowber, explores how one can have a call and response with the earth and open an embodied understanding through cultivating a relationship with body, land, water and what it means to be human.

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This brief piece describes the author’s experience of encountering art. After several initial claims about meeting art, the author offers a poem as an act of offering an artwork when reflecting about art.

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Through a series of projects, this article discusses the role that objects play when art, design, and research intersect. The article is divided into nine sections. After a preamble, I discuss The Pea Project, key to understanding how anomalous objects and odd experiences stimulate reflectiveness, curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. “A Surrealist Encounter” discusses how contexts can be designed to foster reflective and collaborative practice, while Reflective Probes focuses on artifacts designed to stimulate reflective practice. I then discuss activation of receptive modes of engagement through playful triggers and travelling containers. Progetto in Memoriam further explores art, research, and ethnographic practices, and Debris explores simultaneous roles as a designer, artist and ethnographer. While section 8, They Said, looks at how prior learnings were used to deepen my understanding of self, the final section provides conclusive remarks, reiterating the opportunities that exist when art, design, and research intermingle and collide.

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This article brings together two broad areas in arts-based research: curation and the study of how images travel. At the centre of this work is a concern for what might be described as “ethical encounters”, drawing on an autoethnographic project working with family photographs, reenactments, and travel from Canada to the U.K. as the “Old Country”. Questions about who is in the picture and what is said and not said about a family photograph arise about what can be shown, and about stories of what is left out. But this work with family photos and travel does not sit alone; rather, it gives rise to questions about curating participant-generated images in community-based research, including the drawings of war-affected children and photos on gender transformation produced in a variety of Global South contexts. The article concludes with the idea that the concept of travelling offers opportunities to challenge normative, colonial, and hegemonic ideas; maybe even advancing social change.

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This article emphasizes the historical role of storytelling as a way of coming to know. We discuss storytelling in research contexts. We look back on storytelling methodology as a way of looking ahead. Storytelling methodology challenges more conventional approaches to research. It approaches research in a way that is relational, reciprocal, and respectful. Bringing together three studies in the field of lifelong learning, we highlight the storytelling methodology with a focus on intergenerational learning and share key themes that storytelling across generations shares.

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Infusing the arts in scholarly work offers rich insights as well as personal and professional benefits.

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Four years ago, I was invited to take on the position of managing editor for Art/Research International (ARI). As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of ARI, I seek to honour the voices that have informed my own engagement with arts-informed research. As an artful researcher, who is comparatively new to the academy, I wish to centre the importance of looking back in order to look forward. In this article, I slow down and trace my own steps. I honour the guidance that I received having Dr. Ardra Cole as my doctoral supervisor. I detail my process conceptualizing and defending an autoethnographic dissertation containing a collection of stories about coming out as queer later in life. I offer one of the stories from my dissertation, and reflect on how my own work was informed by the question posed by Pauline Sameshima and Carl Leggo (2013), “what does love have to do with education?” (p. 90).