Arts based and creative methods EDU61005 Researching digital childhoods

This session is based on Jessica Bradley's research in linguistic landscapes, which uses arts based methods to explore understandings of language with young people. The website is here. We will be joined by Louise Atkinson, an artist researcher who collaborates with Jessica for the project.

Workshop background and summary

In this session we will explore creative inquiry in the context of researching languages in public space. This is often referred to as 'Linguistic Landscapes'. Our session will use methods and approaches from our current collaborative research project, Multilingual Streets: Translating and Curating the Linguistic Landscape. For this project we explore understandings of language as experienced in everyday life and creative methods are central to our inquiry. So far we have worked mainly in the city of Manchester in the north of the UK: in Cheetham Hill and Rusholme. Our work is participatory with young people from two secondary schools based in the city. You can find out more about our current project here. You'll be thinking about this methods in the context of your own research ideas about researching digital childhoods. The project shows the blended nature of research with the arts and with the digital. You'll see that some of our outputs are indeed digital and that we are extending the project to incorporate the 'blended' spaces in which we carry out our everyday lives.

The field of 'Linguistic Landscapes' is very broad. You can find lots of examples of different methodologies used by researchers in this area (see Diggit magazine for an accessible summary). Methods are qualitative and quantitative. However the main methods usually include observation, photography, fieldnotes and interviews, and ethnographic approaches to the study of linguistic landscapes are very common. A number of different apps have been developed to enable researchers – and the general public – to document multilingual signs in public spaces, including the LinguaSnapp app, developed by Yaron Matras at Multilingual Manchester, which enables public audiences to upload multilingual signs and 'tag' them in certain ways. You can download this app and have a play with it.

The signs in public spaces that are of interest to Linguistic Landscapes researchers change frequently, with Linguistic Landscape research offering what can be described as a ‘first line diagnostic’ to researching a particular place, who lives there and works there, and how these places change over time. There are therefore many opportunities for creative development of digital apps, such as LinguaSnapp, to aid research and to give us more insights into particular places, going beyond conventional methods.

During the COVID19 pandemic, researchers have explored the new linguistic landscapes which have emerged. Examples include this project by Jackie Jia Lou, which explores community responses to COVID19, and this research by Zhu Hua which sees multilingualism in crisis in the context of information signs and handwritten notices.

In our project we foreground creative methods and see them as integral to our inquiry. Here is an example of one of the creative outputs from the project, which is a zine created from images some of the young people we worked with made and data they collected. What are your initial thoughts when looking at this zine? We suggest you read our paper (Bradley et al., 2018) and our chapter (Bradley & Atkinson, 2020) (both are available through the resource list) as you prepare for our workshop, as these publications will give you insights into the ways in which we are bringing artistic methods into our research. We are therefore extending the reach of linguistic landscapes research beyond more traditional linguistic research methods. Our work links to theories of dynamic multilingualism (e.g. Garcia & Li, 2014) and spatial repertoires (e.g. Pennycook & Otsuji, 2014), as well as the creative turn in applied linguistics (e.g. Bradley & Harvey, 2019).

Our overarching question for the workshop is as follows:

What are the affordances of creative inquiry in research?

In the workshop we will be working collaboratively to consider the themes emerging from your preparatory work and analyse your collages. It is an exploratory workshop, and these collages are working documents or ‘sketches’. We don’t expect polished artworks and we are certainly not assessing artistic quality!

Materials needed

Phone or similar to take photographs with; background paper (e.g. white A3 paper); coloured paper; pens; magazines/newspapers/fliers etc; glue / scissors

Preparatory work

1. Take a series of photographs around the area in which you live and/or work, or generally spend time. The photographs should reflect language and / or linguistic diversity. They might be indoor spaces or outdoor spaces - up to you! You could even explore online spaces, or a mixture. You can use your phone for this.

2. Select 5-10 images that best represent the idea of language and / or linguistic diversity.

3. Using a sheet of paper as the background (can be white, or can be any colour, should be around A3 size).

4. Cut up coloured paper, newspaper or magazines to recreate shapes and colours from the photographs. You can also cut out lettering.

5. You can also use coloured pens if you wish to write words that you find in the photographs.

6. Your image can be an amalgamation of all of the photographs combined, a number of photographs together or one image.

7. When you have finished your collage, write a short paragraph explaining your process in terms of:

a. Selection of images

b. Chosen image(s) for the collage

c. The collage itself and decisions about media (e.g. pens/coloured paper/newspaper)

d. Types of language(s) represented, e.g. different kinds of signage, levels of temporality, audiences, etc.

8. Using this Google Drive folder link, make a folder with your name (SURNAME_NAME). Add a photograph of your collage, your notes and a selection of your photographs. Please use the following file naming convention: surname_name_image and surname_name_text. Please do this by the class on Thursday 22 April 2021.

Workshop details

In the 10am - 12noon session we will be talking more about arts-based methods and collage, discussing thematic links between your findings, contextualising these within the existing research and considering processes of analysis.

In the 1pm - 3pm session we will be thinking about zines and the role they can play in research. You'll then be able to start to create your own zines. We will be considering the zine as an elaboration on narrative from collage. Zines creates a linear (hierarchical) narrative which guides the reader.

Contact details

Dr Jessica Bradley, Lecturer in Literacies, School of Education, University of Sheffield (Jessica.bradley@sheffield.ac.uk)

Dr Louise Atkinson, Freelance artist-researcher (www.louiseatkinson.co.uk)