Victoria Foster

‘WAYS OF KNOWING AND SHOWING’: IMAGINATION AND REPRESENTATION IN FEMINIST PARTICIPATORY SOCIAL RESEARCH

This article considers how the arts, creativity and imagination can be employed in feminist sociological inquiry in order to capture the complex nature of human lives and to authentically represent research findings. This dual concern is reflected in the articles title which comes from Amanda Kemps work. Here she describes her one‐woman show as using performance ‘both as a way of knowing and as a way of showing’. The arts offer a way for researchers and research participants to examine their lived experience, to reflect creatively upon this, and to know themselves more deeply. The arts can also guide an enriched writing of research and vivify the dissemination of results, stirring the audiences imagination with the outcome, in line with feminist researchs principal aim, of effecting change on a variety of levels. The article reflects upon a participatory, arts‐based research project carried out at a Sure Start programme in North West England. Here, the arts were employed throughout the research process: visual art, poetry and short‐film making offered innovative and emotive methods of collecting data and of encouraging self‐reflection in research participants; drama was used as a means of disseminating the results of the research to a wide and varied audience.

What if? The use of poetry to promote social justice

This paper looks at the use of poetry as a social research method and describes the underlying philosophy as well as the practical processes involved in carrying out such an approach. It draws on an ESRC-funded research project which took place at a Sure Start programme in an impoverished town in North West England. Sure Start was a New Labour initiative working with families with young children in disadvantaged areas. The research used poetry as one of several means of working with the community in order to look at the effectiveness of the local programme and to explore peoples experiences of parenting in poverty. The paper discusses some of the poems produced during this project and questions the extent to which an arts-based approach to social inquiry can challenge dominant ideologies of oppressed people and provide an alternative discourse. This is particularly important in social work education in terms of addressing pre-conceptions that students may have about those marginalised groups that they are likely to be working with in their future practice as social workers. It concludes that poetic texts can provide insight into the lives of others, and can generate important discussion in the process of their interpretation.

Social work, ideology, discourse and the limits of post-hegemony:

• Summary: This article critically examines the problematic status of ideology (and discourse) with regard to social work, and, in relation, questions any contested elevation of sociological theories which suggest we now live in a ‘post-hegemonic’ age. Three types of ideology relating to social work are explored, and it is proposed that such case examples (among others) have, and continue to, maintain a significant influence within state social work. Examples include the role of science, neo-liberalism and professionalism. Each is examined through the work of Althusser, Gramsci and Foucault to underline their significance. • Findings: Within social work there is evidence to support aspects of the social or political fragmentary trends stressed by advocates of a post-hegemony thesis. However, here it is argued instead that reliance upon hegemony has actually increased rather than disappeared as social work has become less structured, more uncertain and increasingly dependent upon unpredictable markets of social care. • Applications: Critical yet careful analysis of the relationship between ideology and social work can help us to increase understanding of social work practice and education.

Authentic Representation? Using video as counter-hegemony in participatory research with poor working-class women

Abstract This paper examines the processes and outcomes of employing video in a feminist participatory research project at a Sure Start programme in the United Kingdom. Sure Start is a government initiative targeting young children and their families in order to ameliorate health, social and educational disadvantages. The project worked with a group of poor working-class mothers who went on to produce their own visual accounts of their experiences of raising children in poverty. The paper looks at the hegemonic representations of poor working-class women in the popular media and discusses how the use of participatory video can challenge these taken-for-granted images, thus providing an ‘authentic’ alternative to commonly held assumptions.

Pantomime and politics: The story of a performance ethnography

The article looks at the alternative forms of knowledge that can be generated by a participatory, arts-based social research process. It draws on a project carried out with working-class women in the North West of England, UK, during the course of which a performance ethnography was developed depicting women’s experiences of motherhood and their interactions with a local Sure Start programme. The transcript of the play produced during the research process, The Wizard of Us, is interspersed here with discussion of how the research was carried out and the motives underlying the methodological approach taken. It looks at the extent to which a process involving stories, theatrics and ‘artifice’ can make claims of validity and authenticity and concludes by questioning the potential of the work to transform lives.

The use of routinely collected patient data for research: a critical review.

Over recent years in the UK there has been growing interest in the potential for routinely collected NHS (National Health Service) patient data to be used for secondary purposes, facilitated by the potential of increasingly sophisticated electronic databases. This article is based on a critically reflective literature review which analyses the key debates pertaining to this issue. The work arose in the context of a programme of research concerning routine patient data use in neonatal care. The article includes analysis of commentary (opinion and ethical inquiry) as well as empirically derived claims. It aims to deconstruct the knowledge assumptions on which relevant research studies have been based or are proposed and it also incorporates ontological position and moral argument. Results are presented according to three predominant debates: the prevailing claim that all health research benefits civic society; the varieties of informed consent and choices open to patients regarding secondary uses of their data; and the ‘rights and responsibilities’ of patients when it comes to their data being used for research purposes. It examines the relevance of these themes specifically to the neonatal context and the implications for our own research, concluding that employing an alternative ethical model to the traditional professional one might be useful in order to provide a further perspective on the issue.

The pleasure principle: employing arts-based methods in social work research

This article considers how the arts can be used in research with service users as a critical praxis that fits with the ethos of social work research. It discusses a research project that took place at a Sure Start programme in North West England, UK. Sure Start is a government initiative working with families with pre-school-age children in the most socially and economically disadvantaged areas of the country. The project recruited local, working-class mothers to carry out research into the effectiveness of the programme and into their contemporaries’ experiences of parenting, often in poverty. It employed drama as a means of communicating the research findings, involving local mothers in constructing and performing two plays. One play took the form of an ‘ethnodrama’, whilst the other was influenced by pantomime. The paper looks at the context for applying this methodology and discusses the process of doing so. It then moves on to consider the success of the project, looking at various means of assessing the quality of arts-based research, which include the pleasure and enjoyment it brings. It concludes with the voices of some of the participants and their reflections on the process.

Reflecting on participatory methodologies: research with parents of babies requiring neonatal care

This article concerns a study that examines the attitudes of parents, who have had babies in neonatal care, to sharing their babies’ routinely collected health data for research purposes. A participatory methodology was applied to the design of the study; a group of eleven parents who had all previously had babies in neonatal care were involved in designing a large-scale questionnaire survey. The article addresses the rationale for taking this approach, highlighting how it differs from the more common models of patient and public involvement. It presents the five themes that emerged from parents’ discussion in the course of engaging in the questionnaire design: legitimation, expertise, experiential knowledge, a different epistemology, power and control. How these shaped the design of the survey is employed in this article as a means of providing a commentary on the participatory research process itself. The article concludes by reflecting on whether participatory research can achieve its aims of promoting social justice when used for instrumental purposes such as the refinement of a data collection tool.

Evaluating Drama-Based Crime Prevention: Problems, Politics, and New Directions

There is considerable international interest in the ways arts- and drama-based education might benefit young people, especially those with limited access to cultural opportunities (e.g., Bamford, 2006). The potential contribution of arts- and drama-based interventions to rehabilitating “young offenders” or improving the resilience of those identified as “at risk” of offending has also been emphasized (see, amongst others, Angus McLewin Associates, 2011; Catterall et al., 2012; Hughes, 2005; Stone et al., 1997, 1998). In the national context which forms the focus of this chapter, a strategic partnership between the Youth Justice Board, which oversees youth (i.e., juvenile) justice services in England and Wales,1 and Arts Council England, the national arts development agency, has recently encouraged such initiatives and highlighted existing work. Summer Arts Colleges, intended for “high-risk” young people under statutory supervision, involved arts organizations as partners and aimed to use creative activities to improve participants’ basic skills, reduce offending, and provide a stepping stone to employment or educational pathways (Johnson et al., 2011; Tarling & Adams, 2012). Drama-based workshops have been offered by local “youth offending teams” (Hughes & Ruding, 2009) and used within targeted support services for young people identified as “at risk” of offending, for example as part of the Positive Activities for Young People program, which was nationally supported from 2003–06 (Arts Council, 2006).