9 Arts-based research work with migrant children
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Genevieve Guetemme
Abstract
‘Migrant children represent a significant share of the refugee population’ (IOM & UNICEF). Many are growing up in bleak conditions, surrounded by poverty and violence. Education is widely recognised as a mean to foster successful integration, but it is not always available or is sometimes too formal with a focus on the values, norms, and experiences of the native population. This can lead to migrant children and ethnic minority pupils gradually developing a sense of inferiority, irrelevance, and resentment (Szalai, 2011, p. 67) Fieldwork supports the importance of informal arts-based education by showing that ‘almost all youths enjoyed taking part in certain remedial and recreational educational activities. For most of them, participation in a wide range of off-site activities, such as language courses, football and basketball, music, painting, and break-dance classes, was a source of excitement’ (Daskalaki & Leivaditi, 2018). Such engagement in combined educational and recreational activities has therefore led many educators to turn to art as a facilitator for learning, socialising, understanding a difficult past, and exploring new directions for the future. During the last 20 years, many artists have been contributing to these arts-based educational experiments. They are convinced that art has a role to play in providing a wider and more complex vision of reality. Then too, researchers have recognised art as a legitimate and useful methodological approach (Greenwood, 2012) to explore the acquisition of knowledge and social inclusion (Jindal-Snape et al., 2018). Arts-based research (ABR) uses art as a methodological research tool in its data generation, analysis, interpretation, and representation.
Abstract
‘Migrant children represent a significant share of the refugee population’ (IOM & UNICEF). Many are growing up in bleak conditions, surrounded by poverty and violence. Education is widely recognised as a mean to foster successful integration, but it is not always available or is sometimes too formal with a focus on the values, norms, and experiences of the native population. This can lead to migrant children and ethnic minority pupils gradually developing a sense of inferiority, irrelevance, and resentment (Szalai, 2011, p. 67) Fieldwork supports the importance of informal arts-based education by showing that ‘almost all youths enjoyed taking part in certain remedial and recreational educational activities. For most of them, participation in a wide range of off-site activities, such as language courses, football and basketball, music, painting, and break-dance classes, was a source of excitement’ (Daskalaki & Leivaditi, 2018). Such engagement in combined educational and recreational activities has therefore led many educators to turn to art as a facilitator for learning, socialising, understanding a difficult past, and exploring new directions for the future. During the last 20 years, many artists have been contributing to these arts-based educational experiments. They are convinced that art has a role to play in providing a wider and more complex vision of reality. Then too, researchers have recognised art as a legitimate and useful methodological approach (Greenwood, 2012) to explore the acquisition of knowledge and social inclusion (Jindal-Snape et al., 2018). Arts-based research (ABR) uses art as a methodological research tool in its data generation, analysis, interpretation, and representation.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents ix
- List of figures and tables xi
- Notes on contributors xiii
- Introduction 1
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Arts-based research as a method to understand and give voice to marginalised groups
- Using arts-based methods to explore existential issues around ageing 13
- Arts- and music-based activities and nondeliberative participatory research methods: building connection and community 24
- Arts-based methods to co-create knowledge and reconstruct power relations with marginalised women in and through research 33
- Autoethnographic playwriting and performance for self-healing and advocacy 45
- Using photography to research the ‘other’: the validity of photography for social work research – a visual case study from China 55
- Mixed arts-based methods as a platform for expressing lived experience 68
- Arts-based methods to support and reveal new mothers’ and families’ experiences: a positive parenting and feminist approach 77
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Using arts-based research to listen to, and give voice to, children in social work
- “I don’t like the cameras in the house. They’re looking at us all the time”: the contribution of Photovoice to children in a post-hospitalisation programme 89
- Arts-based research work with migrant children 102
- Using creative art research approaches to assess arts-based interventions with children in post-disaster contexts 117
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Arts-based research as a way for researchers and community members to understand communities
- Murals and photography in community engagement and assessment 129
- Forum theatre as participatory action research with community workers 139
- A/r/tography, rhizomatic storytelling, and ripple effects mapping: a combined arts-based and community mapping methodology to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 expressive arts support groups for frontliners in the Philippines 148
- Art and artefact: displaying social work through objects 162
- Building research capacity: scaffolding the process through arts-based pedagogy 170
- Art as a way of improving participatory action research: an experience with youngsters with an intellectual disability and their families 181
- Epilogue 198
- Index 200
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents ix
- List of figures and tables xi
- Notes on contributors xiii
- Introduction 1
-
Arts-based research as a method to understand and give voice to marginalised groups
- Using arts-based methods to explore existential issues around ageing 13
- Arts- and music-based activities and nondeliberative participatory research methods: building connection and community 24
- Arts-based methods to co-create knowledge and reconstruct power relations with marginalised women in and through research 33
- Autoethnographic playwriting and performance for self-healing and advocacy 45
- Using photography to research the ‘other’: the validity of photography for social work research – a visual case study from China 55
- Mixed arts-based methods as a platform for expressing lived experience 68
- Arts-based methods to support and reveal new mothers’ and families’ experiences: a positive parenting and feminist approach 77
-
Using arts-based research to listen to, and give voice to, children in social work
- “I don’t like the cameras in the house. They’re looking at us all the time”: the contribution of Photovoice to children in a post-hospitalisation programme 89
- Arts-based research work with migrant children 102
- Using creative art research approaches to assess arts-based interventions with children in post-disaster contexts 117
-
Arts-based research as a way for researchers and community members to understand communities
- Murals and photography in community engagement and assessment 129
- Forum theatre as participatory action research with community workers 139
- A/r/tography, rhizomatic storytelling, and ripple effects mapping: a combined arts-based and community mapping methodology to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 expressive arts support groups for frontliners in the Philippines 148
- Art and artefact: displaying social work through objects 162
- Building research capacity: scaffolding the process through arts-based pedagogy 170
- Art as a way of improving participatory action research: an experience with youngsters with an intellectual disability and their families 181
- Epilogue 198
- Index 200
