Editorial

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal (ARI) is a forum

dedicated to exploring and advancing art as and/or within the research process across

disciplines and internationally. We began this journal, because, over the last decades

research practices that draw on the arts have grown exponentially. There are numerous

books devoted to these practices as well as conferences, special days at conferences,

special interest groups of national and international professional organizations, and

journals that are friendly to these approaches, including those that have published

special issues. We saw the demand for a journal devoted to these practices. It was

important to us that the journal was an inclusive space in two key ways: accessibility

and content.

First, while we saw value in creating a peer-reviewed forum, allowing academic

practitioners to meet the demands of their institutions, we were equally committed to an

open source publication. The journal system has historically been a paid system, with

libraries paying high subscription rates for journals, excluding many from accessing

these published works. In recent years there has been a move by some publishers for

authors to pay for publishing their work, which is then free to the public. This too creates

an exclusionary and ethically compromised format. Moreover, funders are moving

towards requiring open access scholarly outcomes for the research they fund. As a

result, ARI is a peer-reviewed, open access journal. All those on the staff and editorial

board donate their time. We are enormously grateful to everyone involved with the

journal, especially those who oversee the day-to-day operations including the website

management, the submission and review process, and copyediting.

Second, we felt it was vital that the content of the journal reflect the diversity of

practices in which art and research merge. The following chart reflects some of the

terms practitioners use to describe their work:

A/r/tography

Arts in qualitative research

Alternative forms of

Arts-based educational research

representation

(ABER)

Aesthetically based research

Arts-based health research (ABHR)

Aesthetic research practice

Arts-Based Research Practices

Art as inquiry

Arts-Informed Inquiry

Art practice as research

Arts-Informed Research

Art-based enquiry

Critical Arts-Based Inquiry

Art-Based Inquiry

Living Inquiry

Art-Based Research

Performative Inquiry

Artistic Inquiry

Practice-Based Research

Arts-based research (ABR)

Research-Based Art (RBA)

Arts based social research

Research-Based Practice

(ABSR)

Scholartistry

Arts-based qualitative inquiry

Transformative Inquiry through Art

Reprinted with permission from Gioia Chilton and Patricia Leavy (2014) The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative

Research. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 406.

In addition to this list the fine arts disciplines have recently taken up the notion

of Research-Creation as a way to more explicitly frame fine arts practices as scholarly

activities. Researchers in various disciplines have developed methods to describe

their artistic scholarship, such as Applied Theatre Research, Ethnocinema,

Ethnodrama, Fiction-Based Research, Poetic Inquiry, Visual Inquiry, and new and

innovative artistic approaches are continuing to emerge.

ARI was founded with the intent to include work within all of these

categorizations, as well as others to reflect the diversity of the art/research

scholarship undertaken. As an online journal, we are able to include art works across

genres. Further, bound to no specific disciplines, we created this space as a truly

transdisciplinary and international forum, open to a range of practices - presenting,

side-by-side, works reflecting diverse expectations for scholarly writing across

disciplinary areas that are met through various arts-based methods, and addressing a

range of inquiry subject matter. Finally, to reflect the range of ways practitioners are

using and exploring the intersections of the arts and research, we created three

sections: Art/Research Theoretical Musings, a section dedicated to exploring

methodological and theoretical issues related to art/research practices; Art/Research

In Action to showcase examples of scholarship in and through the arts, and

Art/Research Reviews for authors to comment on others’ work taking place in the

field. Submissions for our first issue indicate that the Art/Research In Action section is

particularly attractive to researchers; it allows as a space for arts and media rich

scholarship that was lacking up until now within academic forums.

Contributions to this issue reflect a range of artistic approaches undertaken

across various disciplines. The Art/Research Theoretical Musings section includes three

contributions, which combine theoretical discussion of issues related to art/research

with reference to specific creative practices: Sara Scott Shields (Florida State) and

Leslie Rech Penn (Georgia) in “Do You Want to Watch a Movie? Conceptualizing

Video in Qualitative Research as an Imaginative Invitation” explore the role of

representation in arts based research focusing on the potentialities offered by the

medium of video for researchers and their audiences. Patti Fraser (Simon Fraser, BC)

and Flick Harrison (Simon Fraser, BC) in “Art for? Framing the Conversation on Art

and Social Change ‘with’ Steven Hill,” in conversation with theatre director Steven Hill,

in the form of a creative video, explore the frames artist-researchers bring to the project

of art “for” social change. Dorit Netzer (Hofstra, NY) and Judy Schavrien (Walnut

Creek, CA), in “Transpersonal Art: A Conversation with Artist Judy Schavrien,” offer an

insightful dialogue on Schavrien’s transpersonal art practice and scholarship.

The Art/Research In Action section’s nine contributions span disciplines from

health care, to education, to the fine arts, which make use of various art forms in their

scholarly work including narrative, poetry, play/scriptwriting, music, and visual arts, such

as photography, installation art, video-recorded dramatizations and animated video.

Mindi Rhoades (Ohio), in “imprints,” offers poems in response to a number of artworks

reflecting on art-making and meaning-making processes. Silvo Machado’s (Berkeley,

CA) autobiographical poems, in “Faggot Speaks: A Poetic Inquiry into the Experience of

Antigay Mistreatment and Sexual Prejudice,” are based on his personal experiences

with exposure to antigay mistreatment and sexual prejudice. Mindi Rhoades (Ohio),

James Sanders (Ohio), Kimberly Cosier (Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Courtnie Wolfgang

(Virginia Commonwealth) and Melanie Davenport (Georgia), in “Finding Big Gay

Church: Lost Heretics Seeking Salvation at the Intersections of Art, Religion, +

Education,” present an evocative re-enactment of and a theoretical framing for an

annual conference presentation in the form of a queer church service exploring LGBTQ

issues in arts, education, visual culture and society. Gail Crimmins (Queensland, AU),

in “A Dramatisation of Research Outcomes: A Verbatim Drama Based on the Lived

Experience of Women Casual Academics,” discusses her research to create space for

the voices of women casual academics to be heard through dramatization. The team of

Mitchell McLarnon (McGill, QC), Pamela Richardson (Royal Roads, BC), Sean

Wiebe (UPEI), Veena Balsawar (Ottawa, ON), Marni Binder (Ryerson, ON), Kathy

Browning (Laurentian, ON), Diane Conrad (Alberta), Lynn Fels (Simon Fraser, BC),

Peter Gouzouasis (UBC), Anja Human (North-West, SA), Eun-Ji Kim (McGill, QC),

Carl Leggo (UBC), Amélie Lemieux (McGill, QC), Kathy Mantas (Nippising, ON),

Karen Meyer (UBC), Silvia Morelli (de Rosario, AR), Robert Nellis (Red Deer, AB)

and Julie Vaudrin-Charette (Ottawa, ON), in “The School Bus Symposium: A Poetic

journey of Co-created Conference Space,” present a compilation of poetry and

photography resulting from a experiential conference session focusing on childhood

experiences of riding a school bus that took place on a school bus. Charles Vanover

(South Florida Saint Petersburg) in “Listening to the Silences: A Teacher’s First Year in

Words and Music” presents an ethnodramatic script that evokes a teacher’s first year in

the Chicago Public Schools, and commentary on his process of writing and producing it.

Amber Ward (California) in “Deconstructing Panty Pennants and Revealing Absent

Presence,” deconstructs her research-based art installation on women’s sexual identity

through a process of visual arts and music. Kaisu Koski, (Tampere, FI), Fenna

Heyning (Assn. Tertiary Medical Teaching Hospitals, NL) and Robert Zwijnenberg

(Leiden, NL), in “Collaborative Meaning-Making in Arts-Based Research: Data

Interpretation with an Artist, a Physician, and an Art Historian,” explore an arts-based

process of collaborative meaning making of medical students’ understandings of the

female reproductive system. Jennifer Lapum (Ryerson, ON), Linda Liu (Toronto

General Hospital), Kathryn Church (Ryerson, ON), Sarah Hume (Ryerson, ON),

Bailey Harding (Ryerson, ON), Siyuan Wang (Ryerson, ON), Megan Nguyen

(Women’s College Hospital, ON), Gideon Cohen (Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

& U Toronto, ON), and Terrence Yau (Toronto General Hospital & U Toronto, ON) in

“Knowledge Translation Capacity of Arts-informed Dissemination: A Narrative Study”

discuss how arts-based knowledge translation in the form of an art installation about

patients’ experiences of heart surgery influenced cardiovascular practitioners’ delivery

of care.

In the Art/Research Reviews section, three reviews conclude the issue. John

Guiney Yallop reviews the book Arts-Based and Contemplative Practices in Research

and Teaching: Honoring Presence, edited by Susan Walsh, Barbara Bickel, and Carl

Leggo. Monica Prendergast (Victoria, BC) in “What I Learn from Theatregoing: Review

Haiku,” offers a suite of theatre reviews in the form of haiku along with reflection on the

application of theatergoing on her teaching and scholarship. Sarah Hobson (SUNY