Braving Creative Methods

Dr Ellen Bennett

Senior Lecturer

Sheffield Business School

Access, equity and justice

• Research with small voluntary organisations
• Limited resources, small staff teams, and work in challenging contexts = ‘organisations on the edge’
• Far from decision-making, disenfranchised and disillusioned
• Rich history of research into the relationship between the state and the voluntary sector – story of power, shifting visibility

Belonging and identity

• My work looks at organisational identities
• Interested in how organisations work together within a place and how this relates to identity
• Explore people’s sense of attachment to organisations – employed staff, volunteers and those who use services/take part in activities

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

Governance of transformative change

• Interested in exploring how the work we do with organisations can support change

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• How voluntary organisations are part of the story of change within a place

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• How voluntary organisations can proactively effect change

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

Finding ways to develop more critical approaches

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• Aspiration to support change and challenge power imbalances – and to work with organisations to do this within their own contexts

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• Struggled to see how my use of more ‘traditional’ methods was really achieving this

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• I wanted to explore how we could work differently within ‘everyday research’ – short term, cross-sectional, time limited

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There was more we could do

• Support organisations to become learning organisations
• Build meaningful longer-term partnerships
• Invest in relationships so that we could learn together and alongside

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All of this helps us to know what questions are the ‘right’ questions

Starts the conversation about how we can work towards answering these questions together

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This all involves handing over power

• Bringing together expertise - the work, the organisation, the people the organisation serves, the knowledge of the local context, research
• To build meaningful partnerships we needed to:
• Engage others and their expertise in the research process
• Use methods which enable others to take the lead
• Use methods which encourage (and legitimise) multiple voices

Creative methods

Examples from the field

Visual methods

• Using visual methods can be an important tool in how we understand experiences (Quattrone et al., 2021)
• Can enable different voices to be heard, encourage people who sometimes feel marginalised to be heard and ensure their experiences are visible (Olifee and Bottorff, 2007)
• Some people find purely talking about things quite challenging – visual cues can provide a medium through which people feel more confident to speak up (Slutskaya, Simpson & Hughes, 2012)

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Visual methods�workshop

• 2-hour participatory workshop with organisational actors

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• Combine photo elicitation and free drawing to provide/open pathways wider engagement and greater opportunity for free expression and dialogue

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• Engaged visual methods to explore the experiences of people working and volunteering within smaller voluntary organisations

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Photo elicitation

Provides space for individuals

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• to hear their voice without questions or interruption
• share elements of their personal journey within the organisation
• listen

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During this stage we see participants enter into the research process

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Free drawing

Providing a space for group dialogue

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• to share knowledge/perceptions with others
• to ask questions
• to develop consensus (shared understanding)
• to explore differences
• look ahead and develop

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Combining photo elicitation and free drawing – reflections from the field

• Unanimous apprehension at the outset about the methods
• Renders people equal within the space
• The two-staged methodology is important – support participants to enter into the research, leaving behind some of their organisational baggage
• Role of the researcher shifts between the two stages but the predominant voices are the participants – who determine the story which is told

Reflections on the research process

• Importance of access – relationships and trust
• Time and space to explore new approaches
• Working together to share knowledge and expertise
• Permission to make mistakes and learn
• Underpinned by ethics and research integrity

Thank you

ellen.bennett@shu.ac.uk

b.patmore@ntu.ac.uk