Hershorn, K. (2005). Learning through arts-based action research: Creative approaches to destructive dynamics in our schools and in our world.

Paper presented at the 1st International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, May 5-7, 2005, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Abstract:

This paper will focus on the use of both visual and performing arts to explore issues of identity and diversity with grade 6 students who participated in a school-based community project, Creating Community: Valuing Ourselves and Each Other. The project was initiated in response to violence in multicultural urban schools.

In the fall, students participated in drama workshops culminating in a December performance. The sessions helped students explore their own experience through journal writing on issues such as racism, sexism, and bullying. These were followed up by visual arts workshops in the winter. The grand finale was a zine of the students’ writing launched at an exhibition of their artwork.

The use of open-ended arts-based methodologies provided much insight into the dynamics of the students’ lives and cultural environments. The results are poignantly illustrative of the relevance of “qualitative inquiry in a time of uncertainty.” Their creative work assisted students to learn about each other’s different cultures but also express strikingly common hopes and fears.

Although the students’ were asked specifically to address issues of violence and destructive behaviour in their own lives—particularly in their schools and communities, their work overwhelmingly and alarmingly depicted images of war and bloodshed and expressed their fear of war and hope for peace. Their work demonstrated their sense that the world is not a very peaceful or safe place to be. It illustrated that the current global environment—this time of uncertainty— permeated by images and discussions of war, violence, fear and insecurity, is having a profound and potentially damaging effect on our psyches. The project suggests that these “destructive” effects and dynamics might be productively explored and addressed creatively through open-ended, arts-based qualitative, participatory action methodologies.