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I just wanted to renew the conversation here for the new year. I hope we can push on with this book this year. I'd like to have some idea of what the timeframe and process might be - I need to do some research if I'm going to write this chapter.
Following the meeting with Routledge I think we have an exciting project. If there's any news can we have it posted here? Thanks.

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A couple of ideas on splitting this up since we have more chapter proposals than one book

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A couple of ideas on splitting this up since we have more chapter proposals than one book

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[From Alyssa]

Ask people whether they'd prefer to be volume 1, volume 2, or no preference.

Divide existing proposals thematically or based on neurodivergently apparent connections for volume 1 vs. volume 2, so we're not rejecting so much as saying 'here, you have longer to make this ready.'

Also: Does the number of chapters included change based on the fact that some may be 'shorts' or art or something other than a typical length academic chapter?

Could some chapters even be split or re-occurring? E.g., "SPEED DATES Q&A" might be able to have some number of Q&As in one book and some number in the next.  Or "Am I the Curriculum"/"Being the Curriculum" are each capable of standing alone but they can certainly also be thought of as part 1/part 2.

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Is there a documentary film-maker in our group? wouldn’t it be great to have a ‘making of the first group publication’ video to watch. All the stories from the journey. Also opportunities to show some of the non-printable content like video and music.

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Or something more like this? What happened when I sent a visual poem and photograph of one of my nipples to my PhD supervisors...

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Or something more like this? What happened when I sent a visual poem and photograph of one of my nipples to my PhD supervisors...

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MR RAT Dr Fox, is it true that Ms Mole sent you a picture of herself naked!? With a poem!?

DR FOX Yes.

MR RAT But moles do not make pictures of themselves naked. It’s okay for tits and robins to do that, but not moles! Dr Fox can you describe the picture for us?

DR FOX It was a naked picture of Ms Mole. She was only wearing her fur! Not even a hat!

MR RAT Ms Mole, why did you do it? Oh no never mind, never mind, it doesn’t matter why you did it. The fact is that you did it. And it’s just not appropriate! None of your behaviour is appropriate. Moles are so strange (turns to the animals). None of Ms Mole’s behaviour makes sense to us over-ground creatures at all. Why can’t she just learn to fly like Professor Owl or the tits and the robins? Or climb trees like the squirrels? Why does she spend all her time in dark underground tunnels, only popping up occasionally to deliver the thing she’s been spending all her time writing? (Turns back to MS MOLE) And then you never speak! All you say is yes or no but you send us all this writing and then get upset when we haven’t read it and tell us we aren’t listening to you. You should get out more. Maybe it’s vitamin D deficiency? I think you need more sunshine. And maybe some Acorn Pie? Yes, I think a slice of Acorn Pie would cheer you up no end. All those slimy earthworms can’t possibly be good for you. I hardly know how you stay alive.

LORD TOAD Dr Fox, did you read the poem?

DR FOX Oh no, I hardly even looked at the picture. I was so shocked, I threw it away. Straight away.

LORD TOAD And Dr Fox, is it true that you had asked Ms Mole to send you all her work?

DR FOX Oh yes. After the problem with the play, I asked her to send me everything she had made.

LORD TOAD Hmm. And Dr Fox, is it true that you are an expert in philosophy?

DR FOX Oh yes, philosophy is my speciality.

LORD TOAD Thank you Dr Fox. You may step down now (DR FOX slinks away. The NARRATOR stacks a fifth block with a picture of a fox on it). Ms Mole, I am trying very hard to understand. It says here (points to a pile of papers in front of him) that your picture-poem showed you naked with your own babies. Is that true?

MS MOLE Yes.

LORD TOAD Ms Mole, it says here that your picture-poem was about the problems mothers are having with feeding their babies and keeping them healthy. Is that correct?

MS MOLE Yes.

LORD TOAD Because everyone is trying to make them eat Acorn Pie?

MS MOLE Yes.

LORD TOAD Which is highly addictive and very unhealthy?

MS MOLE Yes.

LORD TOAD But I like Acorn Pie and I am not addicted to it. And I am very healthy (coughs and pats his large tummy – turns and gestures to the animals). None of us are addicted to Acorn Pie! We are all very healthy (lots of nodding and coughing and patting of tummies)!

NARRATOR Five big blocks and one to go. Will it stack or will it fall?

The facts must all fit together. There’s one more animal to call…

I have, or have had, six or arguably seven of the nine protected characteristics listed in the Equality Act 2010, and I believe that several of these adversely impacted on the judgements being made about me, but it was hard to pin any of them down to a particular unticked box. However, some of these judgements did constitute defamation of character, and so I could potentially also have taken the university to the civil court for this.

I did not want to go back to court. The last time took me to the railings of the Mersey in flood, in the dark, in the howling wind and rain. I never want to set foot in a courtroom ever again in my life. I apologised profusely and repeatedly for any distress I may have inadvertently caused. I offered to engage in informal mediation, or to write a formal letter of apology, both of which offers were declined. And I also offered to go back to the Asperger’s team for a formal diagnosis, if that would help, and attached my previous inconclusive report and Bargiela, Steward and Mandy’s (2016) paper entitled The Experiences of Late-diagnosed Women with Autism Spectrum Conditions: An Investigation of the Female Autism Phenotype.

Bargiela, Steward and Mandy’s paper works with the foundational assumption that autism exists: that it’s a real, circumscribed entity, or thing, in the world. They did not interrogate this assumption, but instead studied fourteen women who had been diagnosed with autism spectrum condition (ASC) in late adolescence or adulthood, who gave ‘in-depth accounts of: ‘pretending to be normal’; of how their gender led various professionals to miss their ASC; and of conflicts between ASC and a traditional feminine identity’ (ibid: 3481). Their sample was ‘notably ‘high-functioning’, in the sense that they mostly had above-average IQs and a greater proportion were in work or education than is commonly reported for adults with ASC’ (ibid.).

I question the diagnosis of ASC but I do not question the reality of the lived experience of difficulty faced by people who are neurologically different from the norm. My critical position stems from the experience of being a mole in a world full of seagulls. There’s nothing wrong with being a mole, but if one is a mole who has no choice but to live amongst seagulls one may experience some social difficulties and heightened anxiety, and one may need some extra support (and gadgets) if one is expected to fly.

That said, Bargiela, Steward and Mandy’s paper contained some insights that felt important for me. They cite Howlin and Moss (2012) as saying that ‘people with ASC are at risk of a range of emotional, behavioural, social, occupational and economic difficulties’ and that ‘the timely identification of ASC can mitigate some of these risks and improve quality of life, for example by identifying needs and appropriate interventions, increasing access to services [and] making others less judgemental’.

Well, that’s of course only true if diagnosis does actually lead to more support and less stigma. Sadly, in our world, I doubt this is often the case, and the reality is that the person with ASC – or perhaps let’s say with ASC-like difficulties – might do better to stay in hiding and to carry on pretending to be normal. Because even when support is purportedly offered, it often takes the form of teaching the mole how to be more like a seagull (drugs for the anxiety, gadgets for the flying). But the mole who’s dressed up as a seagull is still a mole, and the kind of support that helps that mole to wear a more convincing seagull outfit, so the seagulls don’t peck at him or her quite so viciously, is not the same as the kind of support that helps the mole to live among seagulls more fully, completely, and fabulously, as a mole.

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PROPOSED CHAPTER – ‘Where knowledge resides’: visual languages in practice-as-research  

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PROPOSED CHAPTER – ‘Where knowledge resides’: visual languages in practice-as-research  

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Practice-as-research as a methodology to be assessed at PhD level presents the question of the extent to which creative practice itself encodes knowledge. My experience as a PaR PhD researcher has led me to consider questions of epistemology and semiotics in relation to non-verbal imagery. Below are a couple of paragraphs from my own book (forthcoming) that I would be happy to develop and explore in more detail here if this would be of value to you.  This is perhaps a bit dry and theoretical but interwoven into the story of my own PhD attempts as a neurodivergent individual it might make more entertaining reading…?? Happy to develop to a brief :-)

Practice-as-research (PaR) is a methodology that presents a challenge to more traditional conceptualisations of knowledge: what knowledge is and how it might be articulated. Language may be a sign system (please see also Chapter 7 for a more in-depth discussion of this), but the idea that visual art, or more creative rather than academic forms of writing, might also encode knowledge is more contentious.

Graeme Sullivan (2005: 118, citing Bechtel & Abrahamsen, 1991; Newell & Simon, 1981) in his book Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts discusses the relationship between perception and conception and the question of ‘where knowledge resides’, arguing that distinctions between its objective presence in the artwork and subjective presence in the mind of the viewer now only have ‘rhetorical (or historical) appeal’, since ‘it is readily accepted that conceptions of mind and perceptions of matter are inextricably linked’.

That knowledge might reside sufficiently in an artwork for that artwork to constitute a valid research output in itself however, is less readily accepted by academic institutions offering PaR PhDs. Christopher Frayling (1994) distinguishes between research for art and design, and research through art and design, questioning why expressive art, and the ‘gathering of reference materials’ (‘research for art’) needs to be classified as research? Research, he says, ‘has become a political or resource issue, as much as an academic one’, and at the Royal College of Art he says, they ‘do not at present offer research degrees entirely for work where the art is said to ‘speak for itself’ (ibid.). Degrees by studio project are accompanied by a research diary that ‘tells, in a step-by-step way, of a practical experiment’, and a report that ‘aims to contextualise it’ (ibid.).

The artefact-plus-exegesis model remains the most common form of submission and, as Sullivan (2005: 212) notes, ‘an exegesis is not merely a form of documentation that serves preliminary purposes, records in-process activity, or displays outcomes: it is all of these’ and more, ‘if the role of “artist-theorist” is seen to best describe the visual arts researcher, then the task of taking up the challenge of serious inquiry will require extensive study and documentation in order to achieve the creative and critical outcomes expected’.

But more troublesome still in some circles is the suggestion that the process of art-making might constitute a valid form of knowledge production. Art doesn’t only provoke and encode knowledge generated by some other means, as either an elicitatory prompt or entertaining form of research data dissemination for example: it is it’s own self-contained system for the generation and representation of meaning. Sullivan (2005: 115) states that using the visual arts ‘to turn questions into understanding that give rise to more questions not only describes an aesthetic process of self-realization but also describes a research process’. Lenore Hervey (2000: 45) reports in her book Artistic Inquiry in Dance/Movement Therapy: Creative Alternatives for Research that in the process of artistic inquiry, art (of any sort) might be made in response to an articulated question, and thereby offer an answer to it: that in this way it might be manifestly ‘knowledge-producing’ (Nelson, 2013: 51). PaR seeks to make visible the processes of knowledge production and thus the knowledge itself contained within its products.

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Proposed chapter [for allyship/leadership section?]: supervising, reviewing or examining neurodivergent research

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Proposed chapter [for allyship/leadership section?]: supervising, reviewing or examining neurodivergent research

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I think this would be a really useful way to link to some of the political / HEI policy work we have some expertise in. It expands the audience beyond methodological enthusiasts to also HEI staff, policy makers, lecturers, funders, etc.

it can also cover a little on inclusive language and practice and maybe provide a glossary of terms which may be shared in our neurodivergent culture but may be foreign to neurotypical allies?

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Alternative title for mike & Tony  routledge chapter: the intersection of playful and unruly 

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Alternative title for mike & Tony  routledge chapter: the intersection of playful and unruly 

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Proposed chapter: Crafting my reflexivity.

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Proposed chapter: Crafting my reflexivity.

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Key words:
Crafting reflexivity
Living with the data
Photo-essay

I am proposing a ‘photo essay’ chapter from my own experiences as a PHD student currently in the write-up stages of a study using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). I am dyslexic, have scotopic sensitive syndrome, and awaiting my ADHD diagnostic assessment.

I have an arts practitioner background, but this is the first time that I have engaged with producing significant body of written work, and I have been thinking about creative approaches to reflexivity as part of the research process.

Reflexivity is understood in qualitative research as being attentive to the influence of the researcher  on the research process because the researcher’s interpretation plays a central role to the IPA process. For an IPA researcher reflexivity, which is predominantly produced and presented in a written format, can be time-consuming, elusive, and uncomfortable. But if avoided, it undermines the validity of a study and the IPA process.

In my study I am exploring lived experiences of crafting as a psychosocial intervention, and as a consequent I have been exploring creative ways to engage with my reflexivity.

In addition, researchers are encouraged to immerse themselves in the data “as far as is possible stepping into participant’s shoes” (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2014), so I am also engaging in craft-based creativity in order to step into the shoes of my participants, and to live with the data in an embodied way.

At the moment this is very much the broad strokes of a proposal. Plus apologies for late posting.

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It occurs to me that we, as neuro-untypical individuals and as members of the neurodiverse community (of neuro diverse communities) are unwritten on multiple levels. Of course we have been and are constantly written-about and written-on by others with their own agendas. I’m thinking of ‘written’ as by ourselves in our own ‘hand-writing’ on our own cave walls. As individuals we have unwritten futures and we have such a good opportunity in these times to grab the pen, to dream our own life stories and scribe them into personal journals from which material to self-actualise a future lived life. As as a group of academics we are writing a book that will open up paths for other to take to our perspectives - we  have the opportunity to carve those paths in our own distinctive styles. As part of an emergent world-wide community there is the opportunity to tear up what has been written about us by others. To walk away from the roads and routes that confine and confuse. To step by step lay down paths across a chosen landscape, paths that wind, diverge, come back and intersect in way that make sense to us and bring us joy as we traverse them. And in that coming landscape , from our discovered and made standpoints, we will get to self-diagnose what neuro-typical attitudes and behaviours need to be adjusted to join us there.

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Hi I have only Just seen this … Since 1995, when my ‘Agenda of the Aggressive Dyslexic’ was published, I have been exploring social and political ideas of difference through video, photography, sculpture and performance, revealing the alternative perspectives that being “very good at being Disleksick” can bring. My many artworks, films, writing, public talks and actions demonstrate that through a polarised neurodiverse experience you can shine a light on the way that we all think and navigate the world around us. The works have have made not only represents my invisible experiences and individual stories of neurodiversity. They expanded beyond my writings and alternative personas The DIV (e.g. The Dislecksick intelligent visjon) into several body’s of lens-based work which represents and creates a dialogue with fellow neurodiverse adults through collaborative photographic portraiture and perforative engagement. Much of my work has been decimated through disability arts publications over the past 26 years. There are lots short films about this work on my Instagram and Vimeo -see bio and links on my website https://benedictphillips.co.uk/

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Hi I have only Just seen this … Since 1995, when my ‘Agenda of the Aggressive Dyslexic’ was published, I have been exploring social and political ideas of difference through video, photography, sculpture and performance, revealing the alternative perspectives that being “very good at being Disleksick” can bring. My many artworks, films, writing, public talks and actions demonstrate that through a polarised neurodiverse experience you can shine a light on the way that we all think and navigate the world around us. The works have have made not only represents my invisible experiences and individual stories of neurodiversity. They expanded beyond my writings and alternative personas The DIV (e.g. The Dislecksick intelligent visjon) into several body’s of lens-based work which represents and creates a dialogue with fellow neurodiverse adults through collaborative photographic portraiture and perforative engagement. Much of my work has been decimated through disability arts publications over the past 26 years. There are lots short films about this work on my Instagram and Vimeo -see bio and links on my website https://benedictphillips.co.uk/

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https://benedictphillips.co.uk/

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Is what we seek to communicate solely in the sphere of what can be described with rational discourse or is some it (Wittgenstein would say  transcendental eg the meanings, the ethics) only available to poetics, our practices ?

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Proposed chapter: Echoes and citations: An essay problematizing the language of interpretation.

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Proposed chapter: Echoes and citations: An essay problematizing the language of interpretation.

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In this chapter I study Boomerang, an artwork produced in 1974 by Nancy Holt and Richard Serra. Framing this work as a staged transmission, I engage it in written dialogue while channelling the divide between subject and object relations. Though subjectivity informs my textual decisions and tendencies, I hope to contextualize this performance-of-writing within broader discourses of art writing and performance art through a citational method that is explicitly indebted to its external sources.

Direct citations are lifted and rewritten through my text from other works by artists and writers, including Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Édouard Glissant, Brandon LaBelle, J. L. Austin, bell hooks, and Adrienne Rich. Engaging text and transmission, reading closely, cutting words and movements together, and forcibly allowing language to slip, I define and problematize the language of my interpretations.

Opening with the section “Checking that her speech acts,” I consider Nancy Holt’s transmissive act through the workings of the term “speech act.” In the second section, “Tense + murmur + interrupt,” I identify the sounds of the transmission, drawing them out as interruptive. Ending with “Monster, echo,” I focus on the echo in the presence of others and ask what, if anything, can be contained (in language).

3 Keywords: Voice; Art; Proximity of text.

Biography

I am an artist, practice-based PhD candidate, and Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Reading.

I am autistic – recently discovered in mid-30s - and slowly coming to understand how this informs my artmaking decisions and strategies. As an artist, I am interested in the qualities contributing to attention and transmission between bodies. Working primarily with text, performance, and video, my PhD thesis considers script writing in performance art. The script is approached as a tool to perform the act of transmission, and as a form of writing prepared for action. Instances of vocal interruption (echo, stutter, proximity of text) are framed within listening and translation, two of the key ideas proposed as underpinning the transmission process.

Note: This is Lisa Barnard and this chapter comes from part of my thesis which I am working on now.

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Learning with labyrinths as neurodivergent pedagogy

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Learning with labyrinths as neurodivergent pedagogy

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In this chapter I will refer to an AHRC funded project exploring the identities and experiences of autistic girls, women and marginalised genders through creative practices: Playing A/Part.  One of our strategies was to use labyrinths as a resource for creative thinking. This arose from discomfort with the group circle as a basis for discussion and collaboration. The circle is frequently used in creative and therapeutic contexts as a means of collapsing hierarchies and facilitating co-production but it can be challenging for neurodivergent people. It can be exposing, forcing eye contact and turn taking. The labyrinth, however offered a format for being apart and together when used as a floor cloth. It also functioned as a space for processing ideas, thinking through walking; it offered a time out space for reflection and we also used it as a creative stimulus. Finger labyrinths were also used as sensory tool. The project was an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers in the arts, psychology and autism studies. I will discuss the problems, the pedagogic principles and the creative practice with suggestions about how this could be developed for the future.
please contact n.shaughnessy@kent.ac.uk for further information.

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Key words: representation, fanfiction, narrative
Bio: I'm Autistic. I do a lot of things, but most relevant to this chapter is my engagement in transformative fandom. I write fanfiction. I write neurodivergent fanfiction. I also have a PhD in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience and do research related to neurodiversity, representation, and communication.
Pronouns: they/them/theirs

It's creative. It's fiction. Sometimes it's fanfiction. Narrative is knowledge production, and narrative is how we see ourselves.

[ok this chapter is probably going to be MOSTLY about fanfiction and neurodivergent headcanon as a space where representation, theory, practice, and art all happen.]

I asked for Autistic Dairine in a fanfiction exchange. I got part time AAC user Darryl... a good three years before I got to do part time AAC use for autistic people as a class project and more like four and a half years before that class project became a journal article ("Augmentative and Alternative Communication for Speaking Autistic Adults: Overview and Recommendations")

Fanfiction fits here, and it's a lot more democratized than academia is.

Definitely open to talking about the how of this and also things like titles. There will probably be some of my fanfiction in it, if that can be done without copyright problems.

[This is Alyssa Hillary Zisk; I just don't have an account here.]

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From my notes in the email chain

I think there is a very interesting discussion to be had about the use of 3rd person, Implications for research as adopting the belief in a placeless place from which people can be observed like ants or atoms. There’s a deadening effect too that I will need to dig into before being able to articulate. It’s a norm of academia but who’s academia? That it has made me feel discomfort is has grabbed  my  attention.  It’s a detail with asymmetric impact

And Stephanie

the authoritative and testimonial value of the autobiographical 'I',

For the purpose of the proposal, we're aiming for consistency…. Could this be achieved another way, e.g. aesthetically.

Can we, should we express ourselves such that our creativity and diversity runs through our contributions like a stick of rock, that every facet of the writings no matter which way they are turned reveals  an expression of our individuality and that we have applied our distinct un-typical minds authentically to our work?

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Stuff and nonsense - Emma's proposal for something

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Stuff and nonsense - Emma's proposal for something

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Making (non)sense of lived experience/s: my neurodivergent methodology and me.

‘Interacting, engaging, requires that we remain separate. It is only as people who are different but interested in engaging that we can interact’.
(De Jaegher 2020, 3).

As a neurodivergent arts marketer-turned-quasi-academic, I have a strained relationship with the notion of making sense. Most of the time, I can get away with it in real life interactions with people: we’re used to tangential trains of thought, paradoxical thinking, and making new words up. In everyday interactions, we navigate the situated and contextual dynamics of the space. We incorporate each other’s ideas and by doing so incarnate parts of them into our own flows of meaning-making. We play with our own epistemological positioning. It’s part of what Enactive theorists De Jaegher and Di Paolo (2007) call ‘participatory sense-making’: how we enact meaning in interactions through and with our environments and other people.

My research is primarily concerned with how we articulate and communicate value of artistic experiences (specifically live performance), in both marketing and management functions, as well as our meaning-making journeys as audience members and artists. Or to put it another way, I’m interested in making some sort of sense out of other people making sense out of other people making sense of the world through art. It may sound (and may be) a bit ridiculous, but interpreting the interpretations of others is in fact something we all do, all day every day, as social and interactive human beings. It’s how we universally inhabit and enact our lived experience of the social world at large.

Like a lot of research concerned with the social world, mine is full of nonsense, manifesting in such familiar forms as ‘dissonance, paradox, tension and contradiction’ (Di Paolo 2014, xiii). Yet as, many researchers such as John Law have pointed out, the act of research itself often requires that we make sense of all this nonsense by making it abstract and therefore manageable in some form, by incarnating a rational and detached positionality, in the hope that that makes us more capable, trustworthy and effective professional researchers. However I am interested in how we might approach our sense-making processes not as nonsense, but instead as strands or explorations of their ‘not-yet-sense’-ness or perhaps as unfinished sense-making-in-progress. Then we can begin to be more curious about the making of meaning, adopt a more ‘engaged’ epistemology and find space for multiplicity and mess.

This chapter aims to explore how neurodivergent ways-of-knowing and ways-of-making- sense can be a liberating impulse for what often can feel like an inaccessible, dominance of the hyper-rational mode of knowing in professional and academic research. It is a call to empower all researchers to embrace their own multiple sense-making perspectives, to be curious about their own ways of making sense, and to consider how embodied research techniques and mixing of methods creatively may help to make our methodologies more divergent. I aim to show how my own PhD research, seeking to understand our interactions with art, reaffirms the seemingly obvious notion that we all make sense of the world differently. But primarily I will argue for a celebration of how our own neurodivergent sense- making can enrichen and deepen our understanding of the social world more broadly, which we can all try (and fail) to make sense of together. Does that make any sense to you?

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Mike & Tony collaboration chapter Incendiary minds @PLAY

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Mike & Tony collaboration chapter Incendiary minds @PLAY

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Intro

We have a two year collaboration that began when I followed up that lead from Kai

It led to us meeting at an arts & intelligence event on 13/11/2019 and then looking at ways to collaborate with the research team

Summary of actions and outputs

Critical  thinking activities that were spun out of the idea that science might be explored creatively, without recourse to its native language - first with the research team during lockdown (Q1 - Q3 2020) and then delivered as workshops on the MSc/MRes in Biomedical Engineering, Q3/4 2020

An ongoing conversation that ricochets between science, philosophy, the visual arts, creative writing, music and politics.

We have engaged with other non-neurotypical academics and setup platforms for wider conversations

A series of animations and pieces of music working with invited performers that draw on enriching, deepening and providing perspectives to our ongoing debates.

Approach proposed

To create our ‘chapter’ we are proposing an approach where we begin by undertaking (in a spirit of adventure and whimsey) a treasure hunt through our digital archives*. And end by curating a chapter from what we find and further create. The middle will get defined along the way. We aim to lean into the distinctive way we have communicated with each other, two very active neurodiverse minds interacting without neurotypical constraints

* we have 100’s of MBs of digital text/sound/image and video content spread by across multiple digital platforms Microsoft Teams, zoom, email, WhatsApp, Slack, Dischord, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Tik-Tok  & Signal. There are also some physically-made artworks, props and workshop outputs.

Incendiary minds

thrown into shadows, rebel

and fizz into flame

Some questions:

Something that may help us is understanding the demographic* we targeting with this book/article? What is the audience?

*Or psychographic?

what will be our intention towards audiences / what response or outcomes** would be satisfying ?

** reminded of Stafford beer’s POSIWID - the Purpose of a system is what it does

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Persistent Robin

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Can I have your opinion, what is the view from there?

Can I lie here bare-faced. Or do I need a mask?

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Progress. Each day in search, at walk, in camera, the cookie cutter, the window display, the diagrams and cartoons,  27 Hologram. A tragic clutter of works, that angel gets blown away. Frustrated again.

Pare it back. Dip chattering language in acid. The skeleton. The equation. The physics. The scanned slices of the theatre.

Take the paper dolls the cardboard cutouts and reenact the scenes for a non-contemporaneous audience. Revealing this snapshot of argumentation stripped of words.

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Linear Verbal language. It gushes around me and through me relentlessly dragging me with it, drowning me out with its incessant shouting. Wittgenstein almost wrote, meant to write, whereof you cannot speak, you may turn to art. Heidegger came to believe in poetic language to communicate his considered thoughts (if he’d just put his arms around all of poetics).

When I have thunk I make art that speaks for me, relating where I have been and what I have found. I task that art - evoke what I cannot write and cannot (must not) be written.

Art shows at art shows

You may catch a glimpse of the

Inexpressible

Linearity totalises and the more gets written, the more totalitarian it’s empire of straight lines. I’d like to offer up divergence from the line. I have these little islands of thought to share, made of images and haiku, of propositions not for the making.

At the horizon

No fundamental thesis

No further questions

What is it, to evoke? the neuro diverse experience. Of Temporal matters. Temporal matters! It’s loopy. And autopoetic. The loop is wrapped about.  It’s shaping, of its shaping and for its shaping. It’s shaping up now. Let’s strip it back Möbius. The language.

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1) Peering through a lens at a little world

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1) Peering through a lens at a little world

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1) In my mind and research, constellations have a flat hierarchy: topic, methodology, explication , data etc all are equal dancers, all the chorus there is no dominating star. Thank you Walter Benjamin for dignifying the way my mind works before it did.

Right now my constellation wants to be a Tarot of images ready to unfold.

Anthony Gormley wrote  of his practice ‘I want to begin where language ends’. I wish it would just stop.

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Proposed Chapter: Demystifying and legitimising the access support role in (creative)arts practice and research.

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Proposed Chapter: Demystifying and legitimising the access support role in (creative)arts practice and research.

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Working Title:

‘Critical Reflections on the Access Support Role in (Creative)Arts Practice and Research – A Practical Perspective.’

Keywords:

Access support; Arts; Research; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity (EDI).

The chapter aims to interrogate and demystify ‘access support’ in a (creative) arts practice and research context, and to provide practical insights for a respectful and productive working relationship.

The chapter will acknowledge inherent access barriers – both individual and institutional – and call out existing and pervasive ableist models of support that deny autonomy.

Rooted in reflective practice and drawing on personal experience, the chapter mobilises a relational approach to access support, modelled on theories of testimony and witnessing from my own research, to suggest ethical and equitable methods that empower and encourage autonomy whilst recognising the specific needs of the individual.

Finally, the chapter calls upon institutions (as employers) to better facilitate – and embed – pathways to support, beyond tokenism and compliance with EDI charters.

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PROPOSED CHAPTER - Creativity, intelligence and neurodiversity: the diagnostic dilemma

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PROPOSED CHAPTER - Creativity, intelligence and neurodiversity: the diagnostic dilemma

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Suggested title. Chapter from my experience as a clinician with experience diagnosing neurodevelopmental disorders, from my experience of being assessed myself for Asperger's/ASD, and from my experience of trying to do a practice-as-research PhD in an HE setting with multiple particular constraints. My interest as a high-functioning female on or beyond the spectrum has focused on the relationship between creativity and intelligence (general factor or multiple intelligences), between creativity and neurodiversity, and between neurodiversity and intelligence. Many features of high-functioning ASD overlap with the social and emotional difficulties known to be experienced by those somehow defined as 'gifted and talented'. Diagnostic processes for ASD are supposed to be distinct from any assessment of cognitive ability, but the spectrum umbrella includes both those who are neurodivergent but without pathology, and those in whom a genetic or environmental cause exists (whether known or unknown), and whose difficulties might therefore be better conceived of as 'brain damage' or failure of brain development in the first place. The problem of defining a particular diagnostic category by a specific constellation of symptoms, rather than by underlying aetiology, is that of lack of clarity and extreme woolly thinking. Benchmarking a diagnosis against socially defined 'normality', when those symptoms are defined as such by their social unacceptability, paves the way for a diagnostic category that is inherently discriminatory and stigmatising. This chapter will consider the literature on creativity, intelligence and neurodiversity, and their interrelationships, so as to inform and move beyond formal diagnostic classification to a place of self-awareness and acceptance, and to further inform those working in HE (where this triad is particularly prevalent) as to how best to allow creative intelligence to flourish.

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Drawing and Meaning making tasks as clarity and development in research - A case study / illustrations or tip sheet - illustrated toolkit.

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Drawing and Meaning making tasks as clarity and development in research - A case study / illustrations or tip sheet - illustrated toolkit.

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Reflection on practice: Drawing
Highlighting areas of weakness, strength & balance.
'Because of the directness of drawing, experiences or thoughts most difficult to express can be rescued from a place where they would otherwise be left inert'.
(Kovats, 2007)

Through my evolving academic career I have increased the amount of drawing I do to make sense of anything I can't quite grasp - or make sense of, inc tacit skills / mindsets / theories etc and even gathering information. inc mind maps, drawing creative cycle / practice and drawing thought processes out in black and white lined drawings. I now realise this is a direct response / coping strategy of my fizzy brain and I think it can help others in my situation as a dyslexic, ADHD researcher / practitioner.

I already draw out checklists from my more visual students and have started getting drawings together to make an illustrated guide that can help others with fizzy brains.

I was wondering if this book was to be illustrated I could offer my services and either respond to the content and offer continuity in a drawn elements of each chapter for eg /and a cover image?
or
offer my own case study of how I use drawing as a way of making sense of research  / project development and or simply using drawing to problem solve issues that feel blind to me.
or
create a small chapter of drawing tips / tasks that can help others. I have a few but can add more I'm sure.

.....This would all depend on the timeline / schedule / deadline and whether there was a fee etc etc...or on a voluntary basis.

Thanks all x

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PROPOSED CHAPTER: SPEED DATES Q&A with openly-neurodivergent senior academics and practitioners

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PROPOSED CHAPTER: SPEED DATES Q&A with openly-neurodivergent senior academics and practitioners

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UK, US, ASIA etc etc

UK profs:

Prof Tony Gee (member)

Prof Judy Williams UoM https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=24368 (dyslexia)

Prof. Pragya Agarwal Behavioural & Data Scientist Loughborough https://twitter.com/DrPragyaAgarwal

Prof. Eleonora Belfoire, Prof of Communication and Media, Loughborough, ADHD Twitter: @elebelfiore

Prof Edmund Sonuga-Barke,  Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience , KCL  https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/edmund-sonuga-barke

Professor Nigel Lockett,  Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde https://www.strath.ac.uk/staff/lockettnigelprofessor/

Senior figures (but mindful of opening up space and give platform to diverse people, apart from usual suspects - privileged white male with autism or those already published etc)

MBE (member)

Space-Scientist Dr Maggie Aderin Pocock

transgender Dutch artist

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Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience

Description

MSc Child and Adolescent Mental Health and MSc in Genes, Environment and Development in Psychology and Psychiatry - delivery of ADHD lectures

CAMHS ST trainees - lectures on ADHD

Supervision of individual research projects on the following KCL courses:

MSc in Child and Adolescent Mental Health

MSc in Neuroscience

MSc in Genes, Environment and Development in Psychology and Psychiatry

Intercalated BSc in Psychology Neuroscience and Neuropsychology

BSc in Psychology

This investment from UK Research and Innovation will fund seven highly ambitious projects, two of...

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Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience Description MSc Child and Adolescent Mental Health and MSc in Genes, Environment and Development in Psychology and Psychiatry - delivery of ADHD lectures CAMHS ST trainees - lectures on ADHD Supervision of individual research projects on the following KCL courses: MSc in Child and Adolescent Mental Health MSc in Neuroscience MSc in Genes, Environment and Development in Psychology and Psychiatry Intercalated BSc in Psychology Neuroscience and Neuropsychology BSc in Psychology This investment from UK Research and Innovation will fund seven highly ambitious projects, two of...

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Three words:
Practice research

Performance

Processing

This chapter would explore neurodiversity as evident in experiences of undertaking performance practice research.  It would particularly explore creative processing as experienced and practised by performance researchers, in relation to ideas of pace and linearity as embodied metaphors.  It would examine and challenge normative ideas around how processing operates and present examples of engagement in performance research processes that embrace a variety of timeframes and shapes.  It would gather experiences from performance researchers who identify as neurodiverse and who employ methods that embrace and creatively utilise diverse or slow processes. It would then propose transformations in the theorisation of performance research practices that could emerge from embracing an expansive understanding of diverse processing speeds and style.

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PROPOSED CHAPTER: ADHD and the search for stimulation

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PROPOSED CHAPTER: ADHD and the search for stimulation

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I have come to believe that much creativity (and failures of such) can be traced to the search for stimulation that is integral to what is known as attention deficit. Understanding this fundamental driver and the yin/yang of the workings of attention deficit can revolutionise creative practice.
ADHD is often comorbid with other neurodiversities. I don't know if it is the key driver of creativity (other neurodivisities might offer their own drivers).
I am approaching the end of a creative writing PhD (research by practice) that does not major at all in this subject but within which the relationship between attention deficit and creative writing has become important. I am also an artist and have been an entrepreneur and can now see the affect that attention deficit has had on the creativity within these roles.
I am not diagnosed formally with ADHD. I categorise myself and others by comparison to a list of attention deficit traits and would consider myself as having 'cultural attention deficit' rather than any medicalised syndrome. By cultural attention deficit I mean the identification of attention deficit by matching with an extensive list of attributes in undiagnosed (or publicly undiagnosed) individuals.
I am interested in researching and writing further on this nexus and would propose a chapter on the role of (cultural) attention deficit in creative success and failure.
(For transparency I am also currently pitching an anthology of attention deficit writings elsewhere.)

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We need neurodivergent research wings to really fly. 

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We need neurodivergent research wings to really fly. 

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PROPOSED CHAPTER: What can ‘Creative Neurodivergent Leadership’ look like? 

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PROPOSED CHAPTER: What can ‘Creative Neurodivergent Leadership’ look like? 

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Scoping, postulating and disseminating an inclusive, transversal creative method.

See detailed proposal here:
https://kaisyngtan.com/artful/neurodivergent-leadership/

Keywords:

(new paradigm of) leadership

artistic/creative practice-led research method

neurodivergence as creative strategy/tactic

EDI

artistic intervention

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What can 'Neurodivergent Leadership' look like? Scoping, postulating and disseminating an inclusive, transversal creative method (hereafter LOOK!) is the title of a 15-month creative practice-led research project. Get in touch now to support, sponsor, collaborate, provide feedback.
WHY THIS MATTERS?

Is 'leadership' in crisis? The old English origin of the term refers to 'guidance'. The Covid-19 tragedy and Black Lives Matter protests prove the need for new models that prioritise equity (not equality) and justice in an unequal society (Cuyler 2020). Could neurodiversity and creativity point a way? 15% of the UK population have atypical modes of thinking and being (ACAS 2020). Greta Thunberg and Leonardo Da Vinci have shown how their autism and ADHD (Catani & Mazzarello 2019) have shaped their bold ways to guide others and spark change. Other examples abound in the Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network, like 26-year old Ali Wilson who is leading an Arts Council England (ACE) project to make theatres neurodiversity-friendly. With new research in neuroscience and psychology on how risk-taking, divergent thinking and creative giftedness pervade in people with ADHD (Lesch 2018), which are also traits in 'effective' leadership (eg Frost 2016), and observations about the overrepresentation of autism in Silicon Valley (Silberman 2001), the elite now tout neurodiversity as the 'next talent opportunity' or 'competitive advantage' (World Economic Forum/WEF, Harvard 2017). This echoes words by UK Research, Arts and British Councils for creativity and 'intellectual agility' and 'novel' interdisciplinarity to 'solve research challenges'. But why are creative, neurodivergent talents and methods absent in these discourses?

LOOK!will relate knowledge, practices and lived experience in neurodiversity, leadership and visual arts to outline 'Neurodivergent Leadership' (NL) as a creative paradigm. LOOK!alerts us to the value of other brains and people, and of interdisciplinary, decolonised creative research. To disregard 'atypical thinkers and creative problem-solvers' (Tan 2020) is an injustice and failure to optimise human potential in a resource-poor world. We 'must attend to neurodiversity, especially when our work does not explicitly deal with neurodivergency or we risk presuming neurotypicality' (Egner 2019).LOOK! will impact academic, creative, cultural, neurodivergent and EDI contexts. LOOK! will bridge knowledge between neurodivergent leaders and 'mainstream' groups in business, culture and research, to benefit each, ensuring marginalised talents and skills are prioritised, not objectified, in the process.

ANONYMISED FEEDBACK FROM PEER REVIEWERS:

The proposal is 'highly ambitious', 'amongst the most interesting I have ever been asked to review', displaying a 'deep commitment from the applicant to develop her own leadership of the emerging field of Neurodivergent Leadership'.

It is a 'timely and hugely important project, demonstrating a very high degree of originality' and will be a 'timely focus for investment' and 'send a strong signal about this agenda being important to [the research council], and to this area of the creative sector too'.

The programme is a 'brilliant and fascinating blend of activities' pioneering 'ground clearing' work', given 'the real lack of work in this area' and 'real dearth of academic engagement on issues of neurodivergence in the creative sector (whether at universities or creative industries)'.

As a 'new area to embrace a vast array of diverse politics, practices and crises including anti-colonialism, queer and anti-racist responses that have come to the fore especially during the pandemic', 'attention to these intersections provides a rich context but also means the frame itself is profoundly elastic and all-encompassing'.

LOOK! will create 'opportunities for policy and creative practice organisations to reflect on their, and their organisations' practices'; inventing a 'multi-faceted definition of leadership (in disciplinary and interdisciplinary terms, and within a framework of EDI' that is 'well placed to play a role in developing a fast emerging area of research on neurodiversity and its relationship to leadership and creativity', 'embracing different ways of conceiving of leadership in a discourse that is genuinely not limited to one discipline or one creative approach, promising to 'help transform thinking for her participants'.

LOOK! employs creative methods in ways that are intended to be challenging brings with it risks but the applicant demonstrates an awareness of these methods and has employed them previously in her established career within and beyond the academy'.

I have a 'strong track-record in arts-based engagement having worked with a range of creative partners on numerous publicly funded projects in the past', and am already recognised as 'one of the few who has written and provided resources on this subject; I've used them in my own work and in my teaching, where my research assistants and MSc students have struggled to find any detailed research engagement beyond industry reports'.

GEEKIER DEEPER DIVES:

QUESTIONS: What can 'neurodivergent leadership' (NL), as a (co-)creative, inclusive and dynamic praxis for positive structural change, look like? Secondary questions are: What are the common grounds/gaps/opportunities in knowledge, practices and lived experience in leadership, neurodiversity and creative research? How can creative and neurodivergent views and methods - hitherto excluded from dominant discourses in leadership and creativity - disrupt, reveal, extend and add value? Could creative research methods bridge the gap where 'traditional' methods have come short? What are NL's strengths? What requires further research?

WHY THIS MATTERS: LOOK! will scope, model and disseminate NL as an inclusive methodology. Cognitive modes that deviate from the 'norm' occur in one in every seven of us. Yet, their creative value has largely been under-researched, misunderstood, marginalised and/or objectified in academia. The situated fields of knowledge within which NL positions itself are: *Leadership: #BlackLivesMatter, #WeShallNotBeRemoved and #CovidChaos show that bold, decolonised, anti-ableist models of leadership are overdue. Across anthropology, business management, psychology and other areas, situational (Hersey et al. 1996), creative (Selznick 1984), feminist (Billing 2020; Batliwala 2010) and non-Western (eg Agrawal & Rook 2013) frameworks of leadership are countering models that continue to mythologise and privilege dominant powers. *Neurodivergence: Neuroscientists view autism, dyscalculia and so on, as related spectra of differences in brain physiology and structure. Psychiatrists frame them as neuro-developmental disorders which are to be 'fixed'. Cognitive psychologists stress differences in thinking, processing and sensory issues. Outside of the psych-sciences, those in sociology and disability studies advocate for autism to be seen through a social constructivist lens (eg Rosqvist et al. 2020), emphasising socio-economic barriers and critiquing deficit and curative modes (Brown & Harris 1978). This is echoed by many neurodiverse movements. While disputes abound (Russell 2020), many posit their differences as a valuable part of the continuum (Kapp et al. 2013). *Creativity: Research shows that features of ADHD like risk-taking, divergent thinking and creative giftedness (Lesch 2018), as well as the ability to problem solve and synthesise concepts (LaFrance 1997) match those identified for 'effective' leadership (Frost 2016, Keamy 2016; Aylesworth & Cleary 2020). When autism was credited for Silicon Valley's success (Silberman 2015) and ADHD was credited for human's survival (Hartmann 1997), 'neurodiversity' and 'creativity' went viral, including in cultural and academic sectors (UKRI 2020; AHRC 2019; British Council 2019; Arts Council England 2020). A sanctioned version of 'neurodiversity' is now sold as the 'next talent opportunity', a 'method for fostering innovation' and a 'competitive advantage' and ''strong business case' to reap 'better financial outcomes', with firms rushing to hire autistics (Sonne 2014; McKinsey & Company 2015; WEF 2016, Harvard Business Review 2017; Patterson 2018; Nesta 2019; Orduña 2019; Nesta 2020). Ruling classes seek to emulate traits of 'weirdos and misfits' (Cummings 2020), but why are the misfits/talents and their creative abilities excluded from this conversation?

LOOK! is my creative response as a misfit/talent, in collaboration with diverse colleagues who have knowledge and lived experience of leadership, neurodiversity, and creative research.

*Creative research is key. Unlike dominant discourses, NL will anchor 'creativity' in creative research by creating drawings, diagrams or maps. I will refer to Chinese Daoist diagrams, which applies spatial thinking to situate the bodymind in relation to the world around them (Lao Tzu and Lau 1963, Kohn 2005, Schipper 1994, Tan 2014). Diagramming is distinct to NL, since neurodivergent people tend to process the world visually and spatially (Orton 1925, Geschwind 1982). Diagrams can 'heed indigenous and black and neurodiverse and queer forms of knowing', inciting us to 'connect to how else we can unknow, unown the language of the order-word as it has been passed down, neurotypical generation after neurotypical generation' (Manning, 2018). Artistic methods can 'write sideways into the academy' and help to 'move the diagram of power/ knowledge' (Manning 2018). NL will open up new pathways to spur dialogue and collaborations.

*Beneficiaries include thosein visual arts (art history, theory and practice), cultural and museum studies, and leadership, management and business studies. LOOK! will advance the call for diverse leadership that draws on, embraces, and authentically responds to, diverse lives in times of global crises, while demonstrating the value of creative research and interdisciplinary co-creation.
Above: Diagram that provides an overview of LOOK! (redacted). Kai Syng Tan May 2021.

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What can 'Neurodivergent Leadership' look like? Scoping, postulating and disseminating an inclusive, transversal creative method (hereafter LOOK!) is the title of a 15-month creative practice-led research project. Get in touch now to support, sponsor, collaborate, provide feedback. WHY THIS MATTERS? Is 'leadership' in crisis? The old English origin of the term refers to 'guidance'.

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Proposed Chapter: Does disaster preparedness research know about neurodiversity? 

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Proposed Chapter: Does disaster preparedness research know about neurodiversity? 

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KEY WORDS: Inclusive Disaster Preparedness [does it exist?]

Neurodivergent individuals have not been a priority group in the strategy for mitigating the impacts of COVID-19; we are resourceful, used to overcoming barriers to taking part in person, and we thrive in online communities. So COVID has actually been relatively ok. But what about in other disaster scenarios; for example, what preparation is available for supporting neurodivergent groups during power outage - where we lose our networks and our assistive technology? Has anybody thought about people who are ND?

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HANDBOOK OF NEURODIVERSITY IN/AND CREATIVE RESEARCH

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HANDBOOK OF NEURODIVERSITY IN/AND CREATIVE RESEARCH

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Or HANDBOOK OF NEURODIVERGENT CREATIVE RESEARCH METHODS? (I'm also working on my monograph Hypertactical: Handbook of Neurodivergent Mobile Creative Methods, Palgrave Macmillan) Here are my sketches - responses/questions welcome!

ONE -LINER?
This handbook seeks to extend understanding + practice of ‘neurodiversity’, ‘creativity’ and their entanglements, and advance discourse and practices around artistic/creative research, interdisciplinary research and practice, creative practice, EDI, intersectionality, critical disability, disability arts, practice-led research, arts-health and more - which are the (ambitious) aims of the Neurodiversity In/& Creative Research Network, with/for/by neurodivergent researchers and practitioners.

POTENTIAL IMPACTS:
An authoritative (BUT anti-authoritarian!) book to advance: creative research, artistic research, practice-led research, creative practice, arts-health, critical medical humanities, social art (socially-engaged art), irritating/extending psych-sciences' deficit/disorder models and HE's instrumentalisation of creative arts methods as public engagement etc  ......... many more

EDITORIAL:

1) Manifesto: celebrate new ways of knowledge creation; against hierarchy of knowledge; demonstrating value of often intellectually promiscuous neurodivergent processes vs logocentricism/linear processes/'specialism', for/with/by people who are neurodivergent in our own voices and narratives (drawing on our lived experience + advocacy work + trauma) BUT in empowering+powerful, positive, celebratory and unapologetic voicesssss - PLURALITY of voices

Point out some of the existing blindspots: ignorance of intersectionality (oversimplification of disability v ableism but ignoring racism etc); ventriloquism / appropriation/colonisation by others (WEF, NESTA, social science); state of affairs; gaps and opps; not just lived experience and essentialism/ territorialisation and uncritical, but demonstrating applied value of neurodivergence

2) Genesis: the network - celebrating the iterative, generative, creative and tentacular and effusive and playful

3) Like the network, show value of ND to all; multifarious applications

4) not exhaustive, but this book provides a timely/belated snapshot of what is already out there, and point to the possibilities (leave with cliffhanger - commission and get the SERIES!)

5) expanded understandings of neurodiversity and creativity and artistic / creative practice-based research and their entanglements  (I have a lot of materials for these from my research + current work on a monograph that's a handbook of neurodivergent creative mobile research methods)

6) 'neurodivergent' (v neurodiverse, etc etc)

7) can't / doesn't try to do everything! Not a comprehensive encyclopaedia, merely an amuse bouche to ELECTIRIFY your tastebuds + to outline themes and concerns for a possible future series etc + to point to yet more/other work out there. This is but an initial mapping, and a call for action, and to give permission + lend legitimacy and recognition to important work already done by Network members (Alyssa Hillary Zisk/US, Ginny Russell/Exeter just to name a couple) and their potential future implications and why this sort of creative, non-siloed approach to knowledge-creation is urgent

PROPOSED FORMAT:
-10 Chapters
-broad spread in terms of geog, disciplinary, class, career stages, etc
-includes dyslexic interventions, critical interrogations of research, knowledge-creation, academic writing; creative and critical interventions to the page ....
-NOT just by academics, but (creative) practitioners in diverse fields, and non-academic professional HE staff too
-NOT just usual suspects, NOT just Anglo-saxon dominance.
-NOT just usual definitions of 'creativity'
-MUST have full colour spread for online versions
-Selection process: transparent, rigorous, inclusive, diverse panel etc

PROPOSED TIMELINE:
-now proposal by small working core group, kickstarted by Ranjita, then relay
-collect ideas on this padlet, feedback from network
-end 11/2021: Send 1st draft of proposal to Hannah
-12/2021: open meeting
-01/2022: 'final' proposal
-sign contract etc

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NEW Creative Health MASc (Masters in Arts and Sciences) 

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NEW Creative Health MASc (Masters in Arts and Sciences) 

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The MASc in Creative Health will create a new generation of socially engaged scholars and practitioners to meet the needs of a changing health, social care and voluntary third sector, where personalised care, social prescribing, health equity and the patient experience are mainstreamed into public health. This programme is the first of its kind in the world, both in terms of the qualification (Masters in Arts & Sciences) and the academic field of study (Creative Health).

The programme is designed to teach students how to connect scholarship with professional practice and policy in the fields of creative health (also known as arts and health), social prescribing and community-based approaches to public health. The programme will provide interdisciplinary perspectives on creative health.

The modules draw on different approaches to assessing skills and knowledge so that students can develop a diverse set of skills needed for working in creative health. These include: presenting, team working, applying theory to practice, translating research into policy and practice, project management and planning, policy analysis, time management and critical thinking.

To meet this need the MASc in Creative Health offers a range of taught and research-led modules providing students with a detailed understanding of the depth and breadth of the field, including professional practice (such as social prescribing), policy shift and research innovation, related to all aspects of socially engaged work across arts, culture, heritage, creativity, nature and the outdoors.

Why study this programme?

The MASc in Creative Health is the first of its kind in the UK, providing the first MASc programme for a planned Masters level 'Arts and Sciences' degree at postgraduate level that concentrates on arts and health sciences. There is a clearly identified need for more training opportunities for those interested in working at the interface of arts and health (see ' Creative Health Inquiry' APPG for Arts, Health and Wellbeing). This need is particularly acute given the very limited opportunities available for healthcare/arts/creative professionals, researchers or people from wider backgrounds interested in creative health to receive specific training.

Rt Hon. Lord Howarth of Newport CBE, Co-Chair, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing:

"I am delighted to support the development of UCL's exciting new MASc in Creative Health which directly addresses Recommendation 8 in the All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health and Wellbeing's Inquiry Report ' Creative Health':

'We recommend that the education of clinicians, public health specialists and other health and care professionals includes accredited modules on the evidence base and practical use of the arts for health and wellbeing outcomes. We also recommend that arts education institutions initiate undergraduate and postgraduate courses and professional development modules dedicated to the contribution of the arts to health and wellbeing' (2017, p.155)."

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The MASc in Creative Health will create a new generation of socially engaged scholars and practitioners to meet the needs of a changing health, social care and voluntary third sector, where personalised care, social prescribing, health equity and the patient experience are mainstreamed into public health.

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Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice.

This bestselling book, now in its second edition, is the first to identify and examine the five areas of creative research methods:

* arts-based research

* embodied research

* research using technology

* multi-modal research

* transformative research frameworks.

Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, with reflective questions, boxed text and a companion website to guide student learning, it offers numerous examples of creative methods in practice from around the world. This new edition includes a wealth of new material, with five extra chapters and over 200 new references. Spanning the gulf between academia and practice, this useful book will inform and inspire researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.

"Inviting the researcher to make the research process attractively creative, Kara extends the scope of the western research tradition, while simultaneously demonstrating rapid growth in the creative research sphere." Chats Devroop, University of KwaZulu-Natal

"Thank goodness for Helen Kara's work. Written in an easily accessible style, Kara tells it like it is and guides her readers beyond her own text to further reading and exploration. In terms of getting bang for one's buck, this is exactly what a second edition should be - substantively re-worked from the first edition, with considerable new content and chapters." Sharon Inglis, Staffordshire University

"A really insightful book with broad coverage of creative methods, an excellent 'go to' text for students who are considering using creative research methods. I find particularly valuable the inclusion of reflective questions at the end of each chapter, this will encourage students to think about the applications of what they are reading in their own project contexts." Louise Gascoine, Durham University

"In this important volume, Kara provides insight and inspiration regarding ways that we can imagine, create, and emancipate through research methods that take seriously contributions from art, indigenous approaches, and embodiment. Readers will benefit from the book's comprehensive coverage, numerous activities, and core examples to guide practice." Sarah J. Tracy, Arizona State University

"This is a beautifully crafted one-stop-shop of a book - encyclopaedic in its coverage of creative methods, carefully structured for usability and filled with live examples which provide real world source material for students, academics and practitioners." Alastair Roy, University of Central Lancashire

"I am excited to see this book in its Second Edition, which builds on the strengths of the first, but expands the matters of creative research methods much further. As with the first edition, the many concrete examples from research projects make this a practical guide for beginner-researchers and an inspiration for the more experienced researchers and research-practitioners. This book is for the 'compulsory' reading list on all research methods modules, and a staple for all social sciences researchers' personal libraries."

Nicole Brown, UCL Institute of Education

Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and specialises in research methods and ethics. She is the author of Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Time-Saving Guide (Policy Press, 2nd ed. 2017) and Research Ethics in the Real World: Euro-Western and Indigenous Perspectives (Policy Press, 2018). Helen is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Introducing Creative Research

Creative Research Methods in Practice

Transformative Research Frameworks and Indigenous Research

Creative Research Methods and Ethics

Creative Thinking

Arts-Based and Embodied Data Gathering

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Data Gathering

Arts-Based and Embodied Data Analysis

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Data Analysis

Arts-Based and Embodied Research Reporting

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Research Reporting

Arts-Based and Embodied Presentation

Technology-Based and Multi-Modal Presentation

From Research Into Practice

Conclusion

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creative research methods - a practical guide

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Policy Press | Creative Research Methods - A Practical Guide : By Helen Kara

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Creative research methods can help to answer complex contemporary questions which are hard to answer using conventional methods alone. Creative methods can also be more ethical, helping researchers to address social injustice.

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Whats already out there in 'Creative research methods'

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Whats already out there in 'Creative research methods'

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Creative research methods: the story so far

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Creative research methods are often treated as though they are new, yet people have always used creative ways of solving problems. We say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ and indeed all research methods were invented once. Some research texts write of methods as if they are static and fixed,…

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Should have practical elelments, esp 'how to do...' involving a range of methods that plays on neurodivergent creative strengths. 

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Should have practical elelments, esp 'how to do...' involving a range of methods that plays on neurodivergent creative strengths. 

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The look and feel of the book must be inclusive and include a range of communities to inform research approaches. Take note from purpleSTARS https://purplestars.org.uk/about/

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The look and feel of the book must be inclusive and include a range of communities to inform research approaches. Take note from purpleSTARS https://purplestars.org.uk/about/

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Click the text to Read our essay chapter purpleSTARS: Inclusive Curation and Production Creates
Inclusive Museums in Inclusive Digital Interactives: Best Practices and Research, Access Smithsonian, MuseWeb & Institute for Human Centered Design

purpleSTARS stands for Sensory, Technology and Art Resource S pecialists

purpleSTARS are a team of artists and technologists with and without disabilities who work with Museums to see how we can get them to make their displays appeal to all of our senses. We think this will make Museums more interesting for all types of visitors.

We think that being able to touch and feel things in Museums makes a visit more interesting. We think we should be able to even smell and taste things in museums, as well as seeing and hearing them. That is our idea of a really interesting Museum!

purpleSTARS will help museums to use technology and art to create displays that use all of our senses in this way.

The purple STARS, Sensory, Technology & Art, Resource Specialists is being funded for the first year by the Arts and Humanities Research Council AHRC developed from the award-winning AHRC-funded Sensory Objects Project and the need to build a more sustainable model for the work to continue.
www.sensoryobjects.com
The original Sensory Objects project in 2012-15 brought together people with learning disabilities and researchers to enrich experience and encourage inclusivity within museums and heritage sites through the development of sensory interactive objects.

Working with the inclusive employment agency Jobs Enterprise and Training (JET), part of the Tower Project charity, we are developing opportunities for people with learning disabilities creating a training, sensory experiences and consultancy service that can help museums and heritage sites to realise more accessible and meaningful experiences for their visitors with learning disabilities.

purpleSTARS products will be available to museums and heritage sites and these products will be trialed during 2017-2018.The pilot process will enable us to refine our product and service packages so that we can replicate and deliver effectively to future paying clients. Each of these three models draws on a 'toolkit for engagement', comprising tools and methods that were prototyped in the original Sensory Objects project and that we demonstrated to be effective in engaging people with learning disabilities in museum and heritage sites.

1. purpleSTARS Workshops in which museum staff engages with the local learning disability community in sensory activities, thereby providing staff with training and experience in methods of engagement.The Pilot workshop model will be refined through delivery to the Ragged School Museum in Tower Hamlets and the running of school-based workshops with their staff.

2. purpleSTARS Consult work in participatory and creative ways to engage disabled people meaningfully in reviewing collections and curatorial approaches with museum staff and contractors.The Pilot consultancy will be at the British Museum as part of the Wolfson Advisory Project.

3. purpleSTARS Dialogues services to assist in the co-design and development of interactives in response to a museum collection.The pilot dialogue model will be at the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading.

The pilots will enable us to trial the relevance and marketability of STARS services for museums and respond to client feedback. We will gain case studies that demonstrate the benefit and innovation that our methods can bring to this sector. These will then be shared as publicity and we aim to work up a detailed 5-year business strategy to provide these services for Museums nationally, generating income for a sustainable 'Not-For-Profit' business

purpleSTARS ' toolkit for engagement '.

The toolkit comprises technologies, artworks and associated methods that were prototyped in the original Sensory Objects project to enhance museum engagement for and facilitate communication with people with learning disabilities.

The elements of the toolkit will also be refined with our

purpleSTARS Advisory Group through the pilots include:

purpleSTARS DO - a printed and online instruction manual for the sensory engagement activities prototyped through our research on the earlier Sensory Objects Project, including ideas on how to conduct the activities and what materials are required. The workbook both supports workshops and serves as a basis for our provision of training.

purpleSTARS COLLECTIONS - handling objects that encapsulate multisensory interpretations of an existing museum collection, curated by a people with learning disabilities. The objects may be developed as a multisensory Box, a Label or a Post Card, and we propose to develop a general template that can be applied across a broad spectrum of museum settings.

purpleSTARS WIKI - 'easy-build' multimedia websites that serve as a repository for insights, ideas and experiences shared by people with learning disabilities. The RIX Centre's easy-build web and social media 'Wiki' tools serve as a platform for our STARS to organise their observations and reflections and report their findings back to the clients. Furthermore, the easy-build sites that are part of our product set will offer a valuable addition to museums' web communication channels, enabling learning that is non-text based and so relevant to a wider spectrum of audiences.

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Click the text to Read our essay chapter purpleSTARS: Inclusive Curation and Production CreatesInclusive Museums in Inclusive Digital Interactives: Best Practices and Research, Access Smithsonian, MuseWeb & Institute for Human Centered Design purpleSTARS stands for Sensory, Technology and Art Resource S pecialists purpleSTARS are a team of artists and technologists with and without disabilities who work with Museums to see how we can get them to make their displays appeal to all of our senses.