Creative Research

Over recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of creative and arts-based research methodologies that mediate or focus participants' responses through a particular medium or activity - most prominently drawing and painting but also things such as creative writing, model making, collage and video diaries.

These approaches draw on traditions of art therapy and the use of 'projective techniques' within market research. A good example of their employment with audiences is the work of David Gauntlett and his Art Lab website. Here Gauntlett writes:

The ArtLab studies represent a new type of research in which media consumers' own creativity, reflexivity and knowingness is harnessed, rather than ignored. In these studies, individuals are asked to produce media or visual material themselves, as a way of exploring their relationship with particular issues or dimensions of media.

The use of creative writing within this project is within this tradition and also continues my own work using drawing as a creative and reflective research methodology.