Art amplifies diverse voices
Researchers at the Faculty of Education and Culture at Tampere University employ art as a research method across all educational levels.
“Art is not only a tool for collecting information but also a means to inspire children and young people to participate in research,” says Professor Mervi Kaukko.
When studying children or young people, researchers often collaborate with schools. Inviting schools to participate in projects that combine art and research can lower the barrier to their involvement. Arts-based research can also provide schools with pre-planned, meaningful activities that can be seamlessly integrated into daily school life.
Researchers at the Faculty of Education and Culture integrate a variety of art forms – such as puppetry, poetry, music and visual arts – into their studies. Their projects often involve collaboration with artists.
According to Maria Petäjäniemi, a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University, art can be particularly effective in facilitating discussions on difficult topics.
“Arts-based methods are commonly used when studying the experiences of children and young people in vulnerable positions,” she says.
Art is a powerful tool for expressing and processing difficult experiences
Professor Kaukko leads with University Lecturer Inkeri Rissanen the Multiculturalism, Transnationalism and Transformation in Education (MTT) research group at Tampere University, where Petäjäniemi is a member. Many of the group’s research projects involve immigrants, including children from refugee backgrounds. When working with these children, art can serve as an effective medium of communication.
Art gives a voice to children and young people. For example, the project titled From panic responses to sustainable practices of refugee education — Participation, support, and inclusion of students from crisis areas (KOTI) uses art to examine the support that Finnish schools provide to children from crisis areas.
While much of the research data for the KOTI project has been collected from comprehensive school students, the project has also expanded to include adults pursuing basic education. The researchers have organised workshops for young adults who have only recently moved to Finland, using creative writing and visual arts to delve into themes of culture and identity.
“For instance, we have created collages that allow the participants to reflect on their positioning within Finnish cultural identity,” Maria Petäjäniemi says.
Petäjäniemi points out that art offers an empowering and safe medium for sharing life experiences.
“Art provides the freedom to decide what and how to share. It is a powerful form of self-expression.”
“Moreover, art has the potential to challenge and dismantle the normative representations associated with marginalised groups, such as refugee children,” she adds.
Research-based art can spread far and wide
Professor Mervi Kaukko has extensive experience in conducting research with refugees and finds that art is an excellent medium for communicating research findings.
For example, the Drawing Together research consortium staged an art exhibition that toured Tampere and Turku in Finland. In this project, young refugees who arrived in their new country as unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors used art to illustrate the rebuilding of their lives.
The results of the ongoing KOTI project will also be communicated through art, with the aim of selecting the art form in collaboration with the research participants.
Sometimes, research-based art can reach an exceptionally broad audience. When Kaukko was working as a researcher in Australia, clay figurines created by refugee children were featured in a fictional animation. The children’s stories were merged into a single tale, just as they had hoped.
The animation was shared on YouTube and gained widespread attention: it was featured on local children’s TV shows, received numerous awards and even ended up being used as pedagogical material in schools.
“We disseminated research-based knowledge from children to children. The animation has been shared on multiple channels and has already clocked in more than a million views,” Kaukko says.
Turning interviews into poetry
Luke Macaulay, a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Tampere University, has adopted poetry as a method for conducting educational research on refugee youth.
“In my previous research I have developed pronoun poems with participants, where we analyse text from their research interviews focusing on how they speak of themselves and others. These are then placed on their own lines with any surrounding verbs and/or important words and phrases to create stanzas,” Macaulay explains.
Macaulay is using the developed method in his current research in Finland. In this project visual artists will render their artistic interpretations of the poems.
“At the end of the project, together with participants, we will publish a book of poetry and art,” Macaulay says.
He sees that by focusing on the multiple layers of participants’ voices in the construction of the poems, the nuances of the collective voices and relationships can be explored.
Macaulay believes that it is important to think of ways to convey research to the broader public.
“Artistic approaches, such as poetry, can be a useful tool to do this. It can allow for participants to express themselves in creative ways, and for the public to be in conversation with the research through their engagement with the poetry,” he says.
