How to train your dragon: using participatory arts-based approaches in qualitative research.

Increasingly, participatory arts-based approaches are being used within qualitative research from inception of the study through to dissemination and potential impact. However, what added value, if any, may they bring to qualitative? In this session I will provide an overview of some of the arts/activities-based methods/approaches that can be used with children, young people and adults. As well as looking at the benefits and rewards of using such methods I will explore some of the hidden challenges of adopting these methods and how sometimes a desire for creativity and ‘innovation’ has the potential to result in muddled and mis-shaped data. Working qualitatively is already notorious for having boggy places where researchers can get both methodologically lost and occasionally marooned without a clear route map for how to proceed. Working with arts-based approaches can ‘up the ante’. Just as Cressida Cowell’s character Hiccup encountered challenges when training his dragon Toothless in ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, qualitative researchers can face similar challenges, which can require thinking out of the box, adapting existing approaches, and thinking through the consequences. Whilst it is unlikely that arts-based qualitative researchers will face the challenge of being ‘flamed’, getting horribly injured, or dying, the consequences for not being alert are that our data and findings may be horribly compromised and useless.