Real Life Methods ran from October 2005 to January 2009. This website is archived and no longer maintained. For up to date information, please see www.manchester.ac.uk/realities
Vital Signs: Paper Session 5b
Thursday 11 September, 9.30-11.00am, Room G33
5b. Arts based research
‘Can knitting socks be scholarly research? How to think through the fabric of life’ – Solveigh Goett (University of East London)
Walter Benjamin in his memories of a ” Berlin Childhood around 1900” recalls a game he used to play with his socks. Rolled up they looked like little bags with a present hidden inside, but when he tried to pull the present out, the bag mysteriously disappeared and he was left with just one thing, a sock. He recalls not getting enough of this astonishing experiment. It taught him, he says, that form and content are the same and that extracting truth from texts requires the same care and attention as exploring the content of a rolled-up sock.
The ordinary fabrics of everyday life such as socks, jumpers, towels, sheets and curtains surrounding the embodied self throughout life become part of memory and carriers of tacit knowledge. Beyond utility these mundane items seem to have no inherent value, yet their power to evoke feelings and experiences is revealed in the stories of which they are part.
Using narrative as process of meaning making, through text and textiles, multi-sensory propositions and thinking through the hands textile artist and researcher Solveigh Goett explores and suggests spaces of knowledge beyond the word between the domestic and the academic in a practice-based PhD project supported by the AHRC.
In words and images, this paper reflects on the challenges of joining methodologies from the sewing box, tales from behind the curtains and strands of academic discourse through acts of the imagination in search of new meanings.
http://www.thetextilefiles.blogspot.com/ [new window]
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‘Studying identities through collage’ – Dr Anna Bagnoli (Real Life Methods, University of Leeds)
What can be learned about young people’s identities from employing the artistic technique of the collage, and how usefully can the insights gathered from young people’s own artwork be applied longitudinally? This paper will discuss the relevance of collage as a method for investigating identities on the grounds of an analysis of the collages which were produced by 5 girls participating in the Young Lives and Times study. This is a qualitative longitudinal project, part of the Real Life Methods Node, which is investigating the everyday lives, identities, and relationships of a cohort of young people, now aged 15, in rural and metropolitan Yorkshire.
During wave 1 of the project, the young people took part in two interviews, and in a range of visual methods, which included a self-portrait, a timeline, a relational map, and two photo elicitation exercises. They were then given a booklet listing eight further methods in which they could choose to take part. The most popular choice among the optional methods was the collage, which also emerged as a girls’ choice. The paper will present an analysis of the identity narratives emerging from the collages, and of the discourses of femininity that appear to be relevant to the construction of the girls’ identities, and will consider the effectiveness of collage when applied longitudinally.
