Drawing as Countersignature to Experience

Recording of presentation given at Vital Signs 2 Conference, 7-9 September 2010, University of Manchester
This paper explores the use of drawing as a tool in qualitative research workshops designed to explore audience experiences of dance.

As part of the ‘Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy’ AHRC-funded project, I conducted visual-arts based workshops with audience members after different dance performances. Working on different occasions with both adults and children, the workshops used drawing and painting to mediate, extend, focus and disrupt conversation in which the participants were asked to reflect back upon their experiences and memories of the performance they had seen.

In its development the methodology engages various overlapping approaches – art therapy, projective techniques in marketing, ideas of participative enquiry – all centred around the concept that the task of drawing will provide insights into individual’s experiences that are somehow ‘deeper’ or more ‘insightful’ than that produced by ‘mere’ talk. The use of drawing also suggests the ability to access knowledge in forms other than the verbal, something particularly attractive when dealing with the medium of dance.

This paper will explore the concepts and questions raised by this approach, including issues of rigour, evidence, the impact of medium on expression and the challenge of interpretation and dissemination. The paper will also explore the manner by which drawing is a transformative medium and how issues of transformation, imitation and (mis)interpretation – typically considered problematic in considering real world data – are appropriate to our exploration of responses to art and other lived experiences.