Participatory Theatre and Walking as Social Research Methods - A Toolkit

The ‘Participatory Arts and Social Action in Research’ (2016-2017) (PASAR) project explores how participatory theatre and walking methods help to understand the ways in which migrant families, some of whom with limited English language knowledge, construct their sense of belonging and social participation as a citizenship practice. It is not within the scope of the toolkit to report back in detail on this research project, but rather we use the toolkit to provide examples and give a detailed idea of how these methods can be used for research.

The PASAR project originated out of the need for the U.K. social science community to gain a better understanding of how participatory action approaches can engage marginalised groups in research that co-produces knowledge.

Funded by the National Centre for Research Methods / Economic and Social Research Council, the PASAR project (http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/projects/pasar) explores how walking methods and participatory theatre creates a space for exploring, sharing and documenting processes of belonging and place-making that are crucial to understanding and enacting citizenship.

Participatory Action Research, based on the principles of inclusion, valuing all voices and action-oriented interventions (O’Neill and Webster 2005) allows for engaging marginalised groups in research as a citizenship practice.

We are, in the U.K., experiencing a widening of inequalities. This includes material inequalities, but also of inequalities of social recognition and access to decision making. It is in this context that participatory action research (PAR) is particularly needed to more effectively engage, recognise and include marginalised groups in the research process (Luff et al. 2015).

The benefits of a PAR approach include contesting existing ways of knowing, producing new knowledge with marginalised groups, and connecting to new publics, such as academics, policy makers and practitioners. PAR serves to raise awareness, challenge stereotypes and produce better knowledge and understanding and contribute to developing action, practice and policy for social justice (O’Neill and Webster 2005; O’Neill 2017; Erel at el 2017; Reynolds et al 2017; Kaptani 2018). Moreover, using participatory arts methods in research enables participants to express themselves through creative means, beyond language. This contributes to developing action, practice and policy for social justice.