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Abstract
Purpose - The purpose this paper is to consider festivals as sites for inquiry and learning.
Design/methodology/approach - The research employed a pluralistic approach to the inquiry drawing on critical African-centred pedagogy, participatory action research, and performance as research inquiry. These arts-based research methods allowed insights to be gained in ways that were congruent to the arts and participants who enacted them. In total, 12 young people and six elders of diverse African heritage as well as two artists were participants in the research.
Findings - The research revealed that the festival as a research methodology was both dialogic and performative and a rich site for the exploration of identity negotiation. Through these arts-based approaches the aesthetic elements often missed by traditional social science methods were highlighted as key in exploring acculturation socialistaion experiences and deconstructing exclusionist discourses emanating from the dominant culture.
Research limitations/implications - The research affirmed the power of multi-modal approaches to research and the importance of evocative discourses in identity exploration and development.
Originality/value - This research is the first known attempt to theorise an arts-based festival as a research approach in reference to enculturation and cultural memory.
Keywords Identity development, Arts-based research, Cultural memory, Participatory arts
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Some of the most exciting developments in research methodology are those that enrich and extend the conversation about process and product. The power of these developments lie in the way that researchers enact ways of being and doing that balance the processes of inquiry with sensitivity to place in ways that are responsive to context, participants, audience, and the phenomena in question. Brearly (2008), for example, highlights the way that researchers have opened the way for us to explore creative forms of research that reflect the richness and complexity of data and invite multiple levels of engagement that are cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic (Barone and Eisner, 2012; Denzin, 2003; Leavy, 2008).
This means that "participation" in research can take many forms that move us beyond the formal and impoverished. For example, in a film or performance we are afforded an opportunity to participate in those events, and we can debate with others the deep motives of the events presented and the meaning making afforded through multi-modality...