In this paper, we explore, name, and unpack the possibilities that printmaking, as an art form, holds in visual narrative inquiry. We also explore the relationship between visual narrative inquiry and narrative inquiry, a relational qualitative research methodology that attends to experiences. Drawing on two different ongoing narrative inquiry studies, where we engage with either trans young adults or refugee families from Syria with pre-school children, we explore how printmaking practices facilitate processes of inquiry. The etymology of the word “frame” helps us understand framing as a process that is future oriented and reflects a sense of doing, making, or preforming. In this way, framing allows us to see otherwise, to respond to and with participants, and to engage with experiences in ways that open new possibilities of inquiry.

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Walking alongside is a phrase used in narrative inquiry to describe relational commitments that shape how we attend to the complexity of lives, unfolding over time, and within a web of social relations. The space of inquiry requires researchers to attend to participants’ lives and stories of experience across various social situations, places, and times. In this paper, I explicate and unpack my intimate, and sometimes complex, journey and unfolding research process. In this study, walking alongside was a process of embodying the relational ethics of narrative inquiry, which attended to silences, remained playful, and responded to and through uncertainty. I provide insight into building relational spaces in visual narrative inquiry by combining art-making with Lugones’ theories on world travelling to creatively and nimbly respond to stories and walk alongside participants. As a narrative inquirer, I walked alongside three trans young adults, to co-create, re-imagine, and transform research in relation to participants. This process is undergirded by attention to and a deepening awareness of relational ethics, and by creating spaces that allow for emergent possibilities of being in relation to honor diverse and multiple ways of knowing.