Understanding the ‘bigger picture’: Lessons learned from participatory visual arts-based research with individuals seeking asylum in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article presents reflections from a participatory visual arts-based research study with individuals seeking asylum in the north-east of England. This study invited participants to represent their lived experiences through biographical and visual methods. In doing so, they engaged in a process of ethno-mimesis, accomplished through the production of images that function as sites for meaning making, self-representation and social critique. This article demonstrates how an arts-based approach can stimulate change and transformation in individuals’ lives by supporting meaningful participation in the knowledge production process and providing a safe space where participants are empowered by sharing stories that challenge, subvert and reimagine what it feels like to be an asylum seeker. Furthermore it suggests that in contrast to interview settings, through the process of ethno-mimesis participants were offered the time and space to consciously engage with their experiences and invest in their creativity and storytelling capacities in order to render their worldviews visible. Although the findings from this study reinforce an existing rich body of ethnographic work on lived experiences of asylum seekers, this study recognizes that the identified themes highlight the enduring impact of immigration policies on individuals asylum-seeking trajectories and focuses instead on how such experiences are creatively negotiated by participants.

Methodological reflections on curating an artistic event with African youth in a Norwegian city

“…Arts-based methods that researchers have used to engage with migrants include photography and filmmaking (Gatta, 2019; Puwar, 2012; Stavropoulou, 2019), cartographic storytelling (Musiol, 2020), drawing (Bagnoli, 2009; Guruge et al, 2015), body-map storytelling (Gastaldo et al, 2012), participatory poetry (Norton and Sliep, 2019) and collage making (Vacchelli, 2018). Scholars have demonstrated the ability of theatre and performance to engage desensitized audiences, tell stories about migration, confront the bodies of performers with the bodies of spectators, and transform nameless migrants into individual agents with memories, histories and identities (Mcneal et al, 2020).…”

Sharing ‘hostile’ stories: Exploring the UK's ‘hostile environment’ through participatory arts-based methods

“…Not all participants felt comfortable to engage with creative methods as they found the ‘expectation of creating art’ challenging (Stavropoulou, 2019). In some cases, we explored alternative creative endeavours such as imagining ‘snapshots’, sourcing online content (creative commons licensed), and sharing images from their smartphone photo galleries.…”

“…Within migratory experiences, time becomes an ‘exercise of power’ by states (Khosravi, 2014) defined by uncertainty about the outcome of one's situation. Similarly, participants who had been waiting for prolonged periods regarding their asylum claims, described how such suspended waiting periods served as a ‘different kind of prison’ (Stavropoulou, 2019: 103). Participants who had been waiting between two to five years, explained how they were not able to move on with their lives due to their lack of refugee status.…”

“…Adopting an intersectional conceptual lens offers possibilities for the article to explore the everyday impact of immigration policies in participants’ lives, and the ways in which their different positionalities, characteristics and priorities intersect with and shape such experiences. Secondly, the article explores how participants make sense and critically reflect on the impact of such policies using participatory arts-based approaches and reveals the transformative potentialities such methods can unlock (Stavropoulou, 2019).…”

“I’m meant to be his comfort blanket, not a punching bag” – Ethnomimesis as an exploration of maternal child to parent violence in pre-adolescents

“…Arts-based methods are also particularly useful in promoting flow, thus mediating potential challenges to addressing traumatic events, or emotionally charged incidents in an embodied, engaged, and ethical way. With these methods, participants and researcher can maintain conversation (Bird, 2018;Stavropoulou, 2019;Westmarland and Bows, 2019) or convey aspects of the lived experience that verbal expression cannot (Bird, 2018;Pain, 2012;Reavey and Johnson, 2008).…”