Supported by the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate fund, Leeds-based arts organisation Compass Live Art has been working with researchers Matthew Reason (York St John University) and Lauren Hall (Liverpool John Moores University, previously York St John University) to dig deeper into questions of co-creation. Their project has looked to uncover the experiences of artists and project participants taking part in collaborative processes of “making with”.

Compass’ work involves commissioning socially engaged, interactive live art in the public realm. Artists develop projects with local participants whose lived experiences make them true experts in the issues being explored.

Yet, on embarking on this research, Compass was also aware that the word “co-creation” comes with baggage. Often used as a catch-all term, talking about “co-creation” can be seen as obscuring the real power dynamics and hierarchies involved in participatory approaches.

The research team was, therefore, keen to explore these apparent tensions and gain a more nuanced understanding of the value of co-creative approaches.

Adopting a creative research approach

Creative research methodologies played a central role in exploring the experiences and impact of different forms of co-creation to ensure the lived experiences of artists and participants were integral to the project.

The research process consisted of two strands:

• Holding four dialogical workshops with Compass-commissioned artists past, present and future.
• Conducting a series of walking interviews exploring participants’ experiences.

Conversations of co-creation

The team facilitated conversations with artists and producers who have previously created and produced work for Compass (or will do in the near future). Using Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation from 1969 as a starting point, workshop attendees quickly highlighted how traditional, hierarchical and rigid frameworks for co-creation didn’t reflect the realities of practice.

As participant Amy Lawrence commented:

“It’s multifaceted. And there isn’t one form of co-creation. I feel like many things can potentially be true at the same time.”

Based on this in-depth work, Compass has now published three illustrated representations that show how co-creation – at its best – is underpinned by structure but is also fluid and responsive rather than linear:

• Co-creation as Mobius ladder: Everything everywhere all at once
• Co-creation as bouldering: Problem-solving
• Co-creation as mycelium: Relational practice

These representations encourage different ways to think about co-creation and draw out some of the key questions, issues and ethics of working in this way, as well as suggesting some practical approaches.

Re-visiting memories through walking interviews

To uncover more about participants’ experiences, the project team also invited previous project participants to join them in walking interviews, re-visiting key locations to reignite memories and talk more about the immediate and later impacts of participating in a Compass project.

Following this, the team created a series of visual maps, containing mini soundscapes from the interviews (for an example, take a look at this visual map created from walking interviews with participants from Compass’ Public House project). Through analysing the data, it became clear that memory, connection and friendship are integral to being a Compass Festival participant.

The walking interviews demonstrated that involving people in “making with” artwork helped build stronger connections between people and develop a deeper understanding of places and communities.

Rigorous and responsive

So what “should” co-creation look like? The research found that the most frequent response was that “it depends”, underlining how it needs to be flexible and consider “circumstances, funding, objectives, people, place and a whole lot more.”

Even more importantly, however, the research suggests that anybody using the term co-creation should rigorously and transparently reflect on what it means to them and how that is evidenced in the way they work. Perhaps it is best to think of co-creation as not meaning anything at all until we say and show what it means in each individual example of practice.

You can further explore the research findings, including the visual representations of co-creation, on the Compass Live Art website.

Interested in incorporating walking interviews in your own project evaluations or research? Take a look at this How To guide, which includes video case studies from Compass Live Arts and project researcher Lauren Hall.

Illustration by Alyce Wood.

The post Discover new visual ways to think about co-creation appeared first on Centre for Cultural Value.

For their Collaborate project, Compass Live Art has partnered with researchers at the Institute for Social Justice, York St John University to explore the impact of co-creation. As part of this project, lead researcher Lauren Hall is undertaking “walking interviews”, where participants will revisit the locations of previous Compass Festival events to explore enduring memories.

As Lauren outlines in her new blog post:

“It is argued that walking interviews generate richer data, because interviewees are prompted by meanings and connections to the surrounding environment and are less likely to try and give the right answer.”

Lauren has now started piloting walking interviews. So far, the methodology has been found to generate more place-specific data. It has also opened questions about people’s relationships with places and issues surrounding sustainability and the legacy of co-creation.

Read Lauren’s blog post about walking interviews in full at Compass Live Arts.  

We have just re-opened our Collaborate fund to expressions of interest from the UK cultural sector.

The fund supports research partnerships that investigate under-explored questions of cultural value. The deadline for cultural sector applicants is 25 November 2022. We will open the fund to academics in January 2023. Please visit this webpage for more details on how to apply to the fund. 

The post Collaborate project uses walking interviews to explore co-creation appeared first on Centre for Cultural Value.