ACTION RESEARCH NETWORK OF THE AMERICAS

2025 HYBRID ANNUAL CONFERENCE

AN ARTFUL EXPERIENCE: THE USE OF THE ARTS THROUGHOUT THE PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH PROCESS

PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO

MAY 16 & 17, 2025


ARNA Spotlight

What a pleasure it is to have additions to our Spotlight that highlight presentations at the 2025 ARNA Hybrid Conference. We invite you to read the abstracts of these accepted presentations that reflect our conference theme:

Una experiencia artística: el uso de las artes a lo largo del proceso de investigación-acción participativa

An Artful Experience: The use of the arts throughout the participatory action research process.

Presenting? If you are interested in having your presentation to be considered for the Spotlight,
please send by April 15 a visual and the most current abstract of your presentation to

ARNA looks forward to seeing you at the conference.

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Creative resistance: Arts-based youth participatory action research for shared meaning making
  • Kristen P. Goessling, PhD, MS, Director of Participatory Research, Penn State Center - Philadelphia, Penn State University
  • Amanda C. Wager, PhD, Canada Research Chair in Community-Engaged Research
  • Dana E. Wright, PhD, Abbie Valley Professor of Education; Mills College at Northeastern University
  • Marit Dewhurst, PhD, Professor, Art Education Program Director, City College of New York

This session will explore guiding principles of arts-based YPAR (youth participatory action research) as we grapple with key ethical and methodological questions. Reflecting on our past experiences, we critically analyze the conditions for and limitations of using the arts to advance social justice with youth. Stories from the field illustrate the potential for art to generate places of possibility, shedding light on the ways young people actively make meaning of their lives and experiences through creative resistance. Our session is organized by four key principles: 1) art is a rigorous medium for analyzing, producing, and sharing knowledge; 2) authentic and reciprocal relationships are vital; 3) change can occur on multiple levels, oftentimes simultaneously; and 4) it is all about praxis and the process. Additionally, we share practices for engaging in arts-based YPAR, including values-driven participation, listening for emergent outcomes, trusting the process, and maintaining a flexible container. This session will integrate storytelling, dialogue, and a mix of art-making to facilitate collaborative meaning making that is core to the creative YPAR process.

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Enhancing Access and Effectiveness of Harm Reduction Services for Rural Populations: A Participatory Action Research Plan with ACR Health
  • Jonathan Damiani, PhD
  • Patrick Witmer, Graduate Student
  • Le Moyne College

This action research project, developed in collaboration with Le Moyne College’s interdisciplinary Executive Leadership Program, and ACR Health, a legacy of AIDS community resources (ACR), aims to expand harm reduction services for persons who inject drugs (PWID) into rural areas. We will present photographs captured by researchers during their ten full days of field work in rural environments, along with quotes that highlight the researchers’ awakenings, the participants’ lived experiences, and the powerful understandings of humanity that were a direct result of our conversations with PWID in these same environments. We believe that by intertwining our visual narrative with the thoughts and words of the researchers and participants we can help conference attendees see this research three dimensionally and better connect with the challenges researchers and PWID face in these overlooked settings. While most participants have been engaged with treatment services, significant barriers, including stigma, transportation issues, and emotional factors continue to hinder full recovery. Addressing logistical and emotional challenges are essential for creating more effective interventions and fostering long-term health outcomes for PWID in underserved communities. Despite existing harm reduction strategies, including mobile van services and syringe exchange programs, barriers such as financial constraints, limited transportation, and the pervasive stigma surrounding drug use persist as significant obstacles. A more holistic approach to harm reduction—one that encompasses both practical interventions and emotional support systems—must be prioritized to address the multifaceted challenges faced by this vulnerable group.

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Visualising emotional labour: Enhancing the wellbeing of ECD Centre Managers through arts-based methods
  • Prof Lesley Wood, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

Previous research conducted by the ECD Research Chair indicated the challenges early childhood centre managers face when interacting with parents/caregivers who they perceive to have unrealistic demands and expectations of what the service should provide regarding childcare and education. Similarly, the emotional strain of recruiting, retaining and motivating staff in a low paid, low status and under-resourced occupation takes its toll on the wellbeing of these women who often have no qualifications or training themselves. This is understandable, considering their working conditions, where many parents cannot afford to pay adequate fees to cover expenses, and government subsidies—if they receive them—only account for 27% of operational costs. However, these enterprising women are creating employment and freeing up thousands of other parents to earn an income. They make an important contribution to the social and economic welfare of the country, but their own wellbeing can suffer in the process. The constant need to manage/hide emotions and maintain a professional stance can lead to emotional exhaustion, burnout, and feelings of alienation from their true self. This study aimed to facilitate a group of managers of ECD centres in a rural area to articulate the relational experiences impacting on their wellbeing and explore how they could better navigate them for positive outcomes. In line with the government’s drive to professionalise the ECD sector, our work with them was guided by Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour that focuses on recognising and managing emotions as part of any professional role requiring interpersonal interaction. Application of the theory could enable the participants to recognise emotional demands, distinguish between surface and deep acting, develop coping mechanisms, and advocate for supportive environments. Following a participatory action learning and action research design, we recruited 10 Black, female managers to form an action learning group, where they could share their experiences and learning in a safe space over several sessions. Visual methods allowed the participants to articulate their feelings and experiences in a non-threatening way. We prompted them to do a drawing to indicate the thoughts, feelings and physical responses they experienced when interacting with parents, staff or other people related to their professional role. After giving opportunity to all to share their drawings, we facilitated discussion about how they might better deal with these feelings in a way that fosters their wellbeing. The group agreed on the broad themes that emerged from their drawings, and we later analysed the data through our theoretical lens. Initial findings indicate that managers feel emotionally drained by difficult interactions with parents and staff. Due to the competitiveness of the private sector, they are loath to confide in others and feel alone in their struggles. They often cope by avoiding difficult discussions with staff, which creates more problems. These findings will be used to inform a second cycle of research where participants will collaborate to develop strategies to decrease the cognitive dissonance arising from their actual feelings and their need to maintain a professional stance. This should in turn increase job satisfaction, self-efficacy and self-esteem, all important markers of wellbeing. In addition, the findings will be used to feed into the development of a short learning course for ECD managers.

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"Creative Work Rarely Happens by Committee!" Arts-Based Research and Film Creation for Social Change
  • Michelle Lam, PhD Canada Research Chair Brandon University

Creating a film as a participatory arts-based research project involves sharing power with community members, researchers, storytellers, scriptwriters, filmmakers, and more. In response to the need for anti-racist education for social change in online spaces, our research team has spent the past four years creating short films for social media. We heard stories from 500 people in our province, wove the commonalities of those stories into film scripts, read them in focus groups, re-worked the scripts, hired filmmakers who again re-worked the scripts, tested them again in focus groups, and then launched them on social media, analyzing the public response through online comments. We are now on our second round of this project, which involves more film creation and the launch of in-person learning circles, workshops, and professional development which use the films for discussion and growth. In one of our meetings, a consultant who was surprised by how many voices were woven into these short films shared with us, “It is rare that this kind of creative work happens by committee!” This orientation to arts-based creation is an intentional democratization of research and knowledge mobilization, and it is essential in a project like ours, which aims to centre marginalized voices and experiences, educate the general public through social media, and to ultimately foster social change to combat racism. This presentation shares the research behind the films, the process of their creation, their impact on social media, and the things we have learned from using them to facilitate anti-racism education within the broader community. This study expands the notions of what collaboration can look like within the research process, how filmmaking can be used as both process and outcome, how art can impact public audiences and form key moments of public pedagogy, and contributes to understandings of how arts-based research can be used for social change.

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