Reflexive Revisiting: Exploring Youth-Produced Images in Community and Policy Dialogue in Relation to Sexual Violence

• In Event: Engaging Young People Through the Arts and Visual Practices to Address Sexual Violence

Abstract

Objectives: In this paper we focus on audience in arts-based research, including exhibitions, videos and others produced by young people. How do we read audiences where the visual is central? What are some of the tensions and limitations of community screenings and exhibitions? What are the implications for girl-led research focusing on sexual violence? Creative productions of arts based research “yield meanings that may be ineffable ultimately but that nevertheless ring true in the competent percipient” (Barone and Eisner, 2011: 6). If arts-based research is intended to show not tell, how may we as visual researchers discursively represent these so-called ineffable outcomes? In asking visual researchers to critically reflect on issues of audience, this paper explores the political and social engagement that is often at the heart of arts-based methodologies in order to generate methods of fostering debate and deliberation in sustaining audience engagement.

Theoretical Perspectives: Our paper is grounded in Rose’s (2012) work on researcher reflexivity as a critical component of audiencing, alongside the work of Burowoy (2003) on reflexive revisiting and Gubrium & Harper’s (2013) involvement of the research community itself in studying the overall effectiveness of participatory visual methodologies in engaging audiences.

Methods and Data Sources: The paper draws on qualitative Skype and face-to-face interviews with 20 researchers in Canada, the US, the UL and South Africa whose focus is on carrying out participatory visual research, and in relation to the broad question “what difference does this make?” This is a critical question in girl-led/youth-led media making studies where learning ‘from the ground up’ is key and in areas such as sexual violence where the issues themselves may be particularly sensitive and the producers vulnerable.

Results: Following a ‘go ask’ approach (Author), based on carrying out interviews with other participatory visual researchers, this study points to the need for exemplars and protocols for studying audiences of youth produced images. It highlights the impact of the images on researchers as a critical audience in participatory research. This complements and extends the work of Rose on researcher reflexivity by addressing a participatory component. Visual researchers are not ‘untouched’ by these images and we raise questions about what it means to study what could be framed as ‘human suffering’ (Wilkinson, 2006). We suggest that this is an important area for further investigation,

Significance of the Findings: Everyone, it seems, in the social research community, wants to influence community and policy dialogue. However, as Rist (2003) observes, “There is no broad-based and sustained tradition within contemporary social science of focusing qualitative work specifically on policy issues, especially given the real time constraints that the policy process necessitates. Yet it is also clear that the opportunities are multiple for such contributions to be made” (641). Participatory visual research is an area where contributions to community and policy dialogue can be made. The implications are far-reaching if as visual researchers we want to deepen an understanding of the impact of images, particularly in the context of Sontag’s (2004) notion of images that “haunt”.

Authors

• Claudia Mitchell, McGill University

• Pamela Lamb, McGill University

• Haley Raissadat, McGill University