Arts Based Research: Exploring Sandtray as a Creative-Embodied Approach

• In Event: Reflections on Practices in the "Field": Lessons in Creative, Critical, Postcritical, and Community Research

Abstract

In this presentation, the authors introduce the histories and storylines that thread together to tell the story of arts-based research (ABR). Using these storylines as a springboard, the first author shares her conceptualization of the sand tray as an artful approach to qualitative knowledge generation.
ABR is often positioned within the liminal spaces between art and science, where creative expression—its practices, procedures, premises, and principles—is employed as a methodological tool and modality for dissemination (Leavy, 2020). While there is no shortage of artful methods of inquiry, practices that stem from visual, performative, and literary art movements are frequently described and constantly innovated, as seen in the emergence of creative-embodied practices (Flint & Toledo, 2021).
The creative-embodied movement defies easy categorization, drawing on various methods highlighting the artistry of experience (Dewey, 2005/1934) while not necessarily resulting in an art object. Researchers involved in creative-embodied practices are particularly interested in socially situated inquiry that moves beyond tacit knowledge to engage the felt sense—knowledge that comes from embodied, visceral experiences (Tichen & McCormack, 2010). Some examples of these methods include body mapping (Boydell, 2020) and string figuring (Nordstrom, 2022).
To generate discussion about the possibilities of creative and embodied ABR methods, in this presentation, we share the first author's adaptation of the psychotherapeutic method, sandtray, as a tool for qualitative inquiry. In sandtray therapy, clients use miniatures arranged in boxes of sand to make sense of and process their experiences (Homeyer & Sweeney, 2023). The first author, a qualitative methodologist and family therapist, conducted a sandtray study in the spring of 2023. The project explored 19 participants' experiences of required diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) college courses. The study occurred over two meetings, including an in-person, 90-minute sandtray interview and a 60-minute online interview using a digital sandtray platform.
The first author illustrates sandtray as an innovative method for creative and embodied movement ABR by weaving her own and the participants' reflections alongside images of completed sandtrays. These reflections focus on the creative expression potential of play, the fluidity of storytelling, and the significance of metaphor in artful knowing without dependence on artistic skill. Overall, participants felt encouraged to tap into new and abstract ways of thinking as they thought about old problems in a new way, expressing a sense of liberation in the process. Sandtray provided participants a space to symbolically manifest memories, emotions, moments in time, relationships, identities, and experiences through metaphor. The participants' storytelling was fluid as they replaced figures, shifted their placement in the sand, and moved through the scene, their stories evolving through verbal to non-verbal, kinesthetic, visual, and linguistic spaces and actions. This presentation details these reflections to connect the promise of sandtray in data generation with the goals and methods of ABR methods while highlighting the significance of the creative and embodied movements within artful inquiry.

Authors

• Lorien S. Jordan, University of South Florida

• Daria Smirnova, University of South Florida

• Anna V. Gonzalez-Pliss, University of South Florida