Creative research series, part three: Impact
How can creativity boost the impact of research?
How can we make sure participants benefit from their involvement?
And what intangible impacts might creative methods generate?
In the run up to our Creative Research Methods webinar on November 11th, we’re sharing actionable insights on how Creative Methods can make your research more inclusive, insightful and impactful.
Creative researcher Dr Ella Harris, engagement specialist Kheron Gilpin, and artist and facilitator Hannah Mumby will be your webinar hosts on the 11th. Here, we each share knowledge on how creative methods can boost research impact.
1: Kheron Gilpin
positive impacts for research participants
Good research has the potential to influence the world profoundly. Whether it’s by shifting political discourses, offering new insights into a social issue, or convincing the public to make positive changes.
But as well as having impact for external audiences, your research can, and should, also have a positive impact for your participants.
“Your research can and should have a positive impact for your participants”
I’m passionate about making sure that participants benefit from research they’re involved in. There are a few dimensions to this.
Involving Participants in Influencing Change
When working with participants, it’s really important to transparently communicate how their contributions will be used and what change you’re hoping to create with the research findings. This transparency not only enhances trust, it also motivates your participants by recognising the significance and responsibility of their role. When you involve participants in this high level thinking about the impact of research, they can be empowered to play their part in influencing change.
Enabling Professional Development for Participants
An often-overlooked aspect of research participation is its impact on a participant's professional development. Especially for long term research projects, participants will likely gain and develop skills by being part of your research. You can acknowledge this by naming participants (if they choose) in reports and other outputs, and even with certificates. Especially for young people, this can be really beneficial in boosting their professional or academic progress, allowing them to list their contribution on their CV.
Inviting Continued Engagement
You can also invite participants to research related events, such as launch parties, workshops and presentations. These events offer participants a chance to see the real-world application of their contributions. This ongoing engagement ensures that the conversations evolving from your research continue to include and benefit your participants.
Case Study
The video below is an example of a research event where we brought together sports brands with community groups. A key aim of the event was to gain insights for brands, but it was equally as important to engage young people and deliver an impactful, community orientated session. We focused on giving back to the community by celebrating participants for their achievements and growth in sports.
The day was filled with sports challenges, workouts, and opportunities for the young participants to showcase their skills and commitment. Participants were recognized for their dedication with trophies, awards, and branded gear like T-shirts and trainers that they could keep. This recognition not only highlighted their hard work and growth but also offered them a chance to celebrate their achievements with their peers.
The event provided valuable participant insights, while creating a memorable and rewarding experience for everyone involved.
While not every budget can support such an initiative at this scale, similar outcomes can be achieved through thoughtful planning and creative approaches, making community impact possible at various levels.
2. Dr Ella Harris
Telling impactful research stories with creative methods
One of the best things about creative research processes is that they lend themselves to producing impactful, engaging and accessible outputs.
As we all know, telling impactful research stories is crucial. A good research story engages your audience - whether that’s publics, stakeholders, clients or communities - bringing your data to life and offering a textured account of your processes and findings.
Effective research stories also strengthen your calls to action. When you invite audiences to engage emotionally with your findings, they’re more likely to act in response to that new knowledge.
What’s more, compelling stories ensure that your research is accessible for a wide range of people, including those less likely to sit down and read a conventional output like a report.
But many teams find it challenging to capture the richness of their research. The most stimulating and dynamic focus group can sound flat and uninspiring when you come to type it up.
This is where creative methods come in…
When we work with creative methods, the research process normally generates rich, creative materials that will allow you to tell impactful research stories.
Often we think about storytelling as something that happens after the research. We collect our data, analyse it and then we find ways to tell compelling and effective stories. But, in creative research, the storytelling is baked into the data collection.
“In creative research, the storytelling is baked into the data collection”
For example, in my collaborative research exploring Tiny Home communities in Texas (with Mel Nowicki and Tim White), we’ve worked closely with photographer Cian Oba Smith. As a method, Cian’s photography helped us to focus on the aesthetics and material cultures of Tiny Housing - adding depth to our analysis. As a medium, the photos are also allowing us to produce engaging outputs. Using the photos, we’re creating an illustrated, coffee table book that will allow the research to reach much wider audiences than a normal academic text could.
Images by Cian Oba Smith. 2022.
Another fantastic way creative methods can boost impact is by giving participants agency in shaping how your research is communicated. In co-creative projects, participants get a chance to produce materials that can be used within, or as standalone, outputs.
For example, I worked with participants to co-create the interactive documentary - The Lockdown Game (press the remote to start). In this research project, about experiences of Lockdown in London, participants created multimedia content individually in their own time (e.g. by taking photos, making short videos, writing text). They then worked together, with my oversight, to design the interactive documentary’s layout, style and interactive features.
This was a really generative method. Watching the group negotiate the design the i-doc gave me rich insights into their diverse experiences of lockdown. It also produced a really impactful output. The i-doc is a dynamic, interactive resource that audiences can play around with to immerse themselves in participants’ stories.
Importantly, The Lockdown Game is an output that my participants had direct control over. It shares their experiences, on their own terms - allowing them to shape how the research is encountered and understood.
3. Hannah Mumby
The intangible impacts of creative research
When considering impact in relation to creative research, we can easily see how creativity boosts or enriches traditional measures of impact, for example:
Making new audiences aware of pieces of research
Increasing audience engagement with the content of the research
Raising the profile of a research study
Impacting the design of services or community resources
Influencing behaviour change of citizens, participants or audiences
However, creativity also brings potential to generate more intangible or unexpected impacts:
Opening spaces for dialogue where complicated views and issues can be surfaced and explored in a way that doesn’t require resolution - these conversations may have a lasting impact on participants / stakeholders / communities
Participants developing a sense of their own voice
Participants building an understanding of their own values
Solidarity through the sharing of lived experience
Building of emerging connections which can go on to form new networks
In other words, perhaps one of the most powerful impacts of creative approaches is in the potential to build and inhabit new worlds.
“One of the most powerful impacts of creative approaches is in the potential to build and inhabit new worlds”
I recently facilitated a creative session that brought together multiple community peer research projects to share the learning and practices. After a series of breakout groups where each project shared their methods and learning, we constructed 6 spaces within the event venue, where participants could imagine “future worlds”. Participants were confronted with a provocation:
“This is a future where…”
Each of the 6 spaces finished this statement differently, drawing on the values of the various research projects represented.
This is a future where…
Participants were invited to move around the room and choose the world that they were most interested in building. They then sat around that table for the next hour, committing to building that future with their table group.
Within the emerging worlds, participants had to co-create the following:
Future Worlds, Instructions
A Motto, which was a short statement summing up the mission that anchored the values of their world, articulated in a way that they all agreed on
A Set of Values: Participants could add words, phrases, ideas, drawings, and doodles that helped describe what was needed in order to achieve this motto - this could be from their own individual knowledge or lived experience, or from what they had heard in the breakout sessions
A World Map: This was a large sheet of graph paper backed onto cardboard, with a set of location pins or waymarkers, for participants to fill out with information about actual projects / organisations / people / resources / websites that are currently doing work, or offering support, that could actually help make this future a reality.
All the groups had markers, collage papers, and decorative ribbons to use to decorate their worlds. In the last 10 minutes of the activity, the room was abuzz with everyone making their worlds into welcoming, beautiful spaces that we would move around and visit during the lunch period. The sense of ownership around the activity of collective world-building was tangible. Some of the groups had had very in-depth conversations about how to define their motto and values. By rounding off with the decoration, there was a sense of celebration around what they had been able to envision and build together in only 1 hour.
The impact of this activity, beyond the cohesion within the small groups, was a tangible resource that thematically mapped existing resources available to guide future strands of the projects.
This illustrates how creativity can support people, through imagination and collaborative visioning, to narrow down, articulate and then resource a set of values, potentially fostering new partnerships and anchoring the beginnings of future pieces of work.
