The Inaugural Practitioner Action Research & Creative Methods Hub Seminars
5 November 2018, Room SB203 Lancaster Campus University of Cumbria
Welcome to the Practitioner Action Research and Creative Methods Hub launch event. We are delighted to bring together a community of action researchers and people who use creative methods in different settings.
One motivation is probably bringing us all together today – the question of how can we improve our practice? Whether we work with children, young people, adults, whether we are in education, healthcare or social care, whether academics, practitioners or students, whether front line staff, researchers or managers, we are all wondering – how can I do this better?
Many of us are also troubled by the times we find ourselves in, unprecedented austerity measures, fake news, Brexit, rising inequality, increasingly disenfranchised communities may all provoke us to wonder how we can research better and how we can achieve more with the findings from our research.
If practice development, methodology and social justice questions have brought you here today, then welcome. You have found a supportive and welcoming community who share your concerns.
The PAR&CM Hub is a community of people who believe practitioner action research is a potent form of inquiry that can drive powerful social change at micro and macro levels. We believe that using creative methods enables the research effort to more effectively address social justice issues and helps to prevent the increasing colonisation of research by normative and neoliberal assumptions. Beneath these two beliefs are a raft of questions about how such research endeavours take place and how we capitalise on the findings that arise from them.
As such this event is an opportunity to draw together and deliberate on what it means to do practitioner action research, how to achieve change from research findings and to give voice to the voiceless. Today we will hear from leaders in the field on knowledge democracy, mobilisation and social change, engage in debate about action research and creative methods, build networks and develop a wider understanding of the ways to achieve impact through small scale research, such as publication and activism.
Whoever you are, whatever your research experience, whatever your professional background you are welcome. Welcome to a space of curiosity and critical inquiry fuelled by a desire for positive social change.
Kaz
Practitioner Action Research and Creative Methods Hub 