Creative and art-based methods, including visual, audiovisual and performing arts, are increasingly applied in social sciences in diverse research topics. These methods have the potential to challenge the normativity of scientific knowledge production through, for example, allowing embodied ways of expressing thoughts and challenging the dominance of verbal language. The symposium Performing Arts in Urban Space, Creative Methods in Social Research brings together scholars from cross-disciplinary fields to reflect the potential, possibilities, and challenges of creative, art-based methods in research.
In the morning session we’ll hear the international keynote speakers Dr., Lecturer Ian R. Walsh (Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Galway, Ireland) and Dr. Ilaria Bessone (AltroCirco, Italy). Ian Walsh will talk about Galway Community Circus’s urban LifeLine event as a means to outline the benefits and drawbacks of urban space initiatives that are framed in terms of impacting wellbeing. In the second talk, Ian R. Walsh, Ilaria Bessone and Heta Mulari will discuss their experiences of using performing arts methods (theatre, circus) in research about social circus.
The afternoon session is reserved for research papers on performing arts, urban space and creative, art-based methods.
The registration is open until December 3.
The symposium is organized by Youth Research, Faculty of Social Sciences and the Under Pressure research project. The event has received TURNS (Tampere Urban Research Network for Sustainability) research platform’s seed funding.