In 2013 Professor David Gauntlett and Amy Twigger Holroyd led two events in Birmingham and London to explore what creative research methods are and how, where and why we engage in them. Evoked as as ‘play shops’ rather than ‘work shops’ the aim of these was to dismantle borders in our thinking as to what kinds of research methods are appropriate for disciplines and bring arts and design and ‘non-arts’ research approaches together.

A multitude of questions were asked, among which the principal ones were:

What qualities are needed to be a creative researcher?  How can we develop these qualities? How do we define ourselves as (creative) researchers? Who has creative control in our research relationships? (How) do participants in research benefit and what happens to creative outputs produced as part of that research? What sort of data is gathered through using creative research methods and how do we analyse it?

To see how these questions were explored and find out more about the activities undertaken click here

Playing is also at the heart of a creative approach to developing research skills through Six Degrees of Separation, a concept which may well be no familiar, and which has been used in this example as part of a first year induction into skills required for higher education.