Art-based Research

Art therapy and all of the other creative arts therapies have promoted themselves as ways of expressing what cannot be conveyed in conventional language. Why is it that creative arts therapists fail to apply this line of thinking to research? In this exciting and innovative book, Shaun McNiff, one of the field's pioneering educators and authors, breaks new ground in defining and inspiring art-based research. He illustrates how practitioner-researchers can become involved in art-based inquiries during their educational studies and throughout their careers, and shows how new types of research can be created that resonate with the artistic process. Clearly and cogently expressed, the theoretical arguments are illustrated by numerous case examples, and the final part of the book provides a wealth of ideas and thought provoking questions for research. This challenging book will prove invaluable to creative art therapy educators, students, and clinicians who wish to approach artistic inquiry as a way of conducting research. It will also find a receptive audience within the larger research community where there is a rising commitment to expanding the theory and practice of research. Integrating artistic and scientific procedures in many novel ways, this book offers fresh and productive visions of what research can be.

The difficulty with this approach in relation to art-based research is that the
creative process typically emerges in unexpected ways from the attention we give
to objects of inquiry. This is a major distinction between traditional science and ...