“Aesthetics and the experiences of beauty are the primary vehicle through which complexities are made known without the confinement imposed by belief and construed meaning. It is this way of knowing, steeped in axiology, that arts-based research methodology can offer truths regarding the social world around us. Within the arts, the concept of truth is seen through axiology, where even fiction reveals a reality that exists but might be unspoken in the social world.”
For me, arts-based research is a chance to innovate, create, and design new research methods to investigate complex social phenomenons of the 21st century. I have used the art of remixing as a way of (re)constructing knowledge from songs created in music therapy. I am interested in arts-based research as its own methodology, not wholly qualitative or quantitative, but instead informing both from a position of axiology (being guided by values of aesthetics and ethics). Arts-based research creates new ways of knowing through artistic social reconstructions, aesthetic engagement, and research performance.
Arts-based Research
Co-Author, Michele Forinash
Chapter 44 in Music Therapy Research. Edited by Barbara Wheeler and Kathleen Murphy