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Naming Sexual Violence: Epistemic Power, Narratives and Representations

Creative Practice, Co-Production and Marginalised Stories in the Study of Violence and Sexual Violence: Reflections from the Field

Pratique créative, coproduction et récits marginalisés dans l’étude de la violence et de la violence sexuelle : Réflexions issues du terrain
Baljit Kaur et Effie Makepeace

Résumés

Dans cet article, Baljit Kaur et Effie Makepeace réfléchissent aux méthodes créatives, tant théâtrales que musicales, utilisées dans leurs projets de recherche participative menés respectivement à Londres Est et au Malawi. Les auteurs discutent des possibilités et des moyens par lesquels la coproduction avec les participants, fondée sur la praxis féministe et combinée à des pratiques créatives, non seulement brisent le silence autour des récits de violence (sexuelle), mais peut également être utilisée comme une intervention et un outil permettant aux jeunes femmes et aux groupes marginalisés de représenter leurs expériences vécues de la violence. Cela permet en outre aux participants d'exercer un contrôle créatif sur les récits qui émergent et la manière dont ils sont représentés, tout en laissant place à la joie, à la résistance et au triomphe. En fin de compte, l'article plaide en faveur de l'utilisation de méthodes créatives qui offrent une orientation plus optimiste et plus enthousiasmante dans la recherche d'une amplification des histoires marginalisés.

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Notes de l’auteur

Authors’ note: This article contains references to violence and sexual violence. Please read with care.

Texte intégral

Acknowledgement: Baljit Kaur would like to acknowledge the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the “Mapping the Streets” research, and LirJane, Clarissa, Ruby, Maria and Scarlett who were co-producers in this project. Effie Makepeace would like to thank her co-researchers Dipo Katimba and Khamalathu Arts: Chrissy (Calo) Sitenala (Chair), Felistas Kamloni (Secretary), Gloria Njiwa (Treasurer), Esmie Breacer, Laina Saizi, Chrissie Magalasi, Chrisy Sinyanyalo, Rhoda Malefula, Gladys Theniford and Prisca Phiri.

Introduction

  • 1 Audre G. Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Trumansburg, NY, Crossing Press, 1984.

1“What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say?”. Beginning with Audre Lorde’s writing on the transformation of silence (1984), we consider these questions pertinent to the discussions we are offering on breaking silence around (sexual) violence.1 As we move through this paper, we share the kinds of stories that have emerged in our respective research projects, and how the methods we have chosen offer avenues to break this silence in ways that are helpful to those involved. 

  • 2 John Heron and Peter Reason, “Co-operative Inquiry” in THE SAGE Encyclopaedia of Action Research, S (...)

2We are two researchers from different disciplines (Makepeace is a Theatre Practitioner and Kaur is a Sociologist); our doctoral projects (Makepeace with women in Blantyre, Malawi and Kaur with young women in East London, UK) are discussed in more detail in the case studies below. We find in each other’s work commonalities, useful resonances, provocations and cross-pollinations, such that they have each invited interlocutors as collaborators and co-researchers/producers of knowledge and are led by feminist and creative methodologies that serve to elicit and safely receive material that reflects the sensitive nature of our respective projects. We use different terms for the populations involved in our projects (Kaur uses participant/interlocutor and Makepeace uses co-researcher). In participatory research traditions, a co-researcher is positioned alongside the researcher and involved (to varying degrees) in design, delivery, analysis, decision making and dissemination.2 This is not possible in all projects, hence our words linguistically represent our methodological positioning. To reflect this, our co-written sections will refer to participants or interlocutors where appropriate and case studies will use the language particular to our individual projects.

  • 3 Anna Pettican, Beverley Goodman, Wendy Bryant, Peter Beresford, Paul Freeman, Valerie Gladwell, Che (...)
  • 4 Pettican et al, Doing Together, p. 204.
  • 5 John Heron and Peter Reason, “Co-operative Inquiry”, 2014.

3We present research in this article that draws on traditions of Participatory Action Research (PAR), within which co-production sits well.3 We are drawn to these methodologies because of their participatory focus: that is, directly involving participants as co-producers of knowledge and at times requiring participation in an active, physical sense from both participants and researcher. PAR involves specific processes and cycles of planning, action and reflection which encompasses agreeing on methods, gathering and analysing data in an ongoing process.4 Although there is no universally agreed definition of what co-production is, it has been described as a way of working that is grounded in principles of shared power, respect, trust, equality, flexible thinking, valuing relationships and reciprocal learning. These principles underpin both of our projects. While the structure of PAR distinguishes itself from co-production, there are clear parallels in their shared principles of developing and maintaining equitable partnerships and engaging experiential knowledge and skills, contrasting presentational and propositional ways of knowing that are more widely acknowledged.5

  • 6 Patricia Carolina Gayá, “Towards Ever More Extended Epistemologies: Pluriversality and Decolonisati (...)
  • 7 Patricia Hill Collins. “Comment on Hekman’s ‘Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited (...)

4Furthermore, Heron and Reason’s co-operative inquiry invites us to work with an extended epistemology. Their work builds on discussions and foundations in the Global South and holds resonances with feminist, indigenous and decolonial approaches to knowledge production, “mak[ing] space for multiple ways of knowing”.6 This is imperative to diversifying our approaches and foregrounding knowledges from the Global South, as well as supporting the engagement of marginalised people. In dialogue with standpoint epistemologies we approach knowledge-production as situated and partial, foregrounding interlocutors’ standpoints.7 We pay careful attention to power imbalances and epistemic justice through the use of creative methods. As we discuss in our examples of practice, this can trouble traditional research power dynamics and enable participants and co-researchers agency over the knowledge they produce, and how it is framed, to subvert conventional approaches to knowledge production.

  • 8 About “sensitive research”, see Raymond M. Lee, Doing Research on Sensitive Topics, London, Sage, 1 (...)

5We explore different (although related) topics in our research, Makepeace’s work centres an exploration of power while Kaur’s work centres an exploration of violence. However, the sensitivity of these topics, as well as our concerns and considerations for the risks, safety, protection and well-being of participants and ourselves, is uniting. Research into violence is defined as “sensitive research”, which invites certain complexities such as access, conceptualisation, relationship between research and the researched, validity of findings and the ethics, politics and legality of the work.8 The intimate, personal and often emotional nature of participation in or witnessing of violence requires particular consideration, both for the research participants and the researchers, and in particular when looking at violence experienced by women and girls. 

  • 9 Ellsberg and Heise, Researching Violence against Women, p. 41.
  • 10 Raymond M. Lee and Elizabeth A. Stanko, eds., Researching Violence: Methodology and Measurement, Ro (...)
  • 11 Ellsberg and Heise, Researching Violence against Women.
  • 12 Virginia Dickson-Swift, Erica L. James, Sandra Kippen and Pranee Liamputtong, “Doing Sensitive Rese (...)

6Furthermore, researchers can also be at risk of violence themselves as well as recognising the “emotional toll” that hearing stories of violence can take.9 These complexities require rigorous reflection and ethical decision making on the part of the researcher and a careful engagement with method.10 Some studies of violence use standard methods deployed or used in creative ways, such as using dummy questionnaires to protect the participants, and some use creative research methods which may be fairly standardised, such as photovoice and body mapping.11 With this in mind, it is important to acknowledge that participants are “allowing you into their lives, they are telling you personal information that might be quite hard […] and you need to make sure you are aware of that”.12 Acknowledging and then addressing the challenges associated with our research topics leads us to search for methods that are best suited to exploring them.

Creative Research Methodologies

  • 13 Helen Kara, Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide, Policy Press, 2015.
  • 14 Monica Prendergast, “‘Poem Is What?’ Poetic Inquiry in Qualitative Social Science Research”, Intern (...)
  • 15 Nicola Allett, “Sounding Out: Using Music Elicitation in Qualitative Research”, 2010. https://eprin (...)

7Helen Kara’s (2015) writing on creative research argues that “in any field, every research project is created by its researchers”; we make research rather than doing or conducting it. In the social sciences, humanities and allied subjects, adopting creative approaches can help us to see and understand our topics in new ways.13 Arts-based techniques, for example, can be particularly useful in exploring sensitive topics, and those that are also associated with high levels of emotion.14 Creative writing and/or the visual arts such as drawing, painting, collage and photography are common forms of arts-based methods. However, other art forms like music and drama might also be used as the basis for creative research and are associated with elicitation methods that serve to enrich research data.15 

  • 16 Allett, “Sounding Out”, p. 3.
  • 17 Allett, “Sounding Out”.
  • 18 Jade Levell, Music, Mattering, and Criminalized Young Men: Exploring Music Elicitation as a Feminis (...)

8Music in social research methodology has received limited exploration despite being a powerful tool of expression. Kaur draws on music elicitation, described as “the integration of the music listening experience in research interviews to draw out or trigger memory, affective experience and descriptive in-depth discussion”.16 Aiding the telling of stories, music elicitation can enable the disclosure of feelings and draw out personal experiences, memories and past feelings.17 Music elicitation can also create spaces of emotional intimacy between researchers and participants through co-listening – the act of listening to music alongside another person. This creates conditions for respectful silences, authentic connection and communication, whilst also creating an atmosphere of trust, inclusion and respect. In light of this, music can be used as a tool to create a collaborative space; offering space to speak and to be heard, amplifying participants’ voices and enabling them to decide how much or little they would like to share. In this way, music elicitation is intimately tied to sonic mattering, or in other words, giving young people the sense that they matter.18 Kaur found music elicitation to be an effective tool in exploring young people’s everyday lived experiences of violence in East London.

  • 19 Bradley C. Haseman, “Rupture and Recognition: Identifying the Performative Research Paradigm”, in P (...)
  • 20 Catherine Etmanski, “Theatre of the Oppressed” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research, SAGE Pu (...)
  • 21 A broad term used to describe socially-engaged theatre and performance practices which include TO a (...)
  • 22 Sally Mackey, “Applied Theatre and Practice as Research: Polyphonic Conversations”, Research in Dra (...)

9The intersection of Makepeace’s work as a theatre maker and researcher means all her research work contains embodied, playful or expressive elements based in a practice-led approach, where the ongoing creative process is valued as research and knowledge itself.19 Theatre as a research method allows for particularly valuable conditions of learning and knowing, through the use of the body as an expressive tool. Makepeace’s work was influenced by Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) which is fairly regularly used as an action-oriented approach to research.20 Elsewhere, Applied Theatre is increasingly contributing to the field of practice research, and action research.21 Projects such as Makepeace’s which fall under this umbrella often use theatre as a tool, facilitated by the researcher, in order to conduct research focused on a particular issue, or group of people. Sally Mackey characterises this application as a “polyphonic conversation”, that is, allowing space for both the co-produced nature of the knowledge (the multitude of voices), the hierarchies of knowledge production (some voices are louder than others) and the focus of the research on a particular issue (the subject of the conversation).22  

10Ultimately, researchers of violence are often looking for ways for participants to use their methods to be able to bring their own narratives, even if these might be challenging. Thus, we proceed by each sharing a case study from our doctoral fieldwork where creative methods have been used to research violence with participants (Kaur), or where they have been used to explore another topic which has subsequently allowed narratives of violence to emerge (Makepeace). Following these descriptive accounts, we re-join to reflect on our use of creative methods in doing and making research around violence. Despite the many ethical complexities of such projects, we invite readers to engage with this discussion in the collective pursuit of future good-quality research.

Amplifying Stories of Sexual Violence through Music Elicitation and Music Production - Baljit Kaur

  • 23 To preserve the anonymity of those involved in the research, I have given pseudonyms to people, pla (...)

11My involvement with Bass Youth Club began in a general youth work capacity in 2014, and after some years was predominantly spent in the music studio.23 Music programmes ran every evening throughout the week and occasionally Saturday mornings too. Facilitating these programmes were Chris, Lawrence, Oscar, Jaden, Damien and Rick, who were all experienced music producers and engineers and/or music artists in the industry. With additional help from volunteers, facilitators rotated throughout the week to ensure that young people had consistent access to studio time. Structured in their design, the sessions welcomed attendees with an introductory activity and a sharing of their goals for the session. Following music production and recording time, the sessions often concluded with allocated time for performances, which was intentionally placed to encourage young people to promote their work, as well as developing their confidence and performance capabilities as music artists.

  • 24 A type beat is an instrumental.

12Scattered across these three-hour music sessions were small pockets in which I interacted with young people in their recording rooms. The routine and mundane tasks of setting up mics and recording their lyrics over type beats often presented opportunities to remain in the room and engage in the embodied and connective experience of co-listening to music.24 What was particularly striking to me was the way in which the production of lyrical content not only conveyed and evoked strong emotions but was ingrained with vivid autobiographical memories. In this way, young people used music as a form of communication and expression, inviting the audience in the studio to listen attentively to their narration of their everyday lived experiences. In so doing, they constructed knowledge about adversity and violence, positioning themselves as experts of their own lives in the room. The time spent with young people in the studio signals my empirical story of arrival to my doctoral research, of which the focus was to explore young people’s lived experiences of violence in East London as they are produced through rap music. Across a ten-month period of ethnographic fieldwork between 2019 and 2020, I observed and spoke to many young people, some of whom were regular and committed attendees of the music sessions, and others who floated between the programmes.

13Preparations to conduct interviews began a few months into fieldwork and my concerns as to how young people might “open up” were rife. Questions like “why would they talk to me about their trauma?” flooded the start of each session with anticipation. I was sceptical about their willingness to talk to me in detail about their lived experiences of violence. Nonetheless, in the studio setting where the production and co-listening of music was a constant and inevitable feature, music elicitation emerged in the interviews organically. More often than not, it did not feel like an intentional use of a creative method as exemplified in my interview with 17-year-old Emina. Our conversation began with her offer to listen to an eight-and-a-half-minute amalgam of raps, the only track she had recorded in the studio. In part two of the track, Emina makes references to “watching young minds, hearts and spirits go to waste”, and “blood stained streets”. “To be frank”, she raps, “I wanna see a change”. As the track concludes, the intensity of Emina’s lyrics and sounds of sirens in the backing track are replaced with a sharp silence that penetrates the media suite, returning us both to a relaxed state.

  • 25 Details of Emina’s experiences of attempted rape and molestation were not audio recorded. However, (...)
  • 26 Nichola Wood, Michelle Duffy and Susan J. Smith, “The Art of Doing (Geographies of) Music”, Environ (...)

14An hour into our interview, the conversation had evolved from the subject of losing her best friend to knife crime, as depicted in her rap, to more direct experiences of violence. Asking Emina about her future projects, she drew on themes of love and sex which were to be featured in upcoming tracks. As she discussed these topics, Emina began revealing parts of herself and her life history to a greater degree: “when I was five or six, I was molested, and a year ago somebody tried to rape me”. In a momentary pause to check on Emina’s well-being, she shared with me further details regarding the childhood sexual abuse and attempted rape; these details remained unrecorded as per her request.25 This interview with Emina came to be one of the most important in revealing the distinction between the lyricism produced by young men compared to young women. The narrative of knife crime, for example, which was largely common amongst young men received popularity in the music studio and was responded to far more favourably than young women’s experiences of sexual violence for which they were often blamed. Exemplifying this, descriptors such as “sket” and “slag” were employed and imposed on young women as signifiers of shame. As one youth worker, Christine, told me, “the victim [of sexual violence] becomes the one at fault in a way that doesn’t happen when a young person is stabbed”. Attitudes towards the issue of sexual violence in the youth club prohibited these narratives from entering young women’s raps and receiving exposure equivalent to narratives of “the streets”. Despite the silencing of young women’s stories of sexual violence, in this example I highlight the way in which music elicitation served as a route to Emina’s lived experiences. Importantly, accepting her offer to co-listen to her track positioned her from the outset as the creator of the space, leading the interview and articulating the “unspoken and unspeakable”, at her own pace and on her own terms.26

  • 27 This was a post-doctoral project carried out between November 2023 and December 2023, funded by The (...)

15Moreover, my interview with Emina brought forth crucial questions: in the creative space of the music studio, whose voices are amplified and whose are silenced? Whose stories are made visible while others are made invisible? Whose worlds do we produce and acquire knowledge about and whose worlds do we miss out on? In seeking to develop these findings, Mapping “the Streets” (MTS) is a project that explored gendered everyday urban violence experienced by young women and produced through rap music.27 Markedly different from the doctoral research, MTS centred the experiences of young women of colour: LirJane (14 y/o), Clarissa (17 y/o), Ruby (17 y/o), Maria (18 y/o) and Scarlett (21 y/o). Each of them had either previously attended Bass Youth Club’s music programmes or were attending them at the time of the project. Importantly, they were invited as co-producers of knowledge and as experts of their own lives and realities. As an area that requires urgent solutions, this project sought to intervene in the silencing of young women’s accounts of (sexual) violence and amplify their voices.

  • 28 Prendergast, “Poem Is What?”. Jenny McMahon, Kerry R. McGannon and Chris Zehntner, “Arts-based Meth (...)
  • 29 Westfield is a shopping centre in Stratford, East London.

16MTS was shorter in duration, comprising five sessions and spanning four weeks. An amalgam of workshop-style activities, a young person-led group walk, and one-to-one interviews created space for our collective discussions in the first three sessions of the project. These activities were purposeful choices that served as small creative containers to transfer their lived experiences of violence in a way that felt manageable and safe.28 The group walk and one-to-one interviews yielded the most detailed and descriptive accounts of their experiences. The co-produced knowledge indicated that all five young women had experienced violence. For two of these young women, this had been of a sexual nature. I draw specifically on LirJane’s disclosure, who at 14-years-old was the youngest of the co-producers. During our group walk, LirJane shared that she had been sexually assaulted by an older man while with her friends at Westfield shopping centre.29 In our one-to-one interview, she described feeling “shocked”, and her description of the assault as “traumatic” could be seen in her avoidance of public spaces for “a couple of months” following the incident.

17Continuing the project, focusing on collaboration, group work and peer support, and amplifying their voices, the remaining two sessions were dedicated to co-producing a rap track through which their lived experiences of violence could be narrated. The young women reserved creative control over their lyricism, particularly in relation to what they wrote about and to what extent. Additionally, this was fundamental for expanding a safe disclosure of their experiences. The three-minute-and-fifteen-second music track comprised a selection of contributions, most of which were verses constructed by each of the co-producers. In reducing the pressure to document each incident in a detailed storied approach, the track asks us, their audience, to listen to their stories and listen under the words, to hear what is and what is not being said (Prendergast 2009). Although LirJane had never written lyrics or recorded a track before, I conclude this case study with her verse:

Safe space, where is my safe space?
You invaded my body, my place of faith
I am calling you out on your lack of grace
I won’t stay silent, show your face
You think it’s okay to invade my bubble
Without any trouble, double the trouble
Double the trouble, but I won’t stay silent
Shout it louder cos it won’t stay private.

Telling Stories of Power Invites Performances of Violence - Effie Makepeace

18My example comes from theatre workshops conducted with community arts group Khamalathu Arts and Research in Malawi with whom Malawian actor and director Dipo Katimba and I have worked since 2008. Khamalathu are ten women from Blantyre Malawi, who were previously identified as vulnerable and trained in theatre skills. They joined me as co-researchers on the PhD, reimagining methods such as image theatre and storytelling to explore and understand how groups of women understand, see and experience power and then using this method in their own workshops with other groups of women.

19There are notable power imbalances within this relationship due to my position as a white British researcher based in a UK institution and the historical legacy of colonisation which echoes into modern Malawian society and research relationships. Negotiating these asymmetries is an ongoing process, however there are concrete ways we have addressed them. The PhD took careful consideration of the ethics of engaging a community group as co-researchers, including compensation for their time and ongoing skills exchange with me to ensure the process was mutually beneficial. In addition, the focus on power gave us a language to discuss the nuanced and evolving power dynamics between us in ways which continue to be helpful as we work together in an ongoing collaboration and close working relationship. 

  • 30 This is different to my own storytelling culture, so it was important to be aware of this when usin (...)

20The exercise I want to use as my example happened early in our methodology development process which took place over eleven workshops between September and December 2019. These sessions were co-designed and facilitated by myself and Dipo, or Khamalathu members. For this workshop Dipo and I were the facilitators and after a physical warm- up during which we played games (which begins all our work together), we began a storytelling exercise. Since 2008 Khamalathu has used storytelling as primarily a theatre making tool so there is an established group culture of which uses storytelling to gather individual stories and then create storylines which are collectively owned. Storytelling has a long and rich history in Africa as a form of ritual, performance and learning in which teller and listener all have roles to play in the process.30

21We asked the group to share in pairs a time when they felt powerful. The pairs, including myself and Dipo, went off to find a quiet spot to tell each other our stories. Then we asked the group to come back together in a circle and each re-tell their stories to the group, but this time from the perspective of someone else in the story. If we did not know each other so well, or the group was not so experienced in storytelling or performing (speaking as someone else) we probably would not have chosen to run the exercise this way as it might have been too exposing or confusing for a group unfamiliar with each other. We asked the group to share as someone else for two reasons: to gain some distance from the story but also to encourage a sense of self-reflection. In the examples below which are taken from participants’ anonymized stories, we are able to see how the creative method (storytelling) and the framing of the method (not directly focused on violence) enabled rich and nuanced narratives to emerge which include experiences of violence, told in ways which participants control.

22The prompt for the stories was about power, yet within this broad theme, violence was explicit or implicit in many of the stories. These examples pointed to the violent ways patriarchy and social norms of gender played out in the lives of participants. One story was one group member standing up to her father who restricted her and her sisters’ movements, another was about finding ways to work around a husband who limits the money his wife has access to. These examples demonstrate the flexibility of the method to incorporate the everyday which reveal the pervasive gender norms in Malawi in which men can control the finances and movement of the women in their families.

23Some stories also revealed overt physical violence which had been directed at group members by their husbands, a fairly common experience in Malawi.31 However the prompt, which invited women to think of a time when they felt powerful, led to stories of retaliation by the women. One member, taking on the character of the husband, described how the roles were reversed one day when he came home drunk, “I usually take something, and I beat her, and she runs away to sleep outside crying, but this day I wasn’t able to do as I wanted to do as usual. In the end, she was the one beating me until I was the one running to hide”. The narrative contains both the legacy of sustained violent abuse but also her revenge, leading the husband to become the recipient of the violence. In another story, again narrating as the husband, a member described, “my wife arrived home [and saw me drunk] and started to swear at me. My goodness! She could have killed me, no joke!”. He goes on to describe how she forces him to pay the rent instead of going out drinking. These stories were both met with applause and laughter. Members felt free to share stories of moments when they were also the perpetrator of violence (albeit in retaliation for previous abuse), reframing them from victims to victors whose triumph is celebrated by the whole group.

24Similarly, when members shared stories which featured overt violence against them, they confidently controlled the narrative they were sharing. One member, speaking as her husband began with a proverb, a creative decision to draw the audience in, although she is narrating a challenging experience in her life. She went on to narrate an epic process of leaving her husband who over several days becomes more and more dejected and repentant, finally sleeping outside her parents’ house hoping she will forgive him (she does not). Using her drama skills, she takes on his character convincingly, but rather than leading us to sympathise with him, instead makes him seem pathetic, drawing out the comedy in his descent, to the other members’ delight. 

25In a similar story, the husband hides in the house while his long-suffering wife sells all the coal he meant to sell elsewhere to the neighbours, who buy it to help enable her to leave. The member describes (as the husband), “She sold everything …when she had all the money, she opened the door to come in, I ran to the bedroom and shut the door [to hide from her]”. She portrays herself through his eyes, as confident and threatening, eventually leaving with the money and the children. This story reveals again how the creative element in the method is employed to reveal something about her experience of herself as powerful and decisive in a moment which changed her life. 

26The storytelling took nearly an hour as one by one people told their stories in a circle. Afterwards we discussed how it had felt and how difficult sharing such personal stories had been, rather than closely engaging with the contents or themes of the stories themselves. However, in that discussion, as in the telling of the stories, we found moments of laughter and celebration of the challenges individuals had overcome, rejoicing at brave actions in the face of physical and emotional danger.

27In the participatory analysis of the workshop which happened after the field work, participants reflected on the method itself, commenting that the storytelling was effective, but it was also difficult, especially the element of telling your story from another perspective. However, whilst this was challenging, it also resulted in a deepened learning for some participants, “it helped me, to see things, myself, deeper, differently than the way I was seeing them, on the surface”. Co-researchers also noticed embodied and emotional affects of sharing the stories, for example goosebumps which occurred while listening. Finally, there was learning from each other’s stories, “it taught me to be brave, if your husband is abusing you to find a solution yourself…it gave me power” this demonstrated the pedagogical function of story, of another’s experience shared in this way to become a shared experience which teaches us something both in the listening and in the telling. This relational function of the story and potential of deep emotional responses means it is crucial to think carefully about what stories we ask participants to tell.

28This small example has demonstrated the strength of the invitation a creative method can offer to a group. Within the scaffold it creates, creative methods offer a way for participants to respond in ways that they choose, sharing what they would like to share, and crucially, how they would like to share it. In the study of sensitive subjects like violence, such freedom can ensure the agency of participants to express their experience in generative, healing and powerful ways.

“It gave me power”; “I won’t stay silent”: Discussion

  • 32 Lorde, Sister Outsider.

29In response to Lorde’s (1984) invitation, “what do you need to say?”, our interlocutors asserted: “It gave me power” and “I won’t stay silent”.32 We return here in a joint endeavour not only to ruminate on the examples we have contributed, but in curiosity of each other’s methods, approaches, processes and practices. In so doing, we reflect on their strengths in enabling marginalised groups to represent their lived experiences of violence. We do this through collaborative and collegiate practices, and also as scholars whose research is imbued with foundational principles of feminist praxis; reciprocal learning and sharing. We also acknowledge that the scope of this article limits the extent to which we can discuss the myriad of issues associated with conducting sensitive research using creative methods, which can often lead to researchers avoiding the study of violence or approaching creative methods. However, we invite scholars to use our reflections as tools for conceptualisation of future research, and to engage with these methods in their own carefully considered journeys of discovery, despite the many ethical complexities.

  • 33 Catherine Jameson, Zehra Haq, Samira Musse, Zahra Kosar, Gloria Watson and Vikki Wylde, “Inclusive (...)

30One of the first evident commonalities between the projects was the rapport we had built with our respective institutions and communities prior to our research pursuits. Makepeace had been involved with Khamalathu Arts and Research since 2008 and Kaur’s relationship with Bass Youth Club extended as far back as 2014. Having similar trajectories and conceptual foundations in our doctoral projects, we were acutely aware of the risk of extractivism and the exploitation of knowledge and resources from marginalised communities in the absence of this rapport. It is worth highlighting that potential interlocutors may change over time and/or frequently, as is inevitable in youth club settings. However, developing and maintaining relationships built on trust should remain an ongoing and iterative process with respective communities.33 It is also integral in ascertaining the history, culture, needs, preferences, and topics of interest to these communities; this requires time. In Makepeace’s research, extended time in Malawi over many years offered the benefit of speaking fluent Chichewa which was ultimately advantageous for co-researching in an engaged and meaningful way. For Kaur, participation from young people on the topic of violence required extensive consideration of their anonymity, based on her knowledge of the risks in their immediate circumstances. In the MTS project, this was demonstrated in the alteration of young women’s voices in their co-produced rap track. With these commonalities we argue that the “parachute” approach, wherein researchers arrive and ask for input devoid of any effort of reciprocal or sustained relationship before leaving again, hinders trust and engagement and risks harming participating communities in ways which repeat colonial and violent research histories.

  • 34 “Pandora’s box”: see Mary. C. Ramos, “Some Ethical Implications of Qualitative Research”, Research (...)

31Furthermore, building relationships in sensitive research, albeit creative, is paramount to the way in which we work to mitigate psychological distress and harm to interlocutors and ourselves, during and after participation. Because they can invite a particularly affective and emotional engagement from participants, extra care must be taken in ethically setting up such work and about adequate support and care for participants and researchers. Sensitive research topics often have the associated risk of opening up “Pandora’s box”, or the “tin-opener effect”, whereby participants may share aspects of their lives that have not been previously discussed.34 In light of this, careful consideration was paid in both projects to the way in which exercises, instructions and invitations were framed so that participants could choose which parts of their personal and lived experiences they brought to the research process. 

32In Makepeace’s research, it is important to note that the storytelling took place with a group that has known each other for over ten years. Although advantageous, the deep trust and working relationships within the group was complicated by the fact that group members had intimate knowledge of each other’s lives, and therefore stories about one's husband or close relative held greater risk. As such, careful agreements were made within the group so that stories could be shared in the space but could not be shared beyond the research workshops. Conversely, while some of the young women co-producers in Kaur’s MTS project had met in the music studio prior to the research, they were mostly getting to know each other for the first time. Thus, Kaur’s first introductory session of the project was crucial in breaking the ice and mitigating discomfort through interactive activities and games that ultimately served to build trust within the group. Similar efforts were also made to ensure confidentiality beyond the research sessions. Despite these differences in set-up, in both projects, agency and autonomy over the creative process remained with participants to deploy protective methods for themselves in their participation. This could be seen in the way they chose to frame their story, or their decision not to tell it. In Makepeace’s example, some participants chose not to share a story that had any mention of violence and to respond to the prompt differently. The participants were artists and directors of their own contributions and therefore they decided what is and isn't included. 

  • 35 Levell, Music, Mattering, and Criminalized Young Men, p. 143.
  • 36 Sonja Marzi,Co-producing Impact-in-Process with Participatory Audio-Visual Research”Area, vol. (...)

33As PhD researchers we were both somewhat constrained by the singular nature of the final thesis in our approach to co-research and co-production. With engaged and meaningful research in mind, we delivered our invitation to interlocutors as co-researchers and co-producers, although this differed slightly in the way this played out in our respective projects. “Handing over the reins” served to challenge traditional interview formats and conversely position participants as the curators of the space.35 For Makepeace, the Khamalathu members were characterised as co-researchers, involved in the conceptualisation, design, delivery and analysis. The workshops held with them in Malawi were methodology development workshops, in order for Khamalathu to also conduct research with other groups. However, due to COVID-19 restricting further field work which was planned to take place, these methodology development workshops ended up being a primary source of data. Khamalathu were also involved in the analysis of the workshops, further handing over the reins to them to be involved in the meaning extracted from their participation, further decentring the role of the lead researcher (in this case Makepeace). Conversely, while a fundamental tenet of co-production is that it should begin from the initial design of research aims and questions, the structure of much academic funding complicates this.36 Nonetheless, in Kaur’s MTS research, young women were invited to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences, to lead activities, engage in reciprocal learning and co-produce throughout the project.

  • 37 Levell, Music, Mattering, and Criminalized Young Men.

34In light of the creative methods used in both our projects –music and theatre– it is notable that our methods were guided by activities and resources that were embedded and accessible in our chosen community venues, and equally, that were already used and enjoyed by our interlocutors. In both contexts, the community spaces were set up for creative practice. In Kaur’s research, young people’s production of music in the youth club’s music studio facilitated the method of music elicitation and co-listening that was instrumental to their emerging accounts of violence. In a similar fashion, the group practices of Khamalathu Arts, such as physical warm ups and games, storytelling, image theatre and role play were utilised in Makepeace’s research, through which subsequent material, discussions and responses were used as data. In both examples, the creative methods were used to facilitate the telling of untold stories. Offering space to speak and to be heard, and in ways in which participants have creative control is intimately tied to mattering; in other words, feeling and sensing that they matter.37 Reflecting on these advantages, we recognise that having access to these activities and resources provided a supportive foundation for our projects which may not exist in other spaces. Therefore, in thinking about transferability to other community settings, we advocate for new art forms to be introduced when working with marginalised groups, or creatively layered with existing ones to build a more nuanced and textured understanding, so long as the focus remains on participants rather than the preference or skill set of the researcher.

35Another resonance across the examples is the scope of their processes, which go beyond the verbal, enable participants to express and explore more fully their offering to the research. For the young people that Kaur was working with in East London, they were able to use the words they had written (using expressive literary techniques such as metaphor), the beat, the melody, their performance style, to narrate their experiences in their own voices. With Makepeace the performative nature of storytelling as it exists in the theatre-making culture of the group, invited the use of physicality, voice, characterisation in order for participants to more fully express their experiences. In this way creative methods paved the way for deepened understandings of experiences through the inclusion of other kinds of data. Attention was paid to not just what the co-researchers said, but the way they expressed themselves, for example body language or tone of voice, which contributes to our understanding of their affective and somatic experiences. When researching sensitive topics or areas such as violence, which may be experienced by participants in ways which are both deeply emotional and physical, this may offer a greater access to understanding these experiences. In both cases we saw there was space for the pain, fear and suffering that violence can cause in the lives of participants, but through the creative methods we chose to employ we also saw participants able to express their resistance, pride and resilience. This was enabled by the particular combination of creative methods and co-production whereby participants were creating in relation to research in which they were invested.

  • 38 C. Perôt, J. Chevous, & Survivors Voices Research Group, “Survivors Voices”, 2018. https://survivor (...)

36Finally, in both projects we have seen positive engagement through creative processes. This aligns with the Survivor’s Charter (2018) which states that “work with all people affected by abuse and trauma needs to work unlike and be the opposite of abuse”.38 Successful projects are thus those with increased capacity for joy, creativity, imagination and elements of fun. In Makepeace’s research, laughter and joy was a notable feature arriving when women narrated their stories of victory over violent men. The creative and performative nature of storytelling could be seen in the way in which women narrated through another character, or incorporated physical movements, gestures and/or changing voices to add to the comical effect. For Kaur, these pockets of creativity and joy were scattered more prominently across the MTS project. A memorable moment of joy arrived after LirJane had finished recording her verse for the rap track. The satisfaction of completing her verse left her elated; she said she was “so happy”. In this way, the methods we employ are bound up in the ethics of how to research sensitive subjects in ways which do not re-traumatise, or reproduce dynamics of testimony, victim statements, and victimhood.

37In summary, both of our respective research projects are situated in different community settings, employ distinct creative art forms and engage with both long-standing and newly formed groups. Despite these differences, each project demonstrates how creative practice can extend beyond verbal articulation to reveal personal complex experiences of power, violence and resistance. In Makepeace’s work, theatre reveals the co-presence of narrative, body and collective humour, illuminating the relational dynamics of power and violence which are negotiated in embodied, communal ways. Conversely, in Kaur’s project, music captures the intimate temporality and affective memory evoked through co-listening, making visible the narrative agency embedded in the non-verbalisation of sexual violence. Taken collectively, the projects demonstrate that creative methods can generate deeper and more ethically attuned understandings of lived experiences where participants’ voices, movements and silences constitute meaningful forms of knowledge.

Conclusion

38To conclude, we have offered two case studies that demonstrate the use of creative methods as co-productive tools which may be used in the research of violence and sexual violence. In exploring power and violence (Makepeace and Kaur, respectively) our research projects are situated on different terrains, but they are nonetheless grounded in feminist praxis. While emerging at different points in the research trajectory, participatory research methodologies offer an alternative to traditional forms of research and knowledge production. In doing so, we honour and contribute to growing recognition and adoption of decolonial research strategies which foreground multiple ways of knowing and resist extractive or harmful models of research. 

39Through Kaur’s work with young people in East London, the use of music elicitation and music production as storytelling details how the traditional research process can be enlivened with the addition of art forms which are meaningful to participants, as well as how young people can use music to express themselves and talk about their experiences in their own way. Through Makepeace’s work with women in Malawi, storytelling as part of theatre workshops details the way in which co-researchers are given an avenue to express, or not, their experiences of violence in ways which are both meaningful to them, but also serve a collective purpose of sharing and learning.

40In both the examples we convey the importance of working in deep and long-term collaboration with communities and participants. These relationships lead to considered decisions on the part of the researcher about which art forms to use, and the creative methods with which to employ them. This is particularly important when working cross-generationally, or cross-culturally in order to ensure careful and ethical access to the research by the participants. By selecting methods which are already familiar and valued by the participants, research is able to “hand over the reins” to participants and interlocutors, offering the methods as an invitation to create, rather than instruction to participate. This embeds co-production in the very methods available to the study, leaving participants to respond to the invitation as they wish. Additionally, in both examples we see participants take this opportunity, working creatively and imaginatively within their art forms, to tell their stories in the ways they choose. This can result in unexpected and challenging narratives around violence which can trouble traditional ideas of victim and recognise the presence of laughter and joy even amongst individual and collective pain and suffering. Similarly, participants have been free to withhold and protect themselves through silence, such is their agency within the research. Ultimately, in these instances creative methods have offered an ethical option when considering how to conduct sensitive research in recognition of the risks therein for both the researcher and researched. We hope these examples are useful and offer inspiration for other researchers, and to continue our collaboration and interdisciplinary learning in pursuit of creative co-production.

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Notes

1 Audre G. Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Trumansburg, NY, Crossing Press, 1984.

2 John Heron and Peter Reason, “Co-operative Inquiry” in THE SAGE Encyclopaedia of Action Research, SAGE Publications, 2014.

3 Anna Pettican, Beverley Goodman, Wendy Bryant, Peter Beresford, Paul Freeman, Valerie Gladwell, Cherry Kilbride, and Ewan Speed, “Doing Together: Reflections on Facilitating the Co-Production of Participatory Action Research with Marginalised Populations”, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, vol. 15, no2, 2023.

4 Pettican et al, Doing Together, p. 204.

5 John Heron and Peter Reason, “Co-operative Inquiry”, 2014.

6 Patricia Carolina Gayá, “Towards Ever More Extended Epistemologies: Pluriversality and Decolonisation of Knowledges in Participatory Inquiry”, in The SAGE Handbook of Participatory Research and Inquiry, ed. Danny Burns, Jo Howard, and Sonia M. Ospina, SAGE Publications, 2021.

7 Patricia Hill Collins. “Comment on Hekman’s ‘Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited’: Where's the Power?”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 22, no. 2, 1997.

8 About “sensitive research”, see Raymond M. Lee, Doing Research on Sensitive Topics, London, Sage, 1993.

Mary Ellsberg and Lori Heise, Researching Violence against Women: A Practical Guide for Researchers and Activists, World Health Organisation and Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), 2005.

9 Ellsberg and Heise, Researching Violence against Women, p. 41.

10 Raymond M. Lee and Elizabeth A. Stanko, eds., Researching Violence: Methodology and Measurement, Routledge, 2009.

11 Ellsberg and Heise, Researching Violence against Women.

12 Virginia Dickson-Swift, Erica L. James, Sandra Kippen and Pranee Liamputtong, “Doing Sensitive Research: What Challenges do Qualitative Researchers face?”, Qualitative Research, vol. 7, no.3, 2007.

13 Helen Kara, Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide, Policy Press, 2015.

14 Monica Prendergast, “‘Poem Is What?’ Poetic Inquiry in Qualitative Social Science Research”, International Review of Qualitative Research, vol. 1, no.4, 2009.

15 Nicola Allett, “Sounding Out: Using Music Elicitation in Qualitative Research”, 2010. https://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/id/eprint/2871/1/0410_music_elicitation.pdf (accessed 19 December 2024).

16 Allett, “Sounding Out”, p. 3.

17 Allett, “Sounding Out”.

18 Jade Levell, Music, Mattering, and Criminalized Young Men: Exploring Music Elicitation as a Feminist Arts-Based Research and Intervention Tool, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2024.

19 Bradley C. Haseman, “Rupture and Recognition: Identifying the Performative Research Paradigm”, in Practice As Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, ed. Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt, I.B. Tauris, 2007.

20 Catherine Etmanski, “Theatre of the Oppressed” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research, SAGE Publications, 2014.

21 A broad term used to describe socially-engaged theatre and performance practices which include TO among many other traditions and practices.

22 Sally Mackey, “Applied Theatre and Practice as Research: Polyphonic Conversations”, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 21, 4, 2016.

23 To preserve the anonymity of those involved in the research, I have given pseudonyms to people, places and other affiliations with the youth club.

24 A type beat is an instrumental.

25 Details of Emina’s experiences of attempted rape and molestation were not audio recorded. However, I made brief notes after our interview in my field diary. Additionally, while there was no immediate risk to Emina, with her consent I informed the safeguarding lead at the youth club after our interview, for the purpose of following up and offering support.

26 Nichola Wood, Michelle Duffy and Susan J. Smith, “The Art of Doing (Geographies of) Music”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 25, 2007.

27 This was a post-doctoral project carried out between November 2023 and December 2023, funded by The Economic and Social Research Council.

28 Prendergast, “Poem Is What?”. Jenny McMahon, Kerry R. McGannon and Chris Zehntner, “Arts-based Methods as a Trauma-Informed Approach to Research: Making Trauma Visible and Limiting Harm”, Methods in Psychology, vol. 10, 2024.

29 Westfield is a shopping centre in Stratford, East London.

30 This is different to my own storytelling culture, so it was important to be aware of this when using this method, being guided by the group in the way they approach the exercise which contained interaction from listeners during the stories.

31 UN Women, “Global Database on Violence Against Women: Malawi”, 2023, https://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/fr/countries/africa/malawi (accessed 14 November 2025)

32 Lorde, Sister Outsider.

Quotes taken from Makepeace’s and Kaur’s case study, respectively.

33 Catherine Jameson, Zehra Haq, Samira Musse, Zahra Kosar, Gloria Watson and Vikki Wylde, “Inclusive Approaches to Involvement of community Groups in Health Research: The Co-produced CHICO Guidance”, Research Involvement and Engagement, vol. 9, 2023.

34 “Pandora’s box”: see Mary. C. Ramos, “Some Ethical Implications of Qualitative Research”, Research in Nursing and Health, vol. 12, 1989; “tin-opener effect”: see Kim Etherington, “The Counsellor as Researcher: Boundary Issues and Critical Dilemmas”, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, vol. 24, 1996. Dickson-Swift et al, “Doing Sensitive Research”.

35 Levell, Music, Mattering, and Criminalized Young Men, p. 143.

36 Sonja Marzi,Co-producing Impact-in-Process with Participatory Audio-Visual Research”Area, vol. 55, 2023.

37 Levell, Music, Mattering, and Criminalized Young Men.

38 C. Perôt, J. Chevous, & Survivors Voices Research Group, “Survivors Voices”, 2018. https://survivorsvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Survivors-Charter-v2.pdf (accessed 19 December 2024).

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Baljit Kaur et Effie Makepeace, « Creative Practice, Co-Production and Marginalised Stories in the Study of Violence and Sexual Violence: Reflections from the Field »Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 19 | 2024, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2024, consulté le 14 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/2746 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15bah

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Auteurs

Baljit Kaur

Baljit Kaur is a Research Assistant on a Wellcome-funded project at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she completed her ESRC-funded postdoctoral project, Mapping the Streets: Young Women Music Creatives and Violence in East London (2024). Her research and writing explore the intersections of (sexual) violence, music production, youth culture, creative and qualitative research methods, and abolitionist feminist theory.

Effie Makepeace

Effie Makepeace is a Lecturer in Community Performance and Applied Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She holds over 20 years of practice experience as a community theatre practitioner, artist and researcher in various contexts including long-term collaborations in India, Malawi and UK. Her work focuses on community reflection and learning for social change, power, reflective practice and queer and creative research methods.

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