Creative Writing for Social Research

Richard Phillips is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He is a specialist in creative and arts-led research methodologies, which he practises in his own work and encourages students to try in the field trips he leads in cities from Liverpool to New York. Richard’s books include Georges Perec’s Geographies (2019), Fieldwork for Human Geography (2012), Sex, Politics and Empire (1996), and Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997).

Helen Kara has been an independent researcher since 1999 and specialises in research methods and ethics. She is the author of Creative Research Methods: A Practical Guide (Policy Press, 2nd ed. 2020) and Research Ethics in the Real World: Euro-Western and Indigenous Perspectives (Policy Press, 2018). Helen is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

INTRODUCTION

Definitions

~ Social research

~ Creativity and creative

~ Writing and creative writing

Synergies between creative writing and social research

What follows

DOING CREATIVE WRITING

Introduction

Doing it yourself: getting started

~ Reading for writing

~ Small steps and time frames

~ Warm-up exercises

Putting yourself in the picture

~ Writing in the first person

~ Diaries and journals

Observation and description

~ Autoethnography

~ Observational writing and the implied observer

~ Stories and storying

~ Collecting and transcribing stories

Writing about ideas: essays and lists

~ Essays

~ Lists and listing

Doing it yourself: following through

~ Drafting and editing

~ Seeking and receiving feedback

~ Writing together

DOING RSEARCH, GENERATING DATA, WORKING WITH PARTICIPANTS

Introduction

~ Rationale

~ Ethics

Getting started: participatory creative writing for social research

~ What is a participant?

~ How to invite or recruit participants

Workshops and groups

~ How to draw participants together into a cohesive group

~ Playful workshops

~ Getting started, warming up

~ How to write, review and revise together: workshopping

~ Scope

Working with individuals

~ Varying roles for participants and facilitators

Data and findings: process and product

~ Observing and documenting the creative writing process

~ Product: outputs and impacts

EXPLORING AND ARTICULATING FINDINGS

Introduction

Data analysis

~ Fiction in data analysis

~ Poetry in data analysis

~ Play and screenplay writing in data analysis

Dissemination

~ Visual methods of writing for dissemination

~ Performance for dissemination

~ Comedy in dissemination

Finding and telling stories; storying

SEARCHING AND QUEER(ING) WRITING

Introduction

Searching

Queer(ing) writing