Dialogic, arts-based methodologies: Ethical questions on facilitating workshop groups in a collaborative research project

This presentation explores the ethics of facilitating arts-based workshops in which co-researchers and university researchers engage in joint analyses of interview material in a collaborative research project Dancing with Parkinson’s. The aims of the workshops are to co-produce knowledge about experiences with Parkinson’s dance in everyday life and develop a graphic novel (drawing on the field of graphic medicine) with people with PD, their families and professionals as the target readership. The graphic novel has been chosen as a way of communicating the co-produced knowledge because it is well-suited to giving voice to experiences anchored in bodily, visual, aesthetic, sensory ways of knowing and being.
The series of workshops involves 4 groups with, in total, 26 people with Parkinson’s and 7 partners. Methods include reflexive poetic writing, photovoice, and collaborative collage. We will reflect on the ethics of consent and facilitation. How do the participants know what they consent to and to what extent do they take part in decision-making as collaborators and co-authors? How can we ethically engage with the tension between giving weight to and valuing the process itself – in the light of relational ethics – and the instrumental orientation towards the research communication product (the graphic novel)?