Cambridge Creative Research Conference 2024

was on Saturday 26th October 2024, 10:00 – 17:00 (BST), Online via Zoom

Thank you to everyone who attended and presented at the conference. Your contributions and engagement were invaluable in making it a success!

What is the Cambridge Creative Research Conference?

The first annual Cambridge Creative Research Conference (CCRC) ran on Saturday 26th October 2024, online via Zoom, at 10:00 – 17:00 BST.

This free online conference was designed around participatory, inclusive and fun workshops to support participants to understand and use creative research methods, tools, concepts, frameworks, and processes. The conference had three strands: ‘Artistic expression and communication’, ‘Innovative approaches to knowledge creation’, and ‘Social context and identity’, and also featured a keynote by Lucy Rycroft-Smith entitled ‘Value and values in creative research’.

 

Poster for Creative Research Conference 2024, detailing the date, time and location (Zoom) of the conference. A paragraph gives details of the conference.

Feedback and Quotes from the Conference

“This was one of the most exciting, stimulating, and thoughtful conferences I have ever been to. The care and consideration you all put into every part of it really showed – and it made me think so much more deeply about how to create a positive experience for the audience. I only wish it had been possible to magically attend all of the presentations, but the ones I was able to join were all fantastic. Thanks for being so supportive, responsive, and accommodating with the preparation process and on the day – it was a pleasure to be a part of this conference and I do hope the funding comes through for it to be run again next year.”

“Thank you so much! It was such a great conference and I’d really like to say a massive thank you for organising it.”

“Thank you very much Lucy and the team behind the Cambridge Creative Research Conference. It was a brilliant day and I genuinely learned so much. I am in the final stage of my PhD and the day gave me a huge boost and encouragement with some very practical insights how to get my studies over the finishing line.”

“Thanks again so much for creating this space available to so many of us. The CCRC really emphasised the spirit of creativity, inclusivity, and innovation trust there is at Cambridge.”

“It was an incredibly well organised conference and I was very grateful for your feedback on the slides – it has helped me consider how I can improve all my presentations to make them more accessible and useful.”

Strands, Sessions & Speakers

Keynote

In all research, the concepts of value and values are multifaceted and deeply intertwined. In adding ‘creative’ we construct another dimension: that is, to (intend to) break boundaries. This talk explores how values – often invisible in research – shape the methodologies and outcomes of creative research, and the ways in which our values shape what construct as ‘of value’ and vice versa, including the central question of why and how we might see creative research as valuable in the first place.

Strand 1: Artistic expression and communication

In this workshop, I will share reflections on how creative nonfiction writing has helped me think – and think in different ways – about my research project and my academic writing. Sharing examples of my own creative nonfiction from my PhD dissertation – particularly my methodology chapter -, I will discuss how creative writing can be used as a tool to a) support reflexivity throughout the research process; b) make sense of literature and data; and c) communicate one’s own research to different audiences in more engaging and accessible ways. Challenges in using creative nonfiction in research, such as formal requirements, will also be addressed. The workshop will feature interactive introductory exercises for those who would like to try writing creative nonfiction within their own research contexts.

The proposed workshop will explore the use of the Critical Poetic Inquiry (CPI) as a method for transformative change in education research. Commencing with a brief overview of CPI as method, we will explore new and creative ways to engage in the subversion of colonial logic. We will discuss CPI as a tool for doing decoloniality and championing change. Attendees will examine the role of poetry and performance in transforming theoretical ideas from objects of intellectual consideration into means of emotive academic engagement. Centralising decoloniality, this workshop will invite attendees to reconsider and reform their conceptualisation of research by reframing their own scholarship through poetic methods. Attendees will be invited to create poems that creatively communicate the concepts at the centre of their academic work. Our engagement in creative processes will encourage the reimagination of educational research in the hope that decolonial futures can be more than a mere figment of imagination but become a manifest reality.

The traditional western creative writing classroom follows a workshop format that alienates writers of colour, gesturing to the need for radically inclusive practices that shift dynamics of privilege and marginalization (Chavez, 2021). My research engages with anti-racist and decolonial methods to propose accessible ways of supporting diverse student writers who are historically excluded from institutions of learning. This workshop provides examples of pedagogic practices that treat art as process instead of product, with activities that rely on movement, pleasure, and honouring what surfaces unplanned (brown, 2017). Rather than using verbal prompts, I guide participants through exercises like map-making, list-building, and sketching feelings. These methods provoke attention to emergence, holding emotions, and embracing love and desire as ways of making knowledge in community (Lorde, 2018). In refusing to teach writing as a skill of grammar or diction (Strunk & White, 1999), I reject a Cartesian mind/body split in favour of embodied pedagogy. With these practices, students can approach creativity on their own terms, with intentions that differ from those outlined by institutions of learning; participatory methods allow students to be co-constructors of their arts education and learning communities. I build on my experience in arts facilitation and adapt successful practices derived from physical theatre (Lecoq et al., 2019), feminist studies (hooks, 2014 and Lorde, 2018), and emergence (brown, 2017). My workshop will be of interest to educators and students interested in how pedagogies from non-western and anti-imperialist communities can dismantle dominant learning traditions within education.

Strand 2: Innovative approaches to knowledge creation

What do we want from technology and constructs of smartness/intelligence? In this by practice workshop Eleanor will invite participants to co-design worlds and technologies together while discussing our understandings of intelligence and ‘smartness’. We will ask what is technology for and who benefits from it? How do we even define what counts as technology? Cynthia Porter Rosenfeld writes: ‘it is more productive to investigate verbs (processes) than nouns (entities); things—as we understand them—are generated by practice and performance and not from a prior essence; thought and the world are interwoven; and phenomena exist in the multiple’ (2023, 37).

This workshop will deploy found objects, recycled materials, drawing and cut up poetry to deploy Worldbuilding as an object and arts based methodology. Eleanor has been evolving worldbuilding in their creative research and practice since 2017, online and in person, influenced along the way by Ruha Benjamin (2019), Design Justice (Costanza-Chock, 2020), science fiction and many of the works of art, music and fiction Burrows and O’Sullivan cite in ‘Fictioning, the Myth Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy’ (2019).

Before the workshop participants will be sent a pdf of things they might find useful to have with them during the session, as well as an outline of what we will do and a reference list of songs, readings, films and artworks relevant to the theme of worldbuilding. Participants are invited to add their own songs and wider references to this list. Participants will come away from the workshop with an understanding of how arts based research and close attention to materiality is more than a method, but a set of processes which can enact an epistemological break, a path to something different from humanist framings of knowledge, innovation, ‘smartness’ and agency.

References

Ruha Benjamin (2019) Race After Technology, Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity Press

David Burrows, Simon O’Sullivan (2019) Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press.

Sasha Costanza-Chock (2020) Design Justice, Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, Cambridge MA, MIT press.

Cynthia Porter Rosenfeld (2023) Digital Worldbuilding and Ecological Readiness (Environmental Communication and Nature: Conflict and Ecoculture in the Anthropocene), Lexington Books/Fortress Academic.

Images have long been valuable resources in educational research. This workshop explores the integration of photographs and other visual materials as active components of research projects. Unlike traditional approaches that utilize pre-existing images, this session will demonstrate how to create and use images within the research process. These images, whether generated by researchers or participants, can take various forms, including films, videos, photographs, maps, diagrams, paintings, diaries, and collages.

Rather than merely serving as illustrative objects, these visual elements are used actively alongside other evidence, such as interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, in what is known as ‘visual research methods’. The workshop will introduce three key methods for incorporating photos into research: photo-documentation, photo-elicitation, and photo essays. A particular focus will be on photo-elicited interviews (PEI), a technique that involves integrating images captured by interviewees into the interview process (Harper, 2002). We will discuss the collection, analysis, and presentation of PEI data.

As a qualitative research method, PEI has proven effective in adding a visual dimension that elicits rich narratives, enhancing our understanding of participants’ learning experiences and perceptions across diverse educational and social contexts (Zhang and Hennebry-Leung, 2023). This workshop aims to demonstrate how incorporating images into research can address various research questions and offer fresh perspectives on educational topics. Participants will gain practical insights and hands-on experience in utilizing visual methods to enrich their research endeavors.

In this workshop, I will explore hauntology and its application in research fieldwork. Hauntology, originating from the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, refers to the study of spectres, ghosts, and traces of the past that linger in the present. Through an interactive and reflective session, participants will look into the conceptual foundations of hauntology, examining its implications for understanding social phenomena and the research process.

I will firstly uncover how hauntology offers a lens through which to interrogate the hidden dimensions of research encounters, acknowledging the influence of absent voices, forgotten histories, and unacknowledged presences. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own research practices and fieldwork experiences, considering how hauntological approaches can enrich their understanding and interpretation of these encounters. As a takeaway from the workshop, I am thinking guiding participants in creating their own mind maps, synthesising key insights and concepts discussed during the session. These mind maps will serve as tools for participants to apply hauntology to their future research practice, providing a visual framework for exploring the spectral dimensions of their fieldwork and embracing the ‘ghosts’ of the research process.

There are an abundance of video data available to us as researchers in the contemporary research space.  But how could we analyse this data creatively? We will look at a short video clip together, exploring ways of viewing the data through different creative methods and questioning what this may tell us about the emotions, meanings and relationships we see in the extract. Please note the extract used in this session contains swear words.

Strand 3: Social context and identity

Current frameworks of school improvement and quality assurance in many education systems around the world are disproportionately focused upon universal standards and generalisable measures that are applied across schools. In doing so, they largely ignore the unique contexts within schools. And yet, these contextual factors, such as socioeconomic status, SEN needs, family circumstances, access to online learning, cultural beliefs etc., have a significant impact upon the learning that occurs within each school. Consequently, we find ourselves in education systems that are increasingly disempowering, and sometimes even silencing, the voice, individuality, and agency of those at the heart of our schools: our young people. For over ten years, my research has focused on how we can meaningfully and sustainably bring young people into conversations about their own learning in schools.

This workshop will invite delegates to engage with recent research conducted with students and teachers in secondary school settings in the UK, Sweden and the UAE. By creating inclusive physical and metaphorical spaces through collage-making and cogenerative dialogue, students were encouraged to discuss their lived experiences of learning with teachers, as co-learners. From this, students and teachers co-generated insights into the mechanisms that drive learning in their own school context. These insights were analysed and diagrams were co-created so that educators can trace the processes – the ‘cogs and wheels’ – of learning.

Drawing on arts-based methods that invite us to make meaning of lived experiences and access tacit knowledge, and inspired by indigenous methodologies that honour the role of storytelling and dialogue in co-creating knowledge, delegates in this workshops will play with collage-making as they reflect upon their own experiences of learning, and engage in cogenerative dialogue (guided conversation) as they discuss the mechanisms that drive learning across a range of education contexts.

This will be a session that invites delegates to interact with the methodology and the research findings of the study – to be courageous, generous, and open to new possibilities!

In this workshop, participants will be invited to engage with field data, preliminary findings, and the central conceptual anchor of my doctoral research, i.e., ‘antifragility (crisis-induced evolution) in education’ through a guided empathy-building exercise. Participants will be given prompts to step into the shoes of various stakeholders (teachers, parents, school leaders, funders, etc.) at schools in India for learners with different kinds of disadvantages. They will then be invited to imagine, as these stakeholders, how they might respond to the challenges posed by COVID-19 within a given set of situational constraints.

Unknown to participants at the time, these descriptions will draw on real-life scenarios and individuals from my pilot study and fieldwork at elementary schools in North India, and their experiences of the pandemic.

Having worked through their own imagined responses to the prompts, participants will then be presented with how their assigned stakeholders and schools actually responded to—and indeed evolved from—the COVID-19 crisis in real life. Using a comparison of participants’ imagination with the realities of field data, the concept of an antifragile school response to crisis will be introduced and discussed.

Through this exercise, what I hope for participants to come away with is fourfold:
– A deeper understanding of the notion of ‘antifragility in education’;
– A practical, visceral experience of what it means to ‘operationalise’ a concept;
– An opportunity to engage with visualisation and imagination as an instrument of research dissemination;
– An intellectual-affective tool, i.e., empathetic visualisation, that they can apply within personal, professional, and academic spaces to engage meaningfully with novel contexts.

This online workshop immerses participants in a virtual exploration of selfhood through art-based, multisensory methods using everyday objects and AI. By employing the concept of ‘synaesthesia-ing’ as a pedagogical action, the workshop guides participants in deepening their sensory awareness to generate creative, embodied knowledge of personal identity. Through digital tools and common household items, participants engage in creative exercises, interacting with both human and non-human agents to explore their identities in innovative ways. AI tools are introduced as optional enhancements, not as central elements.

F.A.Q.

This is a conference about creative research for everyone – you might be an undergraduate, a Fellow, a librarian, a Professor, a writer, a teaching assistant, an artist, a postgraduate student, a teacher, a designer, a data analyst, or a pastoral advisor – and many more. This is a conference focused on participatory, accessible workshops to help people understand and use creativity in research ideas, whether that is for publishing in journals or for enjoyment and self-expression – there is no need to ‘be’ a researcher in any formal sense to attend the conference, although it is likely that people who do research in their job will benefit from it.

The workshops are an hour long and are participatory – meaning you will be invited to try out tools, methods and approaches, and perhaps give your opinions and thoughts. There is no obligation to do so, however, and you may also just listen and think. We do not require anyone to have their camera or microphone on, and encourage participants to put their own comfort first. At the end of the day you will be invited to vote on sessions under three categories:

  1. Accessible and inclusive
  2. Innovative and creative
  3. Well- presented

 

so take care to make a note of anything you notice that might contribute to a well-informed vote. You will also be issued with a certificate of participation at the end of the day.

You are free to move between strands and attend any sessions you wish.

Make sure you have the environment set up so as to be as focused on the conference as possible (we acknowledge the privilege of being able to do so, and that caring responsibilities and attending to personal comfort comes first). A full list of any suggested materials for the workshops will be shared with you before the conference. You also might like to have some pencils or pens with you so that you can make creative notes by hand if preferred, and coloured paper ready for origami which may happen in the event of technical difficulties!

We think that you are! There are many, many ways to be creative, and some people prefer constraints and rules to do so; others enjoy a ‘blank page’, while still others are great at collaborating and bouncing ideas around while not necessarily liking to be creative on their own.

Of course not! No one is going to ‘check your credentials’ to attend. You might be interested in learning more or considering using more creativity in research; or you might hate the idea but be willing to listen; all are welcome.

Of course not! No one is going to ‘check your credentials’ to attend. Looking at things with a ‘researcher’ lens is valuable and interesting, regardless of your title, formal qualifications or whether you are a student or not.