Dialogues on the Intersection of Art and Scholarship

Abstract

As qualitative researchers, we began the study “The second spring: Roads taken and not taken of Hong Kong women in middle ages” with an awareness of the importance to think creatively about more varied and interesting ways to engage in empirical processes and sharing our questions and findings in more memorable and widely accessible ways. We decided to video-tape all the interviewees rather than just rely on audio-taping. It was our initial plan to produce a short film as a side product. The filming of the interviews in the interviewees’ homes and the further exploration of the interviewees’ life in subsequent interviews in their own neighbourhoods have helped us see more clearly the possibility of emphasizing the authority of both the researcher and the researched to create meaning from a work of research. Our experiences of using the visual have enabled us to see more clearly the possibilities and implications of an art-based inquiry approach for social studies. Now we are keen to embrace what came to be called “art-based enquiry”, “scholARTistry” – hybrid practices which combine tools used by the literary, visual, and/or performing arts with tools used by educators and other social scientists to understand the lived experience of our research participants. We hope to make use of the opportunity to share our views and experiences with a Japanese audience by showing 2 short films (Of women, dogs and ai (love) and Your 13 mothers, Part 1) , as our way of engaging the students in a dialogue about the production of new knowledge through art-based approaches to scholarship.