• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Meet us
    • Open days
    • Virtual tours
    • Upcoming events
    • Applicant days
    • Meet us in your country
    • Chat to our students
    • Ask us a question
    • Order a prospectus
    • Our campuses
    • Our four campuses
    • Accommodation options
    • Our halls
    • Helping you find a home
    • What you can study
    • Find a course
    • Full A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Our academic departments
    • How to study with us
    • Undergraduate application process
    • Postgraduate application process
    • International student application process
    • Apprenticeships
    • Applying through Clearing
    • Transfer from another university
    • Fees and financial support
    • Undergraduate finance
    • Postgraduate finance
    • Our funding and support options
    • Supporting you
    • Your wellbeing
    • Student support and guidance tutors
    • Study skills support
    • Careers and employability
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Brighton pier by dusk
Research and knowledge exchange
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • Research features
  • Research organisation
  • Research environment
  • Groups
    • Groups
    • Applied geosciences
    • Built environment
    • Biomaterials and Drug Delivery
    • Brighton and Sussex Medicines Optimisation
    • Chemistry
    • Stress, ageing and disease
    • Ecosystems and environmental management
    • Education
    • Environment and public health
    • Healthcare Practice and Rehabilitation
    • Interdisciplinary Management and Higher Education
    • Management and Employment
    • Mathematics, Statistics and Operations
    • Musculoskeletal
    • Nuclear physics
    • Past human and environment dynamics
    • Paediatrics
    • Product design
    • Sensory neuroscience
    • Social Science Policy
    • Society space and environment
    • Sport and Exercise Science and Medicine
    • Sport, Tourism and Leisure
    • Sustainability and Resilience Engineering
    • Transforming sexuality and gender
    • Values and sustainability
  • Social Science Policy
    • Social Science Policy
    • Research impact
    • Research areas
    • Research projects
    • Collaborations
    • Events
    • About us
  • Research projects
    • Research projects
    • Collaborative Poetics
    • "I will tell you something of my own"
    • Project page
    • Designing healthy prisons for women
    • Making a meal of collaborative learning
    • Material traces
    • Older people: care and self-funding experiences
    • Rehabilitation by design: Influencing change in prisoner behaviour
    • Researching discrimination through poetry: Developing a method of collaborative poetics
    • Resilience and friendships
    • Monitoring, evaluation and impact: Making data work for communities
    • Aesthetics of protest: Visual culture and communication in Turkey
    • Anti-social behaviour enforcement action and young people
    • Brighton Citizens' Health Services Survey
    • Carer Information and Support Programme (CrISP)
    • CCTV: Lessons from a surveillance culture
    • Cheers!
    • Connected Communities projects
    • Dance and dementia
    • Disruption: unlocking low carbon travel
    • Domestic abuse and LGBT people
    • Domestic elder abuse in Japan and England
    • Domestic fire safety evaluation
    • East Sussex carers' break
    • Electronic Patient Records (EPR) evaluation
    • EmERGE
    • ENSUE
    • Fairness in Brighton and Hove: an analysis of public voice
    • Health Trainers in West Sussex
    • Information for healthy living
    • LifeLines
    • Live well with dementia evaluation
    • Mobile phone app for HIV patients
    • Neutralising deviance
    • Older people and human rights
    • Older people wellbeing and participation
    • Older people with sight loss in care homes
    • Older people's experiences of online and offline communities
    • Prison architecture design and technology
    • Protest networks and the Pitchford inquiry
    • Responding to child to parent violence
    • Section 136 in Sussex
    • Service user and practitioner experiences of community treatment orders (CTOs)
    • The Brighton systems knowledge exchange project
    • The problem of personal debt and mental health
    • Social factors, care and Community Treatment Orders (CTOs)
    • Working towards prevention
    • Writing the landscape of everyday life
  • Researching discrimination through poetry: Developing a method of collaborative poetics

Researching discrimination through poetry: Developing a method of 'collaborative poetics'

This project focused on developing a method of ‘collaborative poetics,’ in which poets and social scientists work together as a ‘research collective’ to produce creative texts.  The ‘collaborative poetics’ method harnesses the skills and knowledge of both these groups to produce innovative, creative pieces which enrich our understanding of social scientific issues and help us to communicate this new knowledge in engaging, accessible ways. The approach focuses on expounding the subjective, lived experiences of co-researchers, and thus also harnesses a third base of expertise – that of personal experience.

The method was developed in a pilot study carried out in the summer of 2016 at McGill University’s Participatory Cultures Lab. This pilot research worked with seven young spoken word poets over an intensive six-week period, to explore issues around prejudice and discrimination. The co-researchers were trained in qualitative research methods by Helen Johnson and coached in poetry performance/writing by experienced, local artist-educators, Cat Kidd, Deanna Smith, Tanya Evanson and Chris Masson. The co-researchers’ experiences were illustrated and elucidated in a series of poetic autoethnographic texts, which were disseminated in a chapbook, a spoken word performance, and a series of video poems.

Members of a poetry meeting

Project timeframe

The pilot study research took place between July and September 2016. The project is now entering its second phase, with network development and the development of a collaborative poetics resource pack.

Project aims

The aims of this project were to:

  • use spoken word poetry to create social-scientifically informed poems which explore lived experiences and understandings of discrimination
  • develop the use of poetry as a research tool, exploring ways in which poets and social scientists can work together collaboratively to elucidate personal experiences and inform positive social change.

Please enable targeting cookies in order to view this video content on our website, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

Project findings and impact

The project findings and method were explored and disseminated through a live spoken word show, a poetry chapbook, symposia, workshops and online teaching materials. Future planned outputs include video poems and conference presentations.

The project impact was evaluated through: focus groups, interviews and emails with poet co-researchers and other project participants; informal feedback from the spoken word show and chapbook audiences; and written qualitative feedback on talks and workshops aimed at disseminating the method.

A thematic analysis of the data took place. Findings indicate that the project achieved a range of outcomes for co-researchers, including:

  • providing co-researchers with a sense of ownership and empowerment around their discrimination experiences
  • enabling co-researchers to build a range of skills related to poetry writing and performance, and to social scientific research
  • enabling co-researchers to develop and articulate their thinking around discrimination, embedding their experiences within broader social scientific frameworks and sociopolitical contexts
  • encouraging co-researchers to challenge incidences of discrimination which they encounter in their daily lives.

In terms of audience impact, feedback from the spoken word show indicated that the poems were viewed as powerful and thought provoking. In addition, the chapbooks have been widely disseminated, and have been used in a variety of contexts, including as teaching tools in schools and universities.

In terms of the dissemination of the collaborative poetics method, there has been a great deal of interest from academics, artists and community organisations. All events aimed at disseminating this method have booked out to date. Feedback from these events has been overwhelmingly positive with the vast majority of participants expressing an interest in applying this method in their own work.

Please enable targeting cookies in order to view this video content on our website, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

View this interview with Helen Johnson about the method used

Please enable targeting cookies in order to view this video content on our website, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

View reflective piece from one of the pilot study co-researchers

Please enable targeting cookies in order to view this video content on our website, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

View this film of a collaborative poetics workshop

Research team

Helen Johnson

Output

Johnson, H., Macaulay-Rettino, X., Banderob, S., Lalani,I., Carson-Apstein, E. and Blacher, E. (In press) A rose by any other name? Developing a method of ‘collaborative poetics.’ Qualitative Research in Psychology

Johnson, H., Carson-Apstein, E., Banderob, S. and Macualay-Rettino, X. (2017). 'You Kind of Have to Listen to me': Researching Discrimination through Poetry. Forum Qualitative Social Research/Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 18 (2).

The Struggle is Real. Spoken word show at Mainline Theatre, Montreal in August 2016

A Rose by Any Other Name? Using Poetry as a Tool for Collaborative Research. Talk at University of Brighton, 14 November 2016.

Collaborative poetics workshop. First run at University of Brighton on 6 January 2017. Second run at University of Brighton on 13 April 2017.

'An Artist, a Participant, and a Social Scientist Walk Into a Bar... Creating Collaborative Poetic Autoethnographies,' workshop and talk at the Voicing Experience Conference at University of Sussex. Friday 16th June 2017.

‘You Kind of Have to Listen to Me’ – Chapbook of poetic autoethnographies, (available for £7 + postage and packing from Helen Johnson. Email: h.f.johnson@brighton.ac.uk)

A Rose by Any Other Name? Developing a method of ‘collaborative poetics’ (paper forthcoming)

Partners

  • Matt Shi
  • Amy Iliza
  • Ellana Blacher
  • Emily Carson-Apstein
  • Xander Macaulay-Rettino
  • Inara Lalani
  • Simon Banderob

Funded by the National Centre for Research Methods; developed in partnership with Professor Claudia Mitchell and McGill University’s Participatory Cultures Lab.

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19
  • The Student Contract

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents