Keywords

The Ineffable

Reducing affective knowledge translation to a dummy variable while promoting the utility of art as a communication tool for researchers diminishes what exhibitions are and what they do—immensely. Manning (2008, p. 7) argues that evaluation ‘happens from the outside as an undoing of a work’s process’ whereas Williams (2021, p. 14) contends that the ‘event of the exhibition cannot simply be evaluated in a space of phenomenological experience because it is excessive of subjective recognition and expectation’. However, and as the philosopher Whitehead (1978, p. 340) states, ‘[o]bjectification requires elimination’, and ‘it is an empirical fact that process entails loss’. For me, that loss is acceptable if it means that my fellow creative geographers have the empirical ‘evidence’ they need to support their arts-based knowledge translation efforts. Nonetheless, in ‘giving in’ to positivism and the demands of the ‘neoliberal’ academy (Troiani & Dutson, 2021), let’s not forget that there are modes of academic thought which thoroughly reject them (Nordstrom, 2018).

Even when prioritising the phenomenological experience of exhibition visitors, there will be aspects of that experience that defy representation and cannot be expressed. As Gäb (2020) explains, this is not only because of the limits of language (‘weak’ ineffability) but also, in some cases, the sheer impossibility to form a mental representation capable of being expressed in words (‘strong’ ineffability). However, just because we can’t express it doesn’t mean that we don’t know it (Boyd & Hughes, 2020; Dewsbury, 2003). This is central to affective knowledge translation because we all have the capacity to affect and be affected through our bodily senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste—if we have them all—and a sixth according to Serres, 2008). As Shouse (2005, para. 9, 10) argues, ‘without affect feelings do not “feel” because they have no intensity’; however, ‘the transmission of affect does not mean that one person’s feelings become another’s’ rather it involves ‘resonating with the intensity of the context’. It is perhaps for this reason, too, that virtual online galleries cannot re-create the atmosphere of an in-person exhibition or event and, sometimes, the intensity of the body’s sensations (or the act of being ‘moved’) ‘can “mean” more to people than meaning itself’ (Shouse, 2005, para. 11).

Rapport

When I first met with a manager of a museum at the start of a different project to this one, she thanked me at the end of the meeting for ‘being a “real person” and not an academic’. I think that was less of a judgement about my academic worth than it was a compliment for taking the time and making an effort to establish rapport. Establishing rapport for the sake of a research project starts from the researcher, and it evolves from there. In the case of ‘Finding Home’, it was about caring about regional youth and the regions—their experiences and their challenges—not just being able to demonstrate that through past research but being able to express it with conviction to those who share similar convictions.

Rapport is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a ‘[m]utual understanding between persons; sympathy, empathy, connection; a relationship characterized by these’ (OED, 2022). Furthermore, the ‘concepts of “trust” and “liking” can help to differentiate rapport and friendship … [r]apport is a relationship marked by confidence and trust, but not necessarily by liking’ (Glesne, 1989). In communicating with commissioned artists, research participants, multiple stakeholders, gallery coordinators, but also the ‘hidden people’—technical support, administrative staff, customer service staff and so on—it is not necessary for us to ‘like’ one another, even though in many cases common interests and personalities make it inevitable that friendships will form. What is necessary is that the nature of the work also matters to them (even the customer service agent will ‘go the extra mile’ to find your lost crate of artwork if they understand what the project is about and respect what you’re trying to do).

Caveats and Costs

As much as the evaluation of ‘Finding Home’ addressed many questions related to its reception, several remain unanswered. For instance, how does knowledge curated by the research exhibition radiate from attendance, who does it exclude, how do visitors really make meaning from it, and then who do they tell? As much as all regional people are marginalised by the urban, ‘Finding Home’ (mostly) was about privileged white people talking about their privileged lives and then having those stories artfully curated and exhibited by privileged white people wherein they were viewed and appreciated by mostly privileged white audiences. This was not exclusively the case, but this is a problem for arts-based knowledge translation. If relatively colonial institutions mostly appeal to those who have benefitted from colonisation, then the reach of arts-based knowledge translation efforts via ‘the gallery’ will be limited accordingly. Finally, and in relation to Hawkins (2021) call ‘what work does art do in the world?’, ‘what work do “middle-aged women” do in the world as communicators of arts-based knowledge?’

I remember the need to respond to a reviewer of my original grant application for the EYRA Study who thought that arts-based knowledge translation wasn’t effective or value for money. I hope now, and because of the work relayed in this book, that creative geographers will be able to respond to comments like this with even more ‘evidence’ than we had before. However, and perhaps why the grant application was successful, two out of three reviewers applauded the strategy. In practice so did the exhibition’s audiences, with some expressing delight that the work was government funded and with stakeholders asking for more of it. That means that we need to continue to do this kind of work in a way that convinces funding bodies that it is value for money. This doesn’t mean doing it less expensively, but it does mean justifying costs versus benefit, and in this domain arts-based knowledge translation still has a lot of work to do.

In reducing costs, universities can do more to support arts-based knowledge translation through the provision of infrastructure, like exhibition spaces, for the express purpose of presenting research exhibitions to the public. This would be particularly helpful for urban researchers who might otherwise struggle to stage a research exhibition because galleries in city areas don’t always acknowledge work like this, they don’t have a community remit like regional art galleries do, and they can be dismissive of work they don’t perceive of as ‘high art’ (Winston & Cupchik, 1992). At a school or departmental level, universities can implement modest schemes and initiatives to support art-science collaborations—even just the production of a single work—where a body of themed work might emerge over time.

Transdisciplinarity

Despite all the benefits of arts-based knowledge translation outlined in this book, I am against STEAM—the insertion of art into STEM and divorcing it from HASS (Lachman, 2018)—as it runs the risk of treating the arts as a convenient teaching/learning device, rather than recognising the arts as a way of knowing. Van Baalen, de Groot, and Noordegraaf-Eelens (2021, p. 35) describe this form of transdisciplinarity in relation to the arts as the instrumentalised position, whereby the arts are treated as ‘a tool or a guide for action, rather than an end in itself’. In contrast, the GeoHumanities valorise the arts and humanities for ‘modes of the empirical other than the extractive’ (Hawkins, 2021, p. 15). This second form of transdisciplinarity is referred to by van Baalen et al. (2021) as the artistic vantage point, which ‘influences the ways in which a subject is approached, valued, and understood in relation to other processes or objects’ (p. 37). However, the third position, and what van Baalen et al. (2021) consider to be a fully transdisciplinary approach in relation to the arts, is one that involves ‘a wide variety of actors’ participating in ‘heterogenous collectives and initiatives that [take] place in different contexts’, as well as research which uses ‘a combination of art forms’ to ‘transgress disciplinary boundaries’ and which ‘demand[s] to be understood from a transdisciplinary perspective’ (p. 37).

‘Finding Home’ is an example of van Baalen et al.’s (2021) second kind of transdisciplinarity, and consistent with a GeoHumanities perspective, although it has elements of the first and the third. Still, I hope that this book has demonstrated the value of arts-based knowledge translation in tackling pressing or persistent societal issues. I also hope that in being partly empirical, partly theoretical, and partly ‘how-to’ guide, that this book inspires other academics to embark on their own transdisciplinary trajectories.