‘If you can call it a poem’: toward a framework for the assessment of arts-based works

The use of artistic forms as an alternative means for representing research findings is gaining acceptance in the research community. There are, however, important yet unresolved and even contentious issues arising from these new applications of the arts. These include concerns about the level of expertise required to effectively utilize the arts in research, the appropriateness of various methods of creating artworks and the desirability of identifying criteria for assessing arts-based contributions. Centring on the question of criteria for the creation and assessment of arts-based works, we note that there are, at present, few salient guidelines. Drawing upon our experience in conducting a pilot project employing arts-based methods of representing research findings, we propose a Guiding Arts-Based Research Assessment (GABRA) meta-framework for assessing the quality and effectiveness of utilizing the arts for knowledge dissemination. This overarching framework incorporates normative, substantive and performative aspects of arts-based methods of representing research findings.