Arts practice as method, urban spaces and intra-active faiths

Abstract

This paper examines the research design for an arts-based interfaith research project that is intended to build relationships between children from different faiths and to increase research participants’ understandings of faiths other than their own. The project is funded as an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship called Early Start Arts to Counter Radicalization and has a mixed method approach that brings arts-based workshop groups for children together with focus groups for parents. Early findings demonstrate the utility of art for developing a sense of belonging and self-worth in children and clearly show ways in which art facilitates comment on complex social issues even from primary school age. The nature of such socially engaged arts-based research means it must be developed or, at the least, refined, through engagement with community and social context. As such, consideration of the urban environment that shapes the lives of the young research participants and their families forms part of the discussion undertaken.